Leg 1: Taunton, MA to Taunton, MA -- :45 minutes, about 8 gallons
Well, the starter problems were behind us, but Murphy's Law was in effect again today. We packed all our crap into the plane, said goodbye to Bruce, and started up. As I did the mag check during the runup, the mag ran fine but the electronic ignition ran rough. It seemed like a plug was fouled...but despite a few attempts to "clean" the plugs with leaning, no joy. What I absolutely regret is not paying enough attention to the EGTs...but instead decided just to swap out the plugs. I had a spare set of auto plugs with me for this purpose.
Did I carry a spark plug wrench with me? Nope. Stupid. I have all sorts of tools and gadgets with me, but what I ended up needing this day I did not have. I walked around the airport a bit in search of a spark plug socket. Finally somebody who was doing maintenance at the airport drove by and was kind enough to loan me his spark plug socket...but he didn't have a 3/8" ratchet. I had a 1/4" ratchet in my tool kit but no adapter. Long story short, a guy named Charlie drove up when he saw my top cowl off, and came to the rescue with a ratchet. I swapped the plugs, cowled her back up, returned the tools, and we were off.
I want to add that while I had the cowl off, I noticed that the stainless steel tube baffle brace had broken at the front end. I had just crimped the ends of the tubing and drilled holes in the "flattened" ends for bolt-on attach points. Well, the crimps are natural stress concentrations, and of course it broke right there on the front crimp. Oh, well...I'll replace it with a more robust brace when I get home. Hopefully the baffles won't self destruct with no bracing there, since I did reinforce the back baffle wall with an extra .063" sheet (total of .103" thick). Anyway, that weighed heavily on my mind, but I figured it would hold up ok and get us home. I ended up repairing it later on the trip, but I'll comment on that later...
This time on the runup everything ran smooth as silk. We took off and climbed up to 7500' heading northeast toward Pease (Portsmouth) as our first waypoint. During the climb we got a class B clearance through Boston's airspace...Boston's controllers are as flexible as I remember them being. It's no hassle with them if they're not busy. Here's yet another shot of Boston from above.
As I levelled off and leaned it out, two cylinders' EGTs went up to and over 1500F before peaking. That ain't right...they normally peak around 1440F or so. I switched off the mag and the engine all but died...yep, ok, electronic ignition problem. I switched off the EI and it ran fine on the mag. At that point I got a clue and paid attention to the EGTs...when I switched off the EI, only cylinders 1 & 2 EGT rose. So there you go...the coil on 3 & 4 is bad. Great...
So there I was, 7500' over the suburbs north of Boston -- I was somewhere between Beverly and Lawrence -- and I had a decision to make. I'm basically running on one and a half ignition systems. If that mag went, I'd be going down with partial power at best. Time to land, no doubt...but where to land...
Instinct would tell you to land at one of the many airports "right below," but I made the judgment call to turn around and land back at Taunton. Even though what was below was a sure thing, I assumed that if it was a bum coil that I'd be grounded for at least a day. I figured it would be best to stay with Bruce, where he can loan me tools, and at Taunton Airport, where the people have been most friendly and generous.
I turned around and notified Boston Approach of my intentions, and again they cleared me through the class B on my descent into Taunton.
Lemme pause and say that Jen is a trooper. She had put up with this starter thing, then she put up with the spark plug swapout killing an hour of our time, and now she was heading back to Taunton for who knows what. I reassured her that I want to get to PEI as badly as she does, but we have to take care of whatever this is first. As long as she knew that my goal wasn't to hang out at my buddy's house but rather to get to PEI -- she was happy. Happy anniversary, honey, I get to work on the plane. Not what she wanted to have happen, but she was very tolerant of the "adventure in flying."
