What went wrong with your 1st flight?

[Randy]

I am about to fly my airframe with a completely new firewall forward package and most of the wiring has been highly modified / simplified from what I had with my Subaru experimentation days.

The airframe is well proven, always flew nice and straight, has about 400 hrs on it.

What are the most common problem areas to inspect for prior to taking her up with the new power plant up front?

Heat from exhaust?
Inadequate cooling?
Anything come loose?

I am just looking for pointers on things that others have experienced that I might be able to learn from and perhaps avoid having the same experience.

Randall in Sedona
RV7A, IO-375 low compression and WW RV200.

Data: 8432 R oil cooler (RV10 mounting scheme) is on the firewall with 4" scat feeding it, has a butterfly valve on cable to control oil temps I hope.

Dual Pmags and EICommander, planning to break in with max advance of 26 degrees.

EZ Cool cowl flaps to let some extra air out, planning to leave them open during break in, thinking I will need to.

Pre oiled cylinders, purged fuel system and verified good flow from boost pump.

[LettersFromFlyoverCountry]

B-Nuts on the fuel lines.

[ColoRv]

Two of us had the same issue on first flight.....radio squelch. That PAR100 is not intuitive. Know your equipment.

[aturner]

Funny you mention the PAR 100, that was the only minor thing that went wrong on my first flight. When you toggle frequencies with the PAR 100, you have to be very careful to not change the frequency, just a very slight twist when you depress the tuning knob, and you will have a new unexpected frequency up on the left. Well, not being experienced with the radio, I pulled up the wrong frequency and didn't realize it, and could not figure out why my ground crew would not talk to me. No big deal, all first flights should be so uneventful.

[ColoRv]

Yeah, with all the pieces of equipment in my plane, the PAR100 is the only one I dislike.

[Steve Melton]

Verify the plug on top of the gascolator is tightened. I found weeping after the 3rd flight. It wasn't tight.

[Ironflight]

Probably the most common problems are non-problems, that is, false alarms. dont set your limits very tight - if at all (I only set oil pressure to alarm on a first flight, and if the engine is running fine, don't overreact to annunciations.

[rjbob]

Hello from Alaska, Randy!
Again, thank you very much for your help on my 7 a couple of months ago.

As to your question...
I have made several first flights in RVs for others. All with Lycomings.

That said, I have also maidened the same Glastar twice...once with a Subaru and once with a Lycoming. The Subaru seemed to have built-in problems relatively often and the performance wasn't as advertised. The Lyc is still churning along over a year and a half later with ZERO problems.

Just check the line items others have posted and you will probably notice an increase of confidence in your power plant right off the bat.

Bob

[n816kc]

Check your idle speed, short final isn't a great place to discover it's set too low. A high and tight pattern isn't a bad thing either

[rleffler]

Like Paul mentioned, I had false positives. Alert threshold were set too low. It took me awhile to get them set correctly, specifically EGTs. The alert would go off while short final and idle throttle. I just had to bump it up a bit more to solve that issue.

The major issue was a mechanical fuel pump that failed on a new engine. I probably wouldn't have noticed it, except that I missed turning on the electric boost pump before takeoff. Fortunately, I drilled on the emergency procedures thoroughly before flight, so I caught it pretty quick and it was a none issue getting back on the ground.

The other lesson learned was that the chase pilot got concerned on why I wasn't talking to anyone and kept asking if everything was ok. My first priority was to address the issue, but I probably could have been a little quicker letting him know I had an issue.