Busy week and another Merlin!

How much content can I get into one post before my enchiladas arrive? I lot I think as I haven’t ordered them yet. Working backwards: I just finished a solid week of building at our Dayton center and now driving a Merlin to Alabama. Only 12-hour trip. Sigh. But we got A LOT done in Dayton. In no particular order:

The first Merlin recognition light is installed. We could call it a landing light, but it does not quite meet the FARs for certification as a true landing light. Plenty bright LEDs, however. And easy to install as we made a pretty cool bracket plus we already pre-wired a switch on our circuit board/panel for it.

Sure, I have been talking about how cool our panel is forever. But it is so cool I bring it up again. What’s new is we just finished two panels in one day. You can see the wiring, the remote components, and how one of the 7 screens looks like. This is a LOT of technology and I trust worth the wait. Now the final circuit board versions are done and same for the avionics wiring harness, and the remote mounting tray, and the custom engine harness. ALL DONE. I know, about fricking time. Soon we will stock up and ship out.

On this Merlin I have been trying to remove the protective film for about 6 months. Even with special solvent it was not possible. Maybe a blow torch and an edge grinder woulda worked but I doubt the Lexan woulda survived. Finally, I bit the bullet and removed the windscreen. Conveniently, about 5 miles away is the shop that produces all the RV canopies and a few hundred more. We traced the windscreen shape and cut a new one out. Back at the hangar I overlayed the old screen and clecoed the two together and drilled the holes.

New Lexan is installed. Don was working on the panel for an hour and never noticed the windscreen was there it is so crystal clear.

Today I mostly finished this Merlin which is not following me to Alabama for certification before handing over to the customer.

I conducted a series of taxi tests. Adjustments and comments:

The prop was set at 24 degrees. I changed it to 18, then 16, the 14 degrees before I got the 6,000 RPM, I like static. I will be compiling a worksheet on specs like 14 degrees measured 7 inches in from the prop tip and other useful data.

Idle needed fine-tuning. Seatbelts needed adjusting. Static port needed unplugging. Now all good and ready to fly. I made my usual high speed taxi test. And that is all I am saying. I never left the ground. It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there, and nobody saw me.

BTW, we have custom screens for the EFIS to match the Merlin and Vtwin specs. Copy the files to a SD card, upload to the EFIS, and configure. Plus a few other set-up tricks.

So here is the really big news: Oh, wait my enchiladas arrived!

CHIP

am now driving from