What's new
Van's Air Force

Don't miss anything! Register now for full access to the definitive RV support community.

Got it!

JFCRV12

Well Known Member
My RV-12 is home :) Tomorrow, I'll be getting checked out in it (insurance requirement).

Such a cool machine. One new squawk on the transport to Ohio from Sacramento that I need to sort is the right strobe light isn't working..but the nav light does. I suspect it's a loose connection at wing root.

Then, I need to start the wheel pants and get em on to get her 'prettier' :D

Here's a pic!

PS, I know how to embed the pic, but it turns out HUGE and I don't feel like resizing.
 
Very very nice paint.
Is your spinner metal? plated?
Where/how did you get it done?

Spinner is stock fiber glass. I didn?t have it done. It was bought that way. Kracon Aircraft did the paint. It?s some sort of chemical process to make it look polished. I have no idea how they did it, but it?s nice!
 
chrome spinner

I saw that nice shiney spinner on picture of John's plane so emailed about it and David Szkotak of Kracon reply was:

We use the spectrachrome system for chrome painting. It is definitely something we can help you with. It would cost around $400 and take 3-4 days to complete
 
Photo

Here y'go.

Ag7btHF.jpg


Dave
 
We use the spectrachrome system for chrome painting. It is definitely something we can help you with. It would cost around $400 and take 3-4 days to complete

Wow, that's expensive for one spinner. I think I would try 3M Chrome Vinyl. You can make lots of mistakes and do-over's for $400...
 
Nice! Happy to have another RV in NorCal. Come out to KHAF; great flight, cooler temps, and one awesome phase 1 RV :D. We can meet and greet!
 
Nice! Happy to have another RV in NorCal. Come out to KHAF; great flight, cooler temps, and one awesome phase 1 RV :D. We can meet and greet!

Sorry, the ferry went the other way. I ?removed? it from NorCal. I?m in Ohio. :D
 
Sorry, the ferry went the other way. I ‘removed’ it from NorCal. I’m in Ohio. :D
No worries, June 19th, a RV-12 from South Carolina found it's new home in So Cal. Net change, Zero. There's 3, maybe 4 Rv-12s now at KWHP, that I am aware of. Quite a few 6's and 7's and 2 or 3 RV-9's. Might even be a couple or 3 model 4's that I've seen, while hangar surfing.

EAA chapter 40 is at our airport, Rv's seem to be popular builds here.
 
Last edited:
John and Randy, what were the speeds and fuel burns you were seeing on your recent ferry flights?

Thanks!


A couple things about my plane.

1. It had clean paint and fresh wax on it, probably smoothed out all the rivets. 2. It has wheel pants, and leg fairings.
3. It has an aux 6.5 gal fuel tank and fuel pump in it, adding about another 80 minutes of range on the normal 210 minutes, for 290 minutes, almost 5 hours.
Less time going up and down to 8000 ft or doing fillups, if weather cooperates and your bladder does too.
4. Ferry kept it at or under 5200-5250 rpm.

Probably very close to 110 kts TAS, IAS was always in the green and pretty far under the max 108kts for smooth air, much of trip from Jackson county TX to KWHP was flow at from 8500 to 10,500 ft. The plane and temps were cooler up there, air was more calm, and whatever the prop was set it moved the plane quite well at those elevations and density altitudes. Midland Texas to Casa Grande, AZ was bumpy, rough, slow going.

I believe my pilot/ ferry, averaged 4.8 to 4.9 GPH. Some fuel was saved not climbing every 3 hours instead to almost 5, if the inexpensive fuel stops allowed it, also less fuel lost doing taxi work and warm ups / run ups.

I'd be more inclined to budget closer to 5.5 gallons an hour, depends on how aggressive the ferry you hire is.

There are trade offs... you might be better off slowing the plane down 10 to 12 kts of ground speed for lower GPH, and go farther between fuel ups, saving more time because you increased your range enough by going a bit slower, to save a pit stop.

What I can say is that there were a lot of benefits if you could get up to elevations from 7500 ft and up, and your plane is pitched for it. IMHO, the plane seems to gain efficiencies up there, lessened drag and better airspeed. I am of the belief that those main gear fairings and the wheel pants and the pant for the front landing strut are worth a lot, cumulatively, going cross country, quite a bit more, if you throttle back a bit, and save the fuel, going farther between fuel ups. The wheel pants and leg fairings are nice additions to have, if you do longer trips.

