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Airborne! N427DK is a flyin' machine!!

rightrudder

Well Known Member
What a rush. :D Earlier today I pulled back on the stick of an airplane I built in my garage. It leapt into the air and stayed there!!!!

Perfect conditions at Cable Airport: a balmy 77-degree February day (El Nino on hold temporarily!), some light cirrus clouds at about 20,000 feet and zero turbulence. P-factor, etc. caught me a little off guard on the takeoff roll and I veered a little to the left, but I lofted the nose wheel a few inches and she was flying in 500 feet or so. I've done this hundreds of times in rental Cherokees, DA-20s and 172s, but I have to say it's a little surreal when you, your-own-self, have built the thing and point it skyward for the first time.

Very, very stable in the pattern on climb out. I did 5 hours of transition training with Reuven Silberman out of KSEE in his RV-7, and while it's a fantastic machine, it felt a little edgy and nervous by comparison (and by design, of course). The -9A's control reaction is exactly how I had imagined it to be--steady, smooth and a little higher effort. In the first 30 seconds, it completely reaffirmed my choice of the -9A....docile, yet satisfyingly snappy in the way it handles.

Since our airport is in a fisheye cutout of Ontario's airspace, I climbed above its 5000-ft ceiling and did my lapping at about 5300 ft (about 3 miles north and northeast of the field) so I wouldn't run the risk of nicking their airspace and I could concentrate on monitoring pressures and temps. Plenty of altitude to glide back to the airport too. The workload was low, as there wasn't a trace of a heavy wing, and CHTs, which nudged 435 on a couple of cylinders during climb, for the most part settled nicely into the 360-370 range. Oil temp touched 175, well nigh perfect. I was running between 2400-2500 rpm to help seat the rings, and I bumped it up to 2650 briefly, and saw an airspeed of 135 knots and climbing. I throttled back a little before it peaked. This is with the gear leg fairings fitted, but no wheel pants.

After about 30 minutes, I worked on slowing her down to Vfe and reentered the pattern. Not my best landing, but heck, I was a little nervous!! I got the airspeed stabilized nicely to about 70 knots, but overshot my base-to-final turn and started the final about 150 ft high. So it was a bit of a chop and drop and I touched down (after some float) at least a third of the way down the runway.

A life-affirming experience, as my college psychology professor was fond of saying.

Issues? Minor. The No. 2 cylinder CHTs were a little low in cruise (maybe 275), so I need to extend the air dam in front of the cylinder a bit. And a little vibration from the left-side brakes was apparent on roll out, probably just the linings getting happing with the rotor friction surface. I will de-cowl and give everything an intense scrutinizing, and then it's off to the practice area. Woohoo!

Credit to my friend Sam Ellis, who took the excellent photos, and of course to Van's, for designing such an incredible airplane that fits my mission objectives so perfectly. That last pic is me making my first RV-9A entry in the log book (hidden behind the Magic Duster!).











 
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It has began. The life of a show plane. Doug you are one of the very few who was pushing it from day one until done. Congratulations!
 
Hi Doug,

Congratulations!!! Your RV looks great! Having followed your meticulous and well conceived/planned build on VAF, I am not surprised the least bit that it flew beautifully "straight out of the box." Way to go!!!:D

FYI - my big Acura project is in the final stages (hopefully all done within the next week or so), so my plan for the rest of February and March is to make getting my PPL my full-time job. Then it's off to Sun-n-Fun in April, followed by a new project for Lexus.

I will be sure to hit you up the next time I'm heading out to SoCal. Can't wait to check out that awesome new 9 of yours!

Take care,
 
Thank you, Rick, Vlad and Jim! Everyone on the forum has been so great in answering the myriad dumb questions that spring from my pea brain, so I can't thank you enough.

Jim, great news on clearing the slate to make room for aviation endeavors. Give me a call after Sun-n-Fun and let me know about all the cool new stuff. I hope the next time you're out west, Phase 1 will be a memory, she'll be painted and we can go flying!
 
Awesome, congrats!

I did my second flight this afternoon, the good news is the rush doesn't wear off!
 
Thanks guys! Weather is lookin' good for Friday. I think I'll just explore the perimeter of the practice area and get a good sense of all the visual references, then maybe some slow flight practice.
 
