Here are my ducts on a EVO

Were finishing a new inflatable cabin seal


GB

What kind of hoses are u using?

Some of the mods we came up with have been retrofit to another plane, already flying, so we're getting some real world results. The new hydraulic gear system (went from one-way pump and shuttle valves to reversible pump, moved to the firewall, shorter and larger diameter lines) dropped the gear-swing retract time from 15 seconds to 9. Not as much improvement as we'd hoped for but better. The emergency blow down was timed at 1.8 seconds! The mod also saved weight and moved the CG the right direction, as it finished 50 lbs. lighter and 2" farther forward than any other Evo I know of. The allowable CG range is about 8" so that's a significant move, and in the right direction.

It took about 3/8" of micro, after this it was covered with a bid of fiberglass to stabilize it so it won't crack under the paint from pressurization cycles.Yeah, that's the test plane. He's stuck with that until it gets the bodywork and paint that have been done to all the others with the mod.

That looks like y’all had to use a 5 gallon bucket of elbow grease. I bet the paint job is going to be gorgeous.

Hey Dave,

That’s some good looking work!

I could’ve used your help on the Ranchero!

Best regards,

Jim

What's going on with the airplane in the background? Re-trimming the horizontal?

No, fixing the tail. On that plane, built by another shop, it was never properly attached. This is how it's supposed to work, as we did it in the factory build shop. First, use the factory jigs to line everything up and superglue it in place:Then put on these carbon bracketsand bond them in.Finally, wrap the entire join in another layer of carbon.The other shop was far away, so working without the factory jigs, and for whatever reason skipped that final wrap, leaving the tail wobbly enough that pilots noticed it. Scary to think they flew it that way! (The shop also used an elevator pushrod that was much thinner than the beefy one provided in the kit; perhaps that was so if you pulled too hard the pushrod would fail before the tail came loose!) My shop had to sand down to the brackets and do it right. They have to sand and repaint it all anyway, the micro was so thick in places it was already cracking after just 75 hours. The squawk list on that airplane was many pages long.

The other shop is deceased now, we inherited another project from them as well, only half-finished. It has the same flaws.

Holy crap!! Look at that air filter Do people not realize when they are choking a motor??
We had a race car on the dyno a few years ago and noticed the K&N filter was collapsing ever so slightly under a hard pull. We removed the air filter and immediately saw a 50 HP jump on the dyno screen!!
Dont choke your motor!

I'm guessing those are just there for ground runs.

Inflatable seal

Super soft/ test psi 100 inches



Clear silicone cement included

Fitment
lancair iv/ivp/legacy

In my previous photos, you guys spotted the tail of the plane in back but you missed the big reveal: Evolutions have never had inner gear doors. Until now.Changing the hydraulic system to mimic that of the Legacy allowed us to copy the Legacy's inner door system as well. We'll do back-to-back testing but we're hoping for quieter and worth a few knots.

Also test climb performance at higher AOAs. When the hubcaps were developed for the 421, it was amazing to witness the improvement in climb performance up high at lower IAS and higher AOA. That disruption seemed to blanket the wing aft of the wheel with turbulent air and resulted in a significant loss of lift.

The wings are in the paint shop and the fuselage was supposed to be there as well by now, but we kept coming up with "one more thing" it made sense to do first. One was an idea we had for a flush-mounted NAV antenna. We were able to piggyback on the flight tests of another plane in the shop to try it out. It sucked. But we tried again, reworking an earlier idea, and came up with something that worked great in the air. I think that brings us down to just 3 antennas left in the airflow.

Another thing we did before heading off to the paint shop was to put in a second static port and line. I've been following the threads on the new RVSM rules with some interest and the dual independent static system was the only thing we were missing, we think. The G3X Air Data Computers are certified to 30,000 feet so that much looks very doable but higher than that is tougher. There is an older ADC that was certified to 50K but there would be compatibility issues going backward. Even if it turns out not to be worth cruising in the 30s it would be nice to have it available to top weather.