Test flying

Yesterday I flew for 6 hours in total and I did another 1.5 hours this morning. I then did another oil change and removed both front doors to add a second gas strut to each at the front. The handles are very easy to open, so I'm going to swap the handles between doors. This will put the latch closer to the Perspex and away from knees that might inadvertently lift it during flight. In addition I've extended both latching bolts so the handles have to be rotated over center to unlatch the doors.

I wound a couple more turns onto the oil pressure screw. We've already put 2.5 turns onto it because the oil was sitting at 60psi. Occasionally it drops below that when below cruise rpm. However it has only increased to 63psi which has me a bit concerned. I'd like to see it show 75psi so I know it'll hold that ok, before backing it off.

I added some red RTV around the boot cowl this afternoon, and also added some to the alternate air cable to stop it from chaffing.

The Bearhawk was flying well today. There are a couple small things that are bugging me. When I remove my feet from the rudder pedals it yaws to the left and doesn't correct. I know I can provide some correcting action with the rudder trim tab, but I suspect it's a trade-off of having a larger area forward of the rudder hinge line.

I plan to do alot more stalls to get used to the characteristics. Then I'll add the Vortex Generators and repeat the stalls. I managed to get it to drop a wing twice without trying, so I want to repeat this and establish a safe approach speed. Presently I'm using 50 kts. This seems to work well and I don't think I'd want to approach any slower. At 50kts you need power otherwise it develops a high sink rate quite easily. When power is removed during the flare it stalls almost immediately and stays on the ground, with a very short landing roll.