Avidileaks... and back in the air again..

...while the plane flew perfectly at the (rebuild) maiden flight just before Christmas I did discover some leaks…

I have installed a cabin heater on the water circuit. With not 2 components (pump, valves, radiators, T tube connectors...) having the same diameter fittings I was not too surprised to find some lime green cooling liquid drops where they should not be... and the VW heat system valve I had installed was also leaking… Not a problem to bypass the valve at the moment as we are still in winter and heat always on is the preferred option…

Worse was a fuel leak from one of the lower fittings of the feeder tank… some 10 liters of fuel had drop by drop leaked out and run all along (inside) the bottom of the fuselage to the draining hole just in front of the tail wheel (luckily I had a draining hole at exactly the right place). The leak was so slow I didn’t notice it until it was too late (i.e. after Christmas…). When mixed fuel leak drop by drop it has the time to deposit the 2 stroke oil on the way… It has left a trace I had preferred not to have but that’s life…

With no separate oil system there could be no leaking oil so to compensate this I had a second fuel leak… one of the carburetor seals must have been damaged when I removed the engine and cleaned out the old fuel from the carburetors before the extended storage…

A good battery is supposed to be heavy, right? Well, it is time to embrace change… 

Before the flight I replaced the battery with a light weight LiFePO4 battery as the old lead acid battery had gone where all old batteries one day go… While the gain in weight was the main driver for the change the extra power at cold start is really nice. I was positively surprised… you don’t expect something much smaller (about 1/4 of the volume) and much lighter (about 1/5 of the weight) to be much more powerful. 

The compression ratio on the Victor 2 is way higher than for a Rotax 582 and while it was “ok” to start with the old traditional battery (when fresh and fully changed…) it is no match, even when cold outside, for my new LiFePO4 battery. The cold start performance of the battery is actually very impressive and way better than expected. 

All fixed and ready to fly. I got 1 hour in calm but slightly misty weather. I could feel I had not been flying for a long time and took it really easy.

...but flying again was sooooo good!