Just did my first flight after the big project and I can say it was a success!
I had done a lot of ground calibration and a few taxi tests around the ramp and just enough on the runway to get a little airspeed to indicate, but it was time for the real test. I had a friend and fellow pilot ride with me to make sure that no matter what happened, one of us would be flying the plane.
We took off from Y51 (1292 ft) and climbed straight up to 8000 feet to give us some room and also to get away from most of the local traffic. After 10 minutes or so of looking everything over, we verified that everything was working as it should. It's important to note that the main part of the project was putting the glass panel in, but in the process, I had moved/disassembled/touched almost everything in the panel, and quite a few things on other parts of the plane. The glass panel seemed immediately to be working properly and everything else worked within reason. Some of my EGT and CHT probes were showing erroneous readings, but that's been an intermittent issue since before the upgrade.
With everything working properly and the engine leaned out and humming along better than ever (I found that one of my exhaust pipes was vibrating against the cowling and firewall in the past and causing vibration and noise) I decided it was time to test the autopilot. I reviewed with my safety pilot all of the ways to disable it in case anything went sideways and I flipped the switch and hit the big red button. Nothing drastic happened and it gently held our heading and pitch perfectly. What a game changer!! We then went into heading mode and did big swings of the heading, verifying that the max bank angle was held and that it rolled out on the desired heading. Then tested a climb and level off, then a descent and level off. This all worked well, with a little fussiness, but there is a whole AP calibration process to complete that I have not yet done. That will be on my next flight along with the AOA calibration.
We were feeling satisfied with the EFIS, happy enough with the engine instrumentation, and toasty warm with my awesome cabin heat and seat heaters (actually had to turn both down to keep from roasting even though it was quite cold outside). Then we headed back to the home field and did a few laps around the pattern to make sure I still remembered how to land the thing. Somehow, I seem to land better now than I did in the fall when I was flying it multiple times a week. Maybe a break wasn't such a bad thing!
This was a huge undertaking, and considering all the challenges I had to getting it completed, I feel that it went very quickly and easily. If anyone is planning a similar project, let me know and I'd be happy to share my experience and maybe some spare parts.
I didn't take any pictures or video yesterday as I was just trying to stay focused, but I plan on doing some stuff with it in the near future which I will share with the group.
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