Looks like my last oil change was 84 hours ago so figured that I had better change it again.  The recent long trips mean that I have been using a lot of 100LL. Of course, this means lots of lead contamination of the oil (I am told) so need to get that out of my engine.  I filled with 10W-30 for winter use.

I made a long trip to Sullivan, MO over the Thanksgiving weekend. T'was an interesting trip...  Details on the 2009 Missouri Trip page.

Today I replaced my main gear tires.  They were VERY worn. In fact, the chords were showing thru in one spot!  The old tires were Lamb 11x4.00-5 6 ply tires (part 06-07400 at Aircraft Spruce).  I replaced them with the same size Lamb 8 ply tires.  I'll have to dig for the exact numbers but it seems that I have gotten about 200 hours of use out of these tires and that includes LOTS of landings.

Just returned from the 2009 Tandem Wing Fly-In at Beatrice, NE. Had a wonderful trip and the plane ran perfectly. It is always great to see old friends and make new friends. I flew a total of 10.1 hours. The first three legs I consumed 42.5 gals over 7.2 hrs averaging 5.9 gph over 871 nm for 23.5 statute miles per gallon. For this trip, I had an EGT sensor hooked up and ran 1400 to 1450 degrees for most of the trip. This is richer than I have flown previous trips (hence the lower mpg).

The canard fillets are as done as they are going to get for the time being.  They are not entirely smoothed out but do have a coat of primer.  I have not noticed any speed increase after all the work - of course!  With the new fillets, there is a "nibbling" feel on the stick at cruise.  Installing a pair of VG's at about 55-60% chord in the root solved that feeling.  No tuft testing has been done on the new fillets yet.

Today I started fixing the horrible canard fillets that I currently have.  The first step was removing the old and that's about all I got accomplished....  I started a permanent page here.

I was asked by a fellow Q2 builder to tuft my airplane and take video and still photos of the plane in-flight.  So, that's what I did today.  A big thank you to neighbor Dave for flying Pamela so she could be my photographer!!  The images came out great - the airflow around the plane is not so great.  Lot's of analysis to do...  Videos are here.  Images are here.  Note that both images and videos are pretty large.

There is a lot happening but no time to report on it!! Since my cowling changes, I have started having a bit of a cooling problem. Not overheating but running at the upper end of the tolerable range. I made a 4 hour flight to El Paso and back like this so it can be "managed". However; I don't like it. The only thing that has changed is the lower cowling. My current theory is that airflow to the P-51 style radiator inlet is now "better" which is flowing too much air thru the ducts and not allowing it to properly slow/increase pressure and absorb heat thru the radiator. To test the theory, I have temporarily reduced the size of the inlet. We'll see what happens....

For the past week I've been working on improving the lower half of my cowling.  It has been huge and bulbous since I ran a radiator in there many years ago.  There has been a huge bottom of the cowl to bottom of canard gap of about 4 inches.  So, I cut off the bottom and starting making a mold for a much more streamlined bottom.  Pictures coming soon!

I installed and flew with an MGL Flight-2 instrument this past weekend.  What a wonderful product!!  It was easy to install, easy to setup, is loaded with features, displays a TON of data, and is very reasonably priced - I HIGHLY recommend it.