First takeoff and landing in an RV taildragger

[Dave Taylor]

My buddy Bruce Sacks let me fly left seat in his awesome RV-9 today. We took off from Perry, GA and headed over to Montezuma, GA where there was no traffic. He did an awesome job talking me through the pattern, approach and landing. I felt I was consistent with my speed and altitude and the approach always looked pretty good. When flaring I seemed to pull back a little too hard on the stick and put it in a very shallow climb. We did about 7 touch and goes before heading back to Perry where I made what I though to be a halfway decent landing. Hopefully I didn't scare him too bad. All this before he even knew it was my birthday. Thanks Bruce for an awesome start to my 43rd birthday. It was a totally awesome day and something I'll not forget. Hard to believe we put 1.4 on the hobbs. It seemed like 20 minutes to me. I'm heading out to the shop now to work on the -7. Nothing like a flight like today to motivate a builder!

[Vlad]

It's a great present and powerful motivation indeed.

[Brantel]

Awesome experience is it not???

My first TW experience was left seat in my friend Bob Dougherty's awesome RV7 and I will never forget it...at that time his airplane was brand new so I know he was nervous!!! No large parts departed the airplane....so he let me have a couple more goes at it before I went down to torture Jan Bussel's airplane..

[Wayne Gillispie]

in a nice RV-9A. The Cessna 172L rental's flying qualities will definitely keep me motivated to get it done too!!