As others have said, lots of good advice here, but I am going to echo Terry's advice that you get some formal RV checkout time. if you had lots of hours in other tail dragger RV's, I'd give you much of the "lessons learned" here in this thread and say "go fly", but there are quite a few accidents on record from folks who explored the edges of the RV envelope on their own for the first time and came to grief. Respect the fact that it is still an airplane, and you're going pretty fast close to the hard object known as the earth.
On landings and CG - some said "Wheel Land it Solo, you can three-point one pretty easily with someone in the back seat". Be very careful with this - it will three-point almost TOO easily with someone in the back seat. I have heard many, many stories from low-time -8 pilots who made their first aft-CG landings and ended up with a VERY scary tail-strike "landing". At slow speeds with an aft CG, the stick force gradient is zero to negative, and the nose will rise pretty much on its own. I strongly prefer a tail-low wheel landing in 90% of the cases, definitely with a passenger. I use a three-point when the runway is short and I have to come in over trees. if I have to do that with a passenger, I have to be 100% on my game. Slow with an aft CG is not (in my experience) a good place to be with an -8.
Paul
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Paul F. Dye
Editor at Large - KITPLANES Magazine
RV-8 - N188PD - "Valkyrie"
RV-6 (By Marriage) - N164MS - "Mikey"
RV-3B - N13PL - "Tsamsiyu"
A&P, EAA Tech Counselor/Flight Advisor
Dayton Valley Airpark (A34)
http://Ironflight.com
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