177 WD is a plane

[Bruce]

BOOMER IS FLYING.

MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW.

It was a good day.
Thanks to Rooster for the support.


Boomer

[lorne green]

Congrats!!
We'll wait for your updates!!
regards.

[SmittysRV]

ALLLLLL RIGHT!!!

Congratulations Boomer!

[TSwezey]

Congrats! Just in time for Osh!

[Bob Axsom]

Maybe the Rocket 100 in November?

Bob Axsom

[Bruce]

Bob,

Will be there and Grace.

Video is up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB43__xLanc

[Bruce]

You can barely tell on the video but I did have an emergency situation
arise right after I leveled off on the upwind when I was reporting the
ball centered and leveling the wings.

The canopy popped open

Chase kept me square and I FLEW the airplane.
The canopy will rise forward on a tipup to about 45 degrees.
I am 6-4 and could barely reach the handle. The forward vis was
ZERO. Tried pulling G's just to get a better pull on the canopy.
It was missing the holes by a 1/2 inch. Delrin guide blocks

The G's didn't work at all so I flew the pattern and just let go of
the canopy to make power adjustments the grabbed the handle and
held on to it. Really didn't want to rebuild the canopy.

On the downwind abeam the numbers let the canopy go, adjusted the
power to 1800 looked left, Great View no glass, flew base 90-100
turned final.

Now the tricky part. You can see in the video that the canopy rises
up past the tail. OH $%% , That is what I was thinking too.

Get on final and release canopy, Pull to idle, reach back up grab the
canopy so I can SEE, fly low and hold it off till it settles down.


PERFECT


Boomers thought of the day.

LOCK THE CANOPY AND DOUBLE,TRIPLE CHECK THE LATCH.


Hope this will help someone in the future and right above my
latch is this placard:

Do not open latch in flight unless you are leaving.

Wasn't leaving

[N8RV]

Nice video of a momentous event, Boomer -- despite the videographer's equipment shortcomings. I had the same issue -- tried using my point-n-shoot camera for the first flight video and it lost focus, couldn't find the plane, etc. *sigh* You'd think we amateurs would learn ...

I also had a similar canopy latch issue on one of my early flights. I did my run-up and was rolling down the runway, well aware that the sound level was noticeably higher than usual. It wasn't until I was climbing out and the canopy slid open a couple of inches that I realized that I'd forgotten to latch the canopy!

Luckily, in an -8 the canopy has a tendency to close in flight, not open, so it was an easy task to push it shut and latch it. However, it sure gets the adrenaline flowing for a minute or two.

Congrats on a successful first flight!

[slyfox]

wow what a deal. I've taken off with the lock off twice, but had the center handle in hold possision. THe only way I could lower the canopy to latch it was to slow to about 60kts, even than it was hard to close the canopy, glad things worked out for you on landing with the canopy unlatched like that.

[Danny7]

that video looks pretty scary for the landing. then you realize the ground is higher in between the video taker and the runway. otherwise it looks bad!

congratulations again Boomer!