The condition inspection was the least fun I’ve had since the spilled-paint episode back when I painted the interior. I rented a hangar at Compton, planning to spend the week before the SIGGRAPH conference getting most of the tasks out of the way. The airplane itself only had a few minor squawks that I took care of, like the corrosion starting around the ELT antenna and a few things here and there requiring tightening or replacing. Compressions were between 73/80 and 79/80. No metal found in the oil filter, nothing really wrong that I could find. What sucked was having to have four wisdom teeth pulled on the Tuesday of that week. Cost me three days of work, that did. Then, the wing jack slipped and ran a nice dent in the wing skin near the tie down point. I cut an inspection hole near it so I could keep an eye on it for later cracking, but it wasn’t a crease, so I filled it with micro and painted it. After that I wised up and lifted the plane by the engine mount to get at the wheels.
I also recalibrated the fuel levels on the new RDAC, which was an onerous pain in the ass. Drain the tank, transfer it to the other tank, drain 4 gallons at a time and put them in the empty tank, set fuel level, repeat.
Speaking of the RDAC, I finally noticed that my fuel pressure was stuck at 35psi, which is the maximum for that type of sensor. I checked and rechecked all the grounds, redid the wiring, and eventually replaced the sensor, all to no avail. That is because the manual for the RDAC makes no mention of the fact that when connecting to a MGL Odyssey G2 rather than the iEFIS unit, the fuel pressure sensor must be connected to AUX2 and not FUELP, which is where the RDAC installation manual says to connect it, and is the most obvious place. The manual does make a provision for connecting the RDAC to an Odyssey EFIS, so it’s odd that this little factoid would be omitted.
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