Finally Alone! - Rich of Peak / Lean of Peak
Added 11/25/07For the past nearly 2 years I've spent lots of time flying with the family, traveling around in the RV-10 and reporting back on performance data. Most of the time though, the performance data I was able to show was taken with the whole gang aboard. This time it was a bit different. For the Thanksgiving holiday I had 2 opportunities for some cross-country time, as I had to pick up my in-laws on the other side of the state, and bring them back here...then take them back again a couple days later. As for the trip itself, it was pretty basic, other than dealing with some good head and tail winds. For me though, it was a rare opportunity to spend some time in the cockpit alone, and see what the RV-10 would do for me.
The one part of the second day, final leg that had me really pumped was the takeoff and climb. I'm not much used to climbing light, and in the cool pre-winter air up here I find that I can actually sustain a 2300fpm climb at times. On the takeoff to head home, I didn't do anything but fly a normal cruise climb at between 105 and 115kts, yet when I reached 8500' (8-900' MSL is ground level), I was only 5 minutes and 20 seconds into the flight. That's one of my biggest thrills about having 260 horses on the front end...you get up where you want to be, above the bumps, and start getting yourself configured for economy cruise lots faster than a lesser powered bird.
Did I say the RV-10 is a real kick to fly? Rumor has it from talking to pals with 6's and 7's that the -10 can hold it's own in speed and comes close in efficiency when compared to the 2 seat RV's...so that extra cubic inches isn't killing you all that much.
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| Rich of
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the first of 4 legs, I was flying at 9500' with a good tailwind,
getting groundspeeds of 200kts. My previous static error, as tested by 4-way GPS tests, show that my TAS reads about 1.8 (2) knots low, so using that as a baseline here are some specs: 9500' (7480 DA), 175kts
TAS on 14.2 gph
You can see that by paying for a little fuel compared to my previous distance trips, it's easy to get more performance, and I know there are faster RV-10's than mine out there. |
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| Lean of
Peak |
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After running the ROP test,
I then did the big pull on the red knob and brought that mixture back
to something more economical. As stated before, I lose somewhere around 5-10kts going LOP, depending on how far I lean the engine back. 9500' (7580 DA), 165kts TAS on 10.4 gph So, with a little work, you can save over 3gph over ROP cruise, but arrive there only a couple of minutes later. |
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| Day 2 |
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| Rich of
Peak |
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the 4th leg of the trip, I was once again alone and tried the same
thing on a different day at a slightly different altitude of 8500'. 8500' (8060 DA), 177kts
TAS on 14.4 gph
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| Lean of
Peak |
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after running ROP for a while I pull the knob back once again and get
some LOP time: 8500' (8120 DA), 164kts
TAS on 10.1 gph
You'll notice that the speed dropped off a bit more on this run, but that's because I went a little further on the lean side than I sometimes do. Speed drops off pretty rapidly at some point, so you have to play it by gauge and by ear to come up with a reasonable setting. |
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