01.09.2011: I have experienced some problems since quite a while with my voltage regulator / battery charger. On the internet I found many comments about the Ducati units, which are supplied as standard unit with the Rotax 912 series engines. They seem not to be designed for operation under high load and temperature for an extended time period, with the result that they stop charging the battery intermittently when they get too hot. The problems experienced by other homebuilders exactly match mine, meaning that the voltage and current indicated on the Dynon EMS fluctuate widely and when I land after a long flight in hot temperature and put the engine in idle the voltage drops to below 11 V. The intercom starts to make funny chirps too, but the radio works fine and also the flaps operate without problems. Non the less I still find this annoying.
After some more investigations on the internet I decided to order a LIMA drop in replacement regulator / charger from Silent-Hektik. The charger arrived last Saturday, but I was away for a few days so I only got to unpack it today. It indeed looks more robust, I am looking for ward to installing it next weekend and to see whether this cures the problems.
03.09.2011: Today I went to the airport to install the regulator / charger. It really is a drop in unit, with exactly the same electrical and mechanical interfaces.
Here a picture of both units, the original Ducati unit in the rear and the Silent-Hektik unit in front. The case of the Silent-Hektik unit is milled from a solid piece of aluminium, rather than from cast aluminium as the Ducati unit, with more an deeper cooling fins.
I noticed that in my installation the case of the regulator does not touch the firewall, as it is mounted to the firewall with rivnuts, so I also made a mounting plate that goes in between the regulator and the firewall. It has holes that are big enough to go around the rivnuts. This should also improve cooling, as the firewall now acts as an additional heat sink.
The Silent-Hektik case is a bit wide where the cooling fins are next to the mounting screw heads, meaning the heads of the screws are so close to the fins that a normal hex nut does not fit over the screw heads. After some fiddling I managed however to tighten the screws
Once I had installed the regulator I of course had to make a short test flight, which showed that current and voltage readings are now much more stable and the battery seems to be charged normally. As the weather was so nice I made a second, much longer test flight with my wife, which lasted about 1 1/2 hours, and again the regulator worked flawlessly. It seems I have cured the problem.
Today the vintage airplane meeting at Hahnenweide in Germany takes place, and quit a few planes from Lommis took off this morning to attend. This included the vintage Bücker Jungmann and a Bölkow 208C, but also the new Tecnam Twin with some spectators. It was interesting to see how the takeoff run would be with four onboard and around 25 degrees ambient temperature.
From the takeoff point I would guess that the takeoff run was around 350 m, which is better than most single engine planes operating from Lommis with four onboard, but the climb rate was rather limited. I would not want to have an engine failure at that moment.
11.09.2011: Today I flew to Kunovice in the Czech Republic, home of CzechSportAircraft. Urs, another pilot had to pick up his SportCruiser, so I volunteered to fly him there as Kunovice is a bit complicated to reach by public transport.
We decided to fly nonstop to Kunovice (LKKU), which is a distance of 364 miles / 675 km from my homebase Lommis (LSZT). With Urs, myself and full fuel we still hat around 40 kg of baggage allowance, which we just about used up with two flight bags and some personal baggage for staying overnight.
We can fly internationally from Lommis if we register the flight with customs at least one hour in advance, but to Schengen countries only. This excludes for example the UK, but that’s anyway too far away, as well as some Eastern European countries. The Czech Republic is however part of the Schengen treaty, so no problem from a customs point of view to fly there nonstop. Once in a while customs, respectively the police, show up for a customs check, so registered times have to be adhered to. This time however nobody appeared.
We took off and then went straight east to pass the Bodensee (Lake of Constance) at the eastern end near Bregenz, as can be seen below. The weather was already very nice at takeoff and got even better the more we went east.
We then flew past Kempten along the alps, passing south of Munich.
Above and below the Inn river, which originates in Switzerland, then flows through Innsbruck in Austria and then into Germany to join the Donau in Passau.
Germany gives financial incentives for the installation of solar panels, which can be seen on many large roofs, and has also led to the creation of quite large solar parks. One can be seen below on the lower right of the picture, compare the size with the village to the left.
We decided to cruise at FL75, respectively 7’500 ft. In Germany the rules are clear, above 5’000 ft and 2’000 ft above ground one flies flight levels, but in Austria there seem to be no clear rules. Today it did not matter, as the QNH was 1013 mbar, but on other days that can be confusing.
We were passed from Zurich Information, which assigns transponder codes to flight operating on a flight plan, to Munich Information, which lets everyone fly with squawk 7’000, but asks pilots to press IDENT on the transponder frequently, to Austro Control, which again assigns a transponder code, but does that to just about every VFR flight that contacts them. Funny how the same system is applied differently in different countries.
After crossing into Austria we reached the Donau (Danube) river north of Linz, where it flows through quite a spectacular canyon.
Below Linz, which we passed on the northern side. To the amusement of Urs, who is a Swiss captain, I was was using the VOR’s in addition to the GPS. I just like to have a fallback at any time.
