First Flight!

Caution - Man running (with) power tools

Nora and I met Tad, Radomir, and Dale at the airport around 7:15 AM.  The goal was to fly it early in the morning before things started to heat up.  As luck would have it, there was a good bit of ground fog so we had to wait.  The actual lift off occurred around 8:25 AM.  It happened much quicker than any of us would have thought possible.  With only myself and 18 gallons of fuel in the aircraft, it was light and boy did it ever climb.  After circling the Goose Creek airport (28A) and climbing to 3000 feet I had the longest eight miles of my life over to Monroe Regional (EQY).  Tad, flying his RV-7A with Radomir, tucked in to check out my plane for leaks, speed comparisons, pictures, etc.  This was helpful and they stayed out of the way so I didn't have to worry about them.  (Tad holds a Wingman's Formation Card so I wasn't worried about his ability to fly close to me.)

While I was flying with Tad & Radomir on my wing, Nora and Dale drove over to Monroe to watch the first landing.

After flying in circles for some time, I slowed down, deployed all the flaps and did one power off stall.  Man, this thing flies SLOW!  At that light weight, it broke close to 40 MPH.  Much slower than I could have dreamed for.  The pitot and static system have been calibrated but that doesn't mean these numbers are accurate.

After flying in circles for what felt like two minutes but was actually much longer, I descended for a landing.  Monroe has a 5500 x 100 foot runway where as Goose Creek is only 2300 x 30 feet, thus the choice to go over to Monroe was an easy one.

The first landing was uneventful and I found myself stabilized at 65 mph on final for a very uneventful landing.

After pulling the cowling and checking things over, I topped it off with fuel, started it up and climbed out only to find my CHT's going through the roof.  I did nothing more than an abbreviated pattern, landed, rolled off the runway and shut down.  It turns out one of my Pmags had magically retimed itself.  After resetting that, the third flight of the day back over to 28A was uneventful.

Total time for all three flights was two hours.

Here is a video of N941WR's first takeoff and here is the first landing.

F The famous RV Grin.  (8/5/07)

E Radomir, Tad, and Dale checking for leaks.  None were found and everything looked good for a second flight.  (8/5/07)

F The first fuel receipt.  Oh, and I thought building was expensive!  What really hurts is that the tanks weren't even empty.  The good part of all this is that Nora wants me to hurry and fly off the 40 hours so I can start taking her places.  (8/5/07)

E After the 2nd flight, which was cut short due to a mag problem, Dale and I pushed the -9 back to the FBO building so we could go in side, cool down, and then re-time the mag.  Once that was completed, the third and final flight of the day went without a hitch.  (8/5/07)

F Every good aviation operation requires a tug to move its equipment around the ramp.  No expense was spared on my tug.  Yep, that is a "like new" 1994 12 HP garden tractor that I paid the princely sum of $50 for.  Nora said she didn't "think my tractor's sexy", bummer!  (8/5/07)

E With 18.7 hours left in Phase 1 testing, it was time to do some speed runs.  This was a big test as I had been fighting high CHT's since day one.  As you can see from this picture, those problems are now solved.  It turns out that I had the P-mags running at full advance, big mistake.  This picture was taken with just the wheel pants installed, no gear leg or intersection fairings yet.  I'm starting to think my prop may be under pitched a little bit but I won't know for sure until all the fairings are on and I do some more testing.  Remember, this is with just a 135 HP O-290-D2.  I can only imagine what a 160 HP O-320 would do in this airplane.

Testing run today are stalls, max take off, glide, stalls, wheel landings, 10 degrees of flap takeoffs, and a bunch more.  Having flown almost 6 hours today, I'm exhausted.   (8/25/07)