First Flight N104XP - Part 1

Saturday was a great day all around. The winds were 0-3 knots, 60 degrees OAT, and I didn't sleep one wink that night.
I know everyone says don't have alot of people come to the first flight but that is one rule that I didn't follow. I let everyone know that wanted to know but it was still mostly my family and my wife?s family. There were the usual airport groupies that were hanging around and two of my best friends from work were there too.




I did a preflight on the plane early that morning and then Ray did one too. My friend Mark Patey came up from Spanish Fork airport in his RV-6A to fly chase and we went through the flight on the ground first. I was going to climb out (4230ft airport elevation) to 6500 ft. and orbit the airport below Class B. I wasn't going to touch the power settings until at least 6000 ft. There have been many engines that have quit when people started to pull back RPM's or MP. I was then going to fly 65% to 75% power for at least 20 minutes, then go into some slow flight and get some airspeed numbers. Then back to full power for 10 more minutes and land.

I walked the plane one more time, made sure I had my POH (Thanks Tim) and my notes that I had made and strapped in. I did mount a camera in the plane. My friend?s wife walked into the hanger as I was duct taping the tripod to the floor. I think she thought I was putting in the last few critical pieces. By the way, we will be putting the duct tape on e-bay from the first flight. The video is awesome from inside, can't wait to get it edited so everyone can see it. You can see the camera in the back in some pictures.

First Flight N014XP - Part 2

My wife took a camera and flew with Mark in the chase aircraft and again some of the formation video turned out great. Because there was really no wind and my hanger is on the south end of the airport we had to make some calls and reverse the pattern. I did not want to taxi my new engine all the way to the other end and everyone was really nice about it. We then both taxied out to the end of 34 and I did my final checks.




So there I was sitting at the end of the runway ready to take off. This is the moment we all think about over and over again after long nights of deburring, riveting, wiring, sanding, painting, troubleshooting, and day dreaming at work. I've always thought that I would get to end of runway, take a big breath and really take it all in. Well, I got out there and I was ready, the plane was ready and I just wanted to fly.
I added one notch of flaps, turn the fuel pump on, checked for the 10th time that the fuel was on and all instruments were set and made the announcement, "OK, here we go!"

The next few moments were very routine thanks to Mike Seager and 410RV. I went up and flew 8.5 hours in 410RV and had 44 landings with Mike. Everything felt identical in this takeoff. The plane accelerated quickly, I pulled the nose off within the first 200 feet and just held it up and we were airborne before the first exit. I am going to go out there someday and measure it because it seemed shorter than 500 ft.

First Flight N014XP - Part 3

The RPM's were right around 2710 on climb out, I actually pulled them back to 2650 on my down wind and then back to 2500 at 6000 ft.

It was great to have a chase plane there for the 30 minute flight. I didn't have to make any radio calls, I monitored the airport frequency but left it on 123.45 and talked with the ground and with Mark in the chase plane. I was able to focus on the flying and monitoring engine parameters.




During the flight my airspeed seemed to be 5-6 knots slower at 140 knots than Marks RV-6A, and at 100 knots seemed to be around 4-5 knots. My CHT maxed at 410 on climb out and then cooled and stabilized at 385 F with 75% power. My oil temp never went above 185 F. The engine ran flawless (Great job Aerosport).

First Flight N014XP - Part 4

I made one more upwind leg and started to slow her down to 85 knots for the first notch of flaps. Then I set up for a 78 knot decent and added the second notch (20 degrees). I didn't add full flaps because with only one or two people in the plane you can't trim out all the control forces with 30 degrees of flaps. Even with 50 lbs in the baggage, Mike Seager and I couldn't fully trim out the forces. So I decided during my transition training that 20 degrees would be my setting and it worked perfect.
I was definitely fast on my approach but I had plenty of runway to bleed off speed. I planned on aiming for 1/3 down the runway and a couple extra knots over 76. 76 (90 mph) was the approach speed