Wednesday afternoon I received a call from the A&P that the prop was back on the aircraft and it was back on the line. Received the invoice for the work, which was a bit higher than I thought. The quoted $2K to overhaul the prop was actually $2.2K. Maybe transport, tax or some combination thereof? Not a big deal, but I did send an e-mail just to follow up for my own knowledge.
My frustration the last week in waiting to get the prop reinstalled was apparently a bit unfair, since the labor to do that was 3.2 hours. Out of ignorance, I had thought that it was a 30-minute "put it on, bolt it on" type job, but that clearly wasn't the case. Understandable how it took a few days since it was nearly half an A&Ps day to do it.
The new prop looks amazing - I mean it looks brand new, without an imperfection to be found, so I'm really impressed by the work they did. I mean I guess that's what you should expect with a quality shop, but I'm so gun shy on these type of things these days that my expectations sometimes waiver.
It was now time to do a shakedown flight to make sure everything still worked. I don't know why I was concerned about the airplane lighting up after seven weeks of sitting, but as I hit the master switch, I was relieved when all of the fans turned on. I dropped the flaps, remembering that I had asked the A&P to bend back the inside corner that was scraping the fuselage, which he had in fact done. No more contact there.
Pre-flight was good, and it was time to light the fires. It was 59-degrees, so I gave it three hits of the primer and engaged the starter - boom, fired right up. No coughing, no chugging - just solid ignition and power. Another sigh of relief. Upon taxi I continued to hear the sound from the mains that sound something like a stuck calipar or brake pad.
The flight itself was great. My climb performance on the 80-95ish degree departures when I brought the plane home was sluggish - in the neighborhood of 300-500 fpm, but this time she took to the air like a homesick angel, and I was getting around 700 fpm at between 60 and 65 KIAS. In fact, at one point when I was pitching for Vx I noticed 1,000 fpm and felt like I was at a ridiculously steep climb angle for this airframe. Not sure how much of this was the new prop vs the change in temperature, but either way, it felt great.
Flew to Siler City at 2,500' and tested a few things along the way. I'm still getting the slow roll to the left, so clearly the airplane is out of rigging, which will need to be addressed during the annual. Also, the ball is deflected slightly to the left during cruise, meaning it's yawing right. Maybe adverse yaw from the rolling motion, except it seems to happen even when I keep the wings level.
The radio was still giving me the pulsating interference that seemed to be coming from one of the lights. Through trial and error I determined it to be the flashing beacon on the tail, as when I had it on, other people's radio calls were getting the disruption. Went away when I shut it off.
Upon touchdown at KSCR I had a return of the nosewheel shimmy I noticed on one of my landings months before. Got better when I pulled back on the yoke, but clearly something's up with the shimmy dampner.
I'm not doing any maneuvers until after the annual, particularly with the rigging issues. Safe to fly, but I don't want to risk stalls and spins until the rigging is righted. Upon landing back at KTTA I parked the airplane and noted the times - except I realized that the Hobbs had not changed since when I departed, so clearly it's not working either. No big deal as I had the flight times, but something else to note.
So 1.0 more hours on here, bringing my hourly operating cost to a cool $1,3563 per hour at the moment (acocunting for all MX to this point). Going to work to get that down.
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