The plane out of Yuba City did not have wheel pants or leg fairings. Might be 7 or 8 kts lost, due to that. But highly probable that they had hefty tail winds through the north west, this time of year, all the way to Ohio.
 
Last edited:
Standard nose leg fairing and wheel pants are worth between 3-4 knots (well proven with flight testing).
I have never seen any credible evidence to indicate that main gear leg fairings made any improvement and since they are flat and relatively thin, that is likely the case.
 
I wasn?t the ferry pilot for mine so I don?t have all the details but I did stalk on flight aware. I?m aware that gives ground speed vs IAS or TAS. But I do know that he had a head wind of 1-3 knots on the last leg and speed on flight aware was 109-111 knots. No clue what RPM he was running, but that was at 5500 feet.

I flew for 3 hours yesterday and was seeing 109-112knots at 5250 RPM and 5500 feet. It was HOT. Either way, I think I?m getting 100% of expected performance without wheel fairings. Btw, I do have the fairings. Just waiting for it to cool down a bit to start working on them.

Plane is FANTASTIC. So, glad I made the move to Vans!
 
Standard nose leg fairing and wheel pants are worth between 3-4 knots (well proven with flight testing).
I have never seen any credible evidence to indicate that main gear leg fairings made any improvement and since they are flat and relatively thin, that is likely the case.

The additional fairings I refer to are at the fuselage/leg juncture, and at the leg/wheel pant juncture. A bit more screws to pull when changing the main tires, and doing the air pressure checks and adjustments. It does cover up a hole where the mains go into the fuselage.
 
The additional fairings I refer to are at the fuselage/leg juncture, and at the leg/wheel pant juncture. A bit more screws to pull when changing the main tires, and doing the air pressure checks and adjustments. It does cover up a hole where the mains go into the fuselage.

I know what fairings you meant, but at the speeds that RV-12's fly, they do not improve the speed a measurable amount.

Keep in mind that adding the nose gear leg fairing and fairings for all 3 wheels gives only a 3-4 Kt increase. A round tube like the nose gear leg has a lot of drag. Likely way more drag than the two main gear legs and intersections at each end, combined. The main legs are pretty fair already because they are not very thick. That is why no effort was put into developing a factory fairing for them. The intersections are pretty clean as well (well the bottom is anyway), but adding anything at the top was never found to produce a speed increase. A seal was added to the 12iS fuselage design to help reduce unwanted air entry into the cockpit.


A lot of airplanes built... plus a lot of SLSA production flight testing has shown very consistent performance #'s with airplanes without fairings having a top cruise speed (5400-5450 RPM) of 116-117 Kts TAS and airplanes with the fairings at the same RPM's having a top cruise of 120 Kts TAS.

Nothing wrong with having additional fairings on the main legs. It does clean it up aesthetically but all evidence available to date indicates that it doesn't make the airplane any faster than any other RV-12.
 
Have you found or noticed an elevation that the RV-12 runs at that, all other things being equal, generates the best Ground Speed, in all your testing?
 
We cant talk about best ground speed because that is effected by other influences (like wind speed and direction). We cant talk about indicated airspeed (IAS) because that varies depending on altitude because of different air densitys. We need to talk in the context of True Airspeed (TAS), because it compensates for differences in air density caused by density altitude value and actual pressure altitude.

Because the RV-12 uses a fixed pitch prop that typically gets adjusted for a pitch that is a compromise between good climb and cruise, it actually results in a setting that has about equal speed performance at a wide range of altitudes.

Example

If you cruise at say 7500 Ft at 5450 RPM you will have to have the throttle pulled back a ways for that RPM (It would exceed 5500 if pushed to full throttle).

If you then climb to 11,500, you can be at full throttle and not exceed 5500 because of the power loss that occurs with altitude, but because you are still getting good RPM values, the cruise speed will be about the same (you are also benefiting from slightly lower drag because of the lower air density which also helps attain about the same speed on slightly lower power).

What will be different is that the fuel flow will be lower because of the lower manifold pressure value.

So the best speed vs fuel flow ratio will be what every altitude you can fly at with full throttle and still stay just below the max continuous 5500 RPM limit.
This altitude will vary depending on the prop. pitch setting being used.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top