6 hours.<\/p>\n
A tiring and ultimately unsuccessful day. \u00a0 Dave and I went out to the airport with the intention of starting the engine for the first time. \u00a0 We were off to a stellar start: I’d forgotten my airport key card; it was still attached to my motorcycle safety vest at home. I didn’t notice it until we were actually in Oxnard, so that sucked. \u00a0 We did manage to find somebody to let us in, then went about the business of readying the plane for engine start. \u00a0 We dumped 8 quarts of oil in the tube, then attempted to time the magnetos. \u00a0 \u00a0This is harder than it sounds. \u00a0 Once we actually figured out how to use the buzz box, the cylinder plug, and our own eyes, we got the mags in and timed to the engine. \u00a0 That’s when the fun started.<\/p>\n
We wheeled the plane outside and prepared to start it up. \u00a0 We left the distributor caps off the mags so we could spin the engine a bit and pre-oil it. \u00a0 with four plugs removed, we were able to spin the engine around and get oil into all the nooks and crannies and actually see an oil pressure reading come up on the EFIS. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Prop spins, there’s oil, let’s start it! \u00a0Foolish us. \u00a0 Slick magnetos are designed to run when their circuit is open, that is, the two leads connected to them, when connected to each other, make the magneto safe, cold, whatever. \u00a0 The AeroElectric diagram has you connecting these two switches together in such a way that the right mag fires when you’re starting and the left one doesn’t do squat until the engine’s running, that is, you’ve let go of the spring-loaded upper position toggle because the engine is running.<\/p>\n
Somehow, I’d wired it in such a way that the mags were connected\/safe when the switches were “on” and the start circuit was on. \u00a0 The engine spun, but wouldn’t start. \u00a0 Fortunately, safety wasn’t in question. \u00a0 The way I had it wired, no matter what position the toggles were in, the mags were grounded, so it’s not like the prop would have taken our faces off.<\/p>\n
By the time we’d gotten wind of the problem, it was too late to debug and we were tired. \u00a0Tired people working with dangerous things tend to get hurt, so we packed it in and crawled home, after begging to be let out the airport gate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
6 hours. A tiring and ultimately unsuccessful day. \u00a0 Dave and I went out to the airport with the intention of starting the engine for the first time. \u00a0 We were off to a stellar start: I’d forgotten my airport key card; it was still attached to my motorcycle safety vest at home. I didn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[19,21,46],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1230,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions\/1230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}