First Flight – Not!

I hadn’t intended to let this blog go quiet for so long but there really hasn’t been much to say. We had a couple of weeks of high humidity and it was just too yucky to go out to the hangar, let alone sit in the plane for 20 mins (of terror).

But two weekends ago I went out to do some more taxiing to get a feel for the plane and I found that at “high” speed there was a big side load to the left and it felt like the whole plane was being pushed off the runway. This didn’t seem like a good thing for takeoffs and landings and so I did not go up.

This weekend I determined that I wanted to fix the max RPM issue before a first flight, you may recall that a full throttle test showed we were only getting 5300 RPM, which is less than the 5800 that is required. So Scott joined me on Saturday and we lowered the pitch by a degree, but did not do a full throttle test.

Yesterday I thought I might do the first flight but instead it ended up being just some high speed taxi tests…. BUT…. I now feel a whole lot better about the plane. First, there was not a single stability issue at speed, no veering off the runway; the brakes worked great, and all the gauges worked and were in the green. Oh, and the engine sounds like a kitten. So now it is just a case of getting the pilot ready….

I took some video of my taxi tests, gave me a chance to try out my new camera (and the old Go Pro I put on the wing). Here’s an edit where I have combined the two into one

and for the insomniacs amongst you, here are the full-ish versions from each camera. I need to do a little research to improve the tone from my mic in the radio. Not sure if it is just my cheap headset or if there are some settings I can mess with on the V6.

And yes I was going fast enough at the end there that a very small movement of the stick would have gotten me airborne. I regret that I did not do it.

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