Jeff Lange wrote: > Mark's overall speed would have been faster than posted but he made > the right decision to land and check out a suspected issue. Turned out > to be nothing, but better safe than dead...
Yep, I'll eventually write this experience up into a website, but the short version is that it was a real hoot and I'm glad I did it. Thanks a lot to those that contributed to pay the entry fee. After two hours at wide open throttle, I was at 13,500' making decent time, averaging about 188 mph ground speed. I smelled silicone burning, but no visible smoke, and after about two minutes I conjured up the image of a cracked exhaust pipe burning it's way through the silicone firesleeve on my fuel line, which is about 3" behind it (that'll get fixed very soon!). Once that image is stuck in your head, it only takes a few nanoseconds to pull the throttle back, punch in "nearest" into the GPS, and head to the nearest airport, which was Rochester MN. Once on the ground I removed the cowling, checked everything out, and discovered that a piece of SCAT tubing (also silicone) that I'd replaced between the oil cooler and the cowling just before I left for South Dakota was touching the #5 exhaust pipe, and was offgassing with the heat. I checked the oil, replaced the cowling, and rejoined the fray, this time only going to 11,500', and running wide open for another hour. I didn't actually do a fuel stop, but I guess that's an unofficial way of saying "he'd have been a little faster but he had to land and get back up again". I still had about 7 gallons left when I landed. I think my average speed was going to be something like 134 mph, but I was able to go back through the EIS data on my laptop and determine that it was 43:38 minutes between the time I chopped the throttle and the wheels lifted off the ground (after the checkout), so there was a climbout penalty as well as having to make up the distance back to where I'd been before, so my average ended up at 178 mph rather than the mid 180's I was headed for. I'd planned on doing a more detailed analysis of that data to get a more accurate number when I got home, but my "high altitude" hard drive took the big dump on the way back home today, so all race info and the several other legs of the trip are probably toast. The laptop reports "no hard drive"...which is not a good sign. I'll pull it out and investigate further, but I'm guessing a solid-state drive is in my future. But basically I was running 3390 rpm and getting about 139 mph calibrated airspeed, which translates to 178 mph true airspeed, so you can see I had a slight tailwind. It's funny though...that number matches what I ended up with, so at least one of us in the race had an accurate speed! One reason I chose 13,500' was to make it easier on the engine, and to give me more landing options if I needed it. There was supposed to be a little tailwind there, but the climb penalty negated it. It was a lot of fun though, and now that there's a "Sportsman KR" class, I'd expect more KRs to be racing in the future. I now have a long list of improvements I need to do to the KR, and the race is what has given me the incentive to accomplish them. I'm absolutely beat after the pace I've kept up for the last few weeks, and especially the last few days. I'm pretty much a zombie at this point. As for Mark Jones' comment about the four landings, he's right. Hopefully nobody saw it since the airport was officially closed at the time, but I flew in with Jeff Lange on board Sunday afternoon (probably right at gross weight, considering a full compliment of camping gear) and muffed the landing in a big way, so we did three glancing blows to runway 36, and I got to do a go-around at OSH, which we'll call a "mini-showcase". The controller took it in good stride, and the last one wasn't too bad, by comparison... Mark Langford N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
