I haven't been very diligent about keeping this builder log up to date. I now have 16.7 hours on N188LC. A lot of this time has been spent doing take-offs, landings and touch and goes. It has taken me a while to get the hang of landing because all of this time I have been on a futile quest for a decent 3 pointer. I found a set of very good postings on landing RV-8s on www.vansairforce.com. The consensus as well as Van's advice in RViator is to wheel land it tail low and hold the tail off until it wants to settle by itself. I tried this and boy what a difference. I have made about 5 really nice ones in a row.
I also followed RViator advice on fixing the heavy wing problem. In level flight at high cruise the left wing seemed very heavy. In this state the wing tip lined up with the aileron which lined up with the flap. Same for the other side. When I stalled it it dropped straight (albight with a lot of tail rumbling). It seemed like the problem was that the left aileron wanted to float up and the right one down. After reading the article I bent the outside 6 inches of the trailing edge of the right aileron. The bend was with a hand seamer and was hardly visually noticeable but it made a huge difference. Before complete right trim was needed to fly hands off. Now about 1/2 is needed. I will continue bending about 2 inches at a time until no trim is required with equal fuel tanks.
This week I did an aileron roll! Even though I had taken lessons for doing this at H&R at La Porte, the fear factor was up there with the time I skied off of "Huevos Grandes" at Mammoth Lakes. Ready, set go... ready, set, go...ready, set, go... After a couple of minutes of this I went for it. I pitched it up 30 degrees and rolled it to the left. It was no biggie after all. While I am sure my technique could use some work, it felt safe. I ended up in level flight.
So far I have put 2.6G as per my G meter on the airframe. I know this isn't much but it is more than I am used to. Once at LaPorte the instructor put about 4.5 Gs on the Super Decathlon demonstrating a loop. I could barely drive home after the lesson.
I removed the covers after 10 hours and inspected attach points and controls. I changed oil and the filter since it seems like the engine is broken in. It doesn't use a drop of oil but it hasn't done this since the very beginning.
Here's a very jittery in-flight video. A Divx codec is needed to view it. It is also 9MB so all things considered, it probably isn't worth the trouble to view it.