Alex Perry writes: > Individual cylinders have slightly more or less airflow cooling (due to > the pattern of baffles in front of the firewall) and receive slightly > different richness in the mixture (due to fuel injection differences, > or uneven atomization after the carbureter as appropriate). For each > engine (and baffle layout), the pattern of differences is generally > well known and the behavior is pretty consistent across most of the fleet. > After enough experience in an aircraft, many owners know which cylinder > is going to be hottest for a given phase of flight and therefore can leave > the switch in a single position, just changing it (eg) after climb ends. > Periodically, the pilot will cycle through all the cylinders to make sure > they all read as expected, as a way of detecting some imminent > failures.
Nowadays, a lot of people are installing inexpensive engine monitors like the EDM 700: http://www.jpinstruments.com/edm_700.html It cycles through all the information and will display whatever you want (i.e. hottest cylinder) automatically. It also keeps track of all its incoming data and allows you to download it to your computer and make charts in your spreadsheet, etc., so it's a bit like a poor-man's flight data recorder. It's also considerably cheaper than other toys like an IFR GPS or a Stormscope. All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
