First Flight!
It's Wednesday, February 1st.. and I've spent the last two days getting the airplane put back together after the inspection and correcting all of the issues found during inspection. We had just recently returned from a 4 day trip to San Diego and were heading back out of town on Friday to visit Sandi's family in Illinois. I wasn't rushing myself to fly but I wanted to get the first flight out of the way.
The weather was perfect, the plane was ready. Sandi and I were able to get out of work about 3:00 and head for the airport. Arriving around 4, I pulled the plane out and warmed up the engine awhile on the tarmac and did a little taxing around. I shut down the engine, checked for leaks and put the cowl on. Time to go fly.
Sandi and Tony (airport manager) walked out to the runway while I started up the plane and started to taxi. As soon as turned on my audio panel, I had a stuck mic indication. It had to be the passenger PTT because that was the only thing I had touched recently. I shut down and removed the PTT button and then taxied back out.
Visibility is fantastic with the tip-up canopy... the weather was absolutley great! There was barely a hint of wind and the skies were blue. The sun was still in the sky but setting slowly. I did my runup and went through my checklist. I taxied into position and took stock one more time... full throttlel and away we go!
I got the wheels off the ground and nothing bad was happening so that was a good sign. As I was climbing out a small flock of birds passed in front of me and the thought "O great.. first flight and I'm going to smack a bird." Fortunately they quickly moved out of the way. The airplane was handling nicely but didn't seem to be climbing very well. I glanced at the RPM and saw 2150 or so. Seemed a little lower than it should be. After climbing to 2,000 ft (1,000 AGL), I turned crosswind and made the call that I was going to land. The low RPM was making me a bit nervous. I flew the downwind, bas and final. It was REALLY hard to get the plane to slow down, coupled with the fact that I was leaving a little RPM in. My final was fast but I had a lot of runway to work with so I just held it off and let the airspeed bleed off and squeeked the landing!
Taxi'd back and shut down. Sandi was a bit of a wreck since I didn't follow the 'plan' and landed without telling her what was wrong. I sat in the plane a few minutes and absorbed the first flight. I was happy but the quick flight wasn't what I was planning for. :-)
So.. I can officially say that I built and FLEW my own airplane! Looking forward to spending a lot more time in the plane.
Image animation of first flight.
Total Flight Time: .1 hours
The weather was perfect, the plane was ready. Sandi and I were able to get out of work about 3:00 and head for the airport. Arriving around 4, I pulled the plane out and warmed up the engine awhile on the tarmac and did a little taxing around. I shut down the engine, checked for leaks and put the cowl on. Time to go fly.
Sandi and Tony (airport manager) walked out to the runway while I started up the plane and started to taxi. As soon as turned on my audio panel, I had a stuck mic indication. It had to be the passenger PTT because that was the only thing I had touched recently. I shut down and removed the PTT button and then taxied back out.
Visibility is fantastic with the tip-up canopy... the weather was absolutley great! There was barely a hint of wind and the skies were blue. The sun was still in the sky but setting slowly. I did my runup and went through my checklist. I taxied into position and took stock one more time... full throttlel and away we go!
I got the wheels off the ground and nothing bad was happening so that was a good sign. As I was climbing out a small flock of birds passed in front of me and the thought "O great.. first flight and I'm going to smack a bird." Fortunately they quickly moved out of the way. The airplane was handling nicely but didn't seem to be climbing very well. I glanced at the RPM and saw 2150 or so. Seemed a little lower than it should be. After climbing to 2,000 ft (1,000 AGL), I turned crosswind and made the call that I was going to land. The low RPM was making me a bit nervous. I flew the downwind, bas and final. It was REALLY hard to get the plane to slow down, coupled with the fact that I was leaving a little RPM in. My final was fast but I had a lot of runway to work with so I just held it off and let the airspeed bleed off and squeeked the landing!
Taxi'd back and shut down. Sandi was a bit of a wreck since I didn't follow the 'plan' and landed without telling her what was wrong. I sat in the plane a few minutes and absorbed the first flight. I was happy but the quick flight wasn't what I was planning for. :-)
So.. I can officially say that I built and FLEW my own airplane! Looking forward to spending a lot more time in the plane.
Total Flight Time: .1 hours
posted by Matthew at 10:50 AM
1 Comments:
wow!!! I´m really happy for you...
I saw the pics of first flight, and it´s great. I know you will enjoy it so much...
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