Congrats, Doug! You couldn't have picked a nicer day weather-wise to fly it for the first time. Get those Phase 1 hours done safely and see you in the skies.
 
Thanks, guys! I'm gonna take baby steps on this one. If everything checks out under the cowl, tomorrow's flight will be about 2.5 hours. The presidential TFR in the area comes within about 1/4 mile of Cable, and it lifts at 11:30 PST Friday anyway. So I'm thinking noon to 3-ish.

Video is almost done....will post it over in the photo/video area in a few hours.
 
Thanks, guys! I'm gonna take baby steps on this one. If everything checks out under the cowl, tomorrow's flight will be about 2.5 hours. The presidential TFR in the area comes within about 1/4 mile of Cable, and it lifts at 11:30 PST Friday anyway. So I'm thinking noon to 3-ish.

Video is almost done....will post it over in the photo/video area in a few hours.

I'd keep it to about 1.5 hours, you might be amazed at the oil consumption during break-in.
 
I'd keep it to about 1.5 hours, you might be amazed at the oil consumption during break-in.

Good info. I'll check to see what it consumed on the first flight. Maybe take a couple of extra quarts in the plane too....I can land at Apple Valley in the practice area to top off if needed.

One more shot of the takeoff, with nose wheel lifted and mains just barely touching. You can see what I consider the airport's mascot in the background, an Antonov, purportedly the world's largest single-engine biplane.

 
So nice to read

Great story!

Loved the way it was told as I am looking forward to those precise moments and wondering how I would react. Mine should see air this fall or early winter.

Thanks again and congrats!

Dave
 
Great story!

Loved the way it was told as I am looking forward to those precise moments and wondering how I would react. Mine should see air this fall or early winter.

Thanks again and congrats!

Dave
Dave, if they could take that feeling and bottle it, I think that world peace could be achieved. You are going to dig it! I'm still coming down from the rush.

Video is up over in the RV photo/video section. Check it out!
 
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Great report and congratulations, we have something in common, I to had my first flight out of CCB, was in Chapter 448, so did Gary Sobek, Hanger 229. Hard to come down from that high!!
 
Congrats Doug!

It is such a beautiful thing and milestone to do the first flight of an airplane built in one's garage. You will be amazed how well is performs its mission.

To those still building...push on, it is well worth the effort.

Bevan
 
Update: Today was the second flight, and I went for a full 2 hours on the Hobbs. :) For those familiar with the area, I flew up the Cajon Pass, then crisscrossed around the outskirts of Apple Valley to Barstow to Lucerne Valley, making sure to avoid populated areas as much as possible.

Beforehand, I de-cowled and did a tightness check on everything. No leaks whatsoever. I torqued all the exhaust flange nuts just a smidge, and adjusted the tension on the alternator belt.

The best thing about today was getting comfortable with stalls, and trusting my airspeed indicator. With me and a roughly a 180-lb. fuel load, Vs was right at 47 KIAS, and Vso was a measly 39 KIAS, pretty close to what I expected. But there is a lightness to the controls at, say 70 KIAS that made me a little nervous on my first landing, where I came over the numbers at maybe 72-73 KIAS and floated forever. Today, I nailed it at 65 and it set down like the proverbial butterfly with sore feet. Now that I know--for certain--that I have that much stall margin, and the anxiety goes WAY down. :)

I think I have a bad No. 2 CHT sensor. It was bouncing around from as low as 115 degrees to about 170 when all other cylinders were at 370 or so. I'll order a new one. Oil temp is perfect...160 to 180 with an OAT of 64 to 68 degrees.

I ran her pretty hard, 2400 to 2500 rpm most of the time, with a top speed run where I hit 162 knots true at 2810 rpm, which works out to 186 mph. Woohoo! Should be a little quicker with the wheel pants. Oil consumption was only 0.5 quarts, which makes me think they run it pretty hard in the Lycoming test cell. But I'll keep hammering on it (temps permitting, of course) for another 15 hours for a proper break-in.

Folks with QB wings, don't be alarmed if on the first flight you get what looks like streaks of fuel on the wings. It's actually remnants of the preservative oil used for shipping that collects in the seam between skins. It lies dormant there until the first flight. :)

 
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