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[December 11, 2010]


Today I ran a number of climb and glide tests in the RV-7. What I did was start at about 1,500' MSL and climb through about 6,500' MSL at speeds between 60 and 140 kts. The idea here is to record the time it takes to pass through each 1,000' interval to determine the climb rates. Manually timing these tests seemed a little old fashioned to me. My GRT EFIS's can log all of this information to an datafile which I can convert into XML and interpret with Excel at home. Seemed like the way to go! What I ended up determining after processing a lot of data is my best angle of climbing is a climb ratio of 3.74 (1' altitude gain for every 3.74' movement forward) at about 70kts. So my Vx is 70kts. My best climb rate is 1,800 Feet-per-minute at 90kts. This agrees completely with my transition trainers RV-7.


And here is a chart with the climb performance plotted.


I performed similar tests for the gliding performance of the RV. Once I did a climb test, I slowly eased back the throttle (to prevent shock cooling) at about 6,700', then glided down at set speeds (90 kts through 60 kts) to about 1,500' MSL. Hmmm, I don't know why I bolded 7.83 for my best glide ratio. It really is 7.89 (7.89' forward for every 1' lost in altitude). So my best glide ratio looks to be between 80 and 70 kts.


And this chart plotted out.


After I did my climb/glide tests I went back to the airport and did about 10 closed-pattern takeoff and landings. My goal was to try to exit off the first taxiway at KDMW. Sure enough after a couple of tried I was able to nail it. This is one incredible machine!!! 20 Hours on the RV-7 now. 1/2 way to my 40 hours!

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Last Modified: August 13, 2023