The wisdom of a short ?first flight?

I recently flew my RV-7A for the first time and thought I would share an incident that occurred that drove home for me the wisdom of keeping the first flight short..

I thought I had gone to great lengths to be sure I had no fuel leaks anywhere in the system but I was proven wrong. Following are the steps I took before the first flight to check for fuel leaks.

1. Went trough the engine compartment and fuselage and wrenched on all the fuel line connections to be sure they were tight..
2. Pressurized the system with the electric fuel pump and sprayed talcum powder on all fuel lines to check for leaks. The powder will turn blue and yes I vacuumed it off.
3. Had two friends standing by looking for leaks while we did the first engine start and subsequent run ups
4. Did the powder thing in the engine compartment after each run up.

All looked OK so off I went on the first flight? after about 20 minutes I returned and pulled the cowl for inspection. I found an indication of fuel around the gascolator so I turned on the electric fuel pump and fuel came gushing out of the plug on top of the gascolator. I unscrewed it with my fingers. This port is used for the primer system which I didn?t install. Obviously I had not tightened it properly and missed it during repeated checks. It was tight enough to pass all my test and decided to work loose while in the air. It is now tight and covered with red RTV?.

It?s the little things that can get you? Be careful out there?

Richard

[LettersFromFlyoverCountry]

Richard: Thanks for the tip. Boy that's great thing to keep in my pocket for a future day. Did you do any taxi tests prior to the first flight. Would it have revealed the problem?

Yes, I did some limited taxi test. It was a new engine and I did not want to run it extensivly on the ground. I did run it up to full power, etc... It had about 45 minutes on it when I made the first flight.

[Bob Axsom]

My first flight was once around the pattern. One of my wiser decisions. There is plenty of time for the dreamy-grinny stuff. Also run the engine on the ground with the cowl in place then shut it down, remove the cowl and check it out. I had a timing error from Lycoming that almost burned up the cowl and on a later flight I didn't ground run after changing the oil cooler - one fitting was only hand tight the engine seized on the landing roll after an emergency return (undeclared) from 2,000 ft direct to the runway. As far as taxi tests are concerned if you can taxi to the runway the test is passed in my opinion.

Bob Axsom