1) Airplane manufacturer
2) Test pilot
Saturday McFly took to the air for the first time for a flawless 40 minute flight circling my airport. It is powered a Mattituck TMX O-360, one mag and one Lightspeed ignition, Catto 3 bladed climb prop, and a plenum chamber cobbled up by yours truly. The panel is simple day/night VFR with Vans gauges, LRI, Dynon 10A, Lowrance 1000, I-COM radio and Narco AT150 (the only used piece of equipment on the plane).
The performance was astounding (to me), I was over 4000? on close downwind when chasing 110 knots. I was too busy looking at airspeed, temps and oil press to get the climb rate but holy smokes!!! I was running into RPM redline before I running out of throttle at 160 knots indicated. The chase plane (a sweet RV-8A with a CS prop) was having a really hard time catching me
. When he did, he said he was burning 17 GPH and indicating 180 knots. So it looks like my airspeed is indicating a little low although 180 knots seems too high, particurally without fairings. The single GPS speed I noted across the wind was 175 knots. Regardless, I?ll take any of these speeds.
The plane does not have any heavy wing tendencies. It flew straight and true and RV like, just awesome.
Here are my numbers when things seemed to stabilize.
RPM: 2500
MAN: 22"
CHT#1: 300
CHT#2: 325
CHT#3: 350
CHT#4: 350
Oil temp: 165
OP: 70
It seems bizarre that after a five and a half year build (and counting) that the hundreds of things that I agonized about and lost sleep over, all seemed to work and work well. I was on the steep part of the learning curve during most of my five and a half year build. My tech counselor and the members of this forum played a huge part in my getting me through it all to first flight. Thank you all.
Two more things to add to my resume???
Linear Mode
