ETLB Squawk Forums — Archive

I just made a 444 mile X-country flight in my 1600R.  I flew from the panhandle of Texas to Arkansas.   I made 4 fuel stops and had a chase vehicle that met me at the four stops with pre-mixed fuel in a 30 gal. drum.  I had a 12v pump and we just backed up to the plane and refueled.

I had just done a conditional inspection on the plane and it flew perfectly without even a cough or sputter.  I've been experimenting with different fuel/oil ratios and am very happy with some of my results.  My engine has 280+ hours on it and it has been decarboned once and it running better than it ever has on the new fuel/oil ratio.  BTW, my engine is a Rotax 447 with a single Bing carb.

I flew over the Ozark mountains with solid forest and lakes and rivers that were over a mile across and never had any doubts about my engine.  A maintained 2-stroke is a good reliable engine!  I know some have had problems, but I never have.  I do cruise at a lower RPM than many, but my engine likes it and EGT and CHT temps are wonderful and are very consistant.  I cruise at between 5200 - 5400 RPM, and I did that for 444 miles.  But I have always used that as my cruise RPM.  I take off using 5600-5800 RPM and then immediately pull it back.  I do a slow RPM reduction for my approach and very seldom have to bump the RPM for temp reasons.  But if I do get a spike, I just bump the RPM for a short time and everything cools down.

These airplanes are great little planes............just wish I had a little more fuel capacity!

Hi Kurt: Congratulations  for the long trip! Very encouraging numbers.
Would like to know what kind of fuel consumption did you at those rpm and also what was the cruise speed.
Do you have wing tanks? Picture doesn't show a fuel cap on the wing.

I was burning about 3.25 gal/hr.  The first three legs were with a lot of wind.....side wind mostly, but a tailwind once.  The last leg was almost no wind and I showed a GPS groundspeed of 75 mph.  I was surprised at that speed......I figured on about 65.  I have
a relatively small cowl tank.

Way to go Kurt!  You did a fine  job of managing  fuel  burn and  predicting your fuel stops.  It must be  very comforting to have a chase vehicle. Making a flight like that fills you with exhiliration and confidence in your plane/engine.  As I have stated previously, you don't leave the pattern  unless you have confidence in your engine.  One way to build that confidence, it to actually go someplace requiring multiple fuel stops, and then come back.

At your fuel burn and  four fuel stops it would appear you averaged about 100 miles per leg. That's almost two hours.  If you had a bigger fuel tank two things would  happen. 1) you  could  fly  to your destination in a straighter line and  2) you would learn what your bladder  duration limit was---real fast.

Again, you had a great trip, thanks for positing your experience.  And horray for your statement  about the two-stroke engine!  Maintenance and staying withing the operating paramaters are key to their reliability.

Paul Fiebich

Hey Kurt,
Love the report. Thanks!  Great to see a max used for XC flight... 75mph sounds pretty good... real nice looking bird too!  Well done, again, thank you for sharing with us...

Hi Kurt!
Beautiful Max and she evidently flies as good as she looks.  Great trip and good fuel burn.
Thanks for posting.

Claude