Once on the ground at Taunton I pulled the top cowl to see if there was any obvious wiring fault, and I didn't see anything noteworthy. I called Klaus at Lightspeed and told him what had happened, and his advice was not to assume that the coil had failed, but to test it. The way you test a coil is the same method used to "phase" the ignition system. It's really easy...you unplug the spark plug wires from the coils, and swing the prop through at TDC on cylinder 1...if the coil is functioning properly you'll get an arc across the terminals as the magnet on the flywheel passes the crank position sensor. Then you go another 180 degrees of prop swing and test the other coil. I confirmed that the coil firing 1 & 2 worked fine, but the coil firing 3 & 4 did not fire at all. What I did next was proceed with switching the wires running to the coils, which would rule out a wiring problem and isolate the issue to the coil itself. As I went to disconnect the fast-on connectors on the coil, a wire broke right off the connector. Badabing badaboom. I called Klaus and told him I had the problem squared away...
At that moment, about 120 hours into the life of this plane, I realized as I looked at my wiring job on the coils that it was the dumbest friggin' setup imaginable. Well, I'm being a little hard on it, but it was obvious that every time the engine shook at startup and shutdown, it would impart stress nearly directly (not direct, but indirect strain) on the wire at the terminal. I hadn't provided enough of a "strain loop," and the wire had become brittle right there where it was crimped. If it was any other wire but RG400 it probably wouldn't have been a factor. The issue is that the crimp fast-on connector didn't support the insulation on the center conductor since the insulation is too fat. Normally, if you're crimping 20 AWG wire, per se, the insulation will be partly crimped and supported no problem by the connector barrel. But in this case, the insulation wasn't integrated or supported at all, so the wire had a chance to vibrate and stress itself into breaking strands. Crystal clear, standing there looking at a clear failure case...I don't feel too bad about not anticipating it up front, but I sure know better now.
Anyway, something to visit thoroughly when I get back home...but for now I wanted to repair it effectively, and make sure the insulation was supported along with the wire strands, and get the thing going again. The trick was finding new fast-on connectors and a wire crimper (which you had better believe are now in my travel tool kit!).
It was around lunchtime by that point, and I couldn't find anybody in the hangars nearby. I walked down to the west side of the field where somebody had mentioned there's a shop. I walked in on all the mechanics eating lunch and cried my case...one guy got up and took me over to the parts bins, where he had everything I needed. I got out my cash and insisted on paying him, but he just kept saying, "Get outta here. GET OUTTA HERE." Too kind. He loaned me a wire crimper and even gave me the keys to his car to drive back down to the other side of the field. "When you're done with it, just leave it there. I gotta head down there later with another guy anyway." Jeez, I'm glad I went back to Taunton. Everybody was so generous and more than willing to help out. I really got a good vibe there, and I highly recommend Taunton if you need a place to stop in that area.
Long story short, I made good on the coil connections, buttoned everything back up, and things ran fine all the way up to Bar Harbor.
Leg 2: Taunton, MA to Bar Harbor, ME -- 1:35 minutes, 16 gallons
This trip was relatively uneventful until the end. Again we climbed up to 7500' over Boston and headed up over Portsmouth, Kennebunk, and Brunswick. Actually, I have a funny story about one Boston controller in particular. I requested a class B clearance from Boston Approach on the climbout, and the controller gave it to me immediately. He said, "Sperimennal ah-vee seven one foa delter, say destinayshin." I responded and said, "RV 14D is landing at Bar Harbor." "Weya?" he asked. "Bar Harbor, bravo-hotel-bravo." The controller came back with, "Oh! Bah Hahba." And I'm not exaggerating with that spelling. He said it almost humorously, like he might have been messing with us. Jen and I had joked about the New England accent a million times, so she had heard it all, but when this guy said it that way she just started cracking up and couldn't stop laughing and repeating it. "Oh! Bah Hahba!" I'm from Boston originally, but my accent, if I eva had one, is all but gone. Oh, well...even Bostonians can't undastand me anymoa. That's wicked pissa.
Back to flying...pretty much all of coastal Maine was socked in with a low broken to overcast layer. About 10 miles out we snuck through a break and skirted under the deck and into BHB. When we got there it was cold and misty. Really cold for late June. I was coming down with a nasty cold, and the weather wasn't helping. I think I caught some baby virus from Bruce's kid. Serves me right for playing with his trucks and playdough.