Somewhere over Austria we met two lonely clouds, about the only ones since the Bodensee.
Below a nice lake, especially the castle on the little island in the middle seemed a nice place to visit. I wonder whether floatplanes are permitted in Austria…
We then continued past a little village into the Czech Republic, where a friendly controlled not only welcomed us in the country but also gave us a clearance to cross Brün TMA direct to Kunovice before we could even ask for it. Lovely…
From the Austro-Czech border one passes a nice lake, which can be seen from far and provides a good visual landmark, direct to Sierra. When I asked still inside Class D airspace whether I could start a shallow descent toward Kunovice Sierra the lovely controller came back with an “of course, that’s a good idea”! She even by herself told us she would close the flight plan when we reached Sierra and handed us over to Kunovice Info.
Kunovice airport lies just beyond the little lakes in the centre of the picture. We fist go runway 21 assigned, which would have required us to fly a half circuit as we flew in from the south, but then the controller told us that the wind from the south is only three knots so we could land straight in on runway 03 if we preferred it. Again very friendly people, clearly seeing you as their customer and not as a nuisance. We chose runway 03.
The runway is beyond the lake, paved and around 2 km long, with the taxiway to the terminal at the northern end, so I landed about two thirds down the runway to avoid having to taxi down most of the runway.
12.09.2011: This morning we went to CzechSportAicraft to pick up the aircraft of Urs. We were surprised to see how busy the factory is, there was quite a row of planes awaiting delivery.
We had a detailed look at some of the features of the new models, like this handle to close the canopy…
as well as this bracket to store the headsets. Unfortunately both can not be retrofitted to my SportCruiser, as my canopy frame does not have the required internal reinforcements.
We were also shown a SportCruiser with the new Dynon SkyView, must be great in flight.
Outside, as during all previous visits, some old LET planes were parked. This one in a state indicating that it will probably never fly again.
We then towed the plane of Urs to the terminal, where we filed the flight plan for the return flight, before heading over to the Aeroclub where my plane was parked.
There came the big surprise at the pump, I only needed 60 l to fill up after 3 1/2 hours of flight yesterday. That means 9 litres per 100 km, or 16 l per hour. By car it is 920 km from Lommis to Kunovice, meaning a car would have to use 6.5 litres per 100 km to be more economical. Not bad indeed.
After refuelling we had to taxi back to the terminal to pass customs before departure, and to pay the landing and customs fee.
We departed in short sequence, heading back along the same route as we flew in yesterday.
Urs fortunately took some pictures of my plane, as can be seen below.
I of course did the same, so here a picture of Urs shortly before crossing back into Austrian airspace. We quickly noticed that we were not as lucky as yesterday with the wind, as there was a 16 kts headwind nearly all the way back to Switzerland. We tried once to find a better wind, climbing to FL 85, but the wind was even stronger there so we quickly descended again.
A cold front passed Switzerland on Saturday evening, heading east towards us, and indeed clouds got denser the farther we flew towards it.
There was a short stretch where the ceiling was down to around 5’000 ft, but soon after the sky cleared again.
Here some locks on the Danube river northwest of Linz.
Urs has a variable pitch Woodcomp propeller on his plane where else my Sensenich propeller is only ground adjustable and pitched a bit too fine after some recent maintenance, but I still managed to follow him. I flew most of the way with close to max cruise power at 5’400 rpm due to the strong headwind.
Here the Starnberger See south of Munich, a god visual waypoint.
We also passed a station with many large satellite dishes, but it was not indicated the map so I could not figure out what it is.
Here another one of the many nice castles, with an observatory right next to it.
After passing Kempten Urs headed south over Bregenz towards Sargans an from there back to his homebase Mollis, where else I flew across the eastern end of the Lake of Constance via St. Gallen towards Lommis. The weather got absolutely wonderful again, but with an even stronger headwind of 26 to 28 kts, as can be seen on the pictures below (73 kts ground speed on the GPS with 101 kts true airspeed on the EFIS). Luckily I had full fuel onboard, meaning I still had 36 l or nearly two hours fuel left after flying for 4 hrs. 22 min at max cruise speed. That means 76 l fuel consumed, or 18 l / hour, again a really good result.
Below the Lake of Constance, seen from 7’500 ft,…
…and Lindau on the north-eastern end of the lake.
When we do customs in Lommis we have to announce the arrival time, and we are not allowed to be late. If we arrive too early we have to wait with the baggage still in the plane, so no incentive to land early. For that reason I still made a little detour over Frauenfeld, where I live. My house in right in the centre of the picture below….
This flight to Kunovice and back was a milestone for my SportCruiser in several respects. First of all it was the first flight abroad, then it was the longest flight with regard to distance undertaken so far (364 miles / 675 km each leg), as well as the longest single flight legs with regard to duration (3 hr:48 and 4 hr 22). On top of that the landing in Kunovice was the 100th landing since the first flight, which took place about one year ago.
Finally I could demonstrate that the SportCruiser is really what I wanted from the beginning, meaning a very economical travelling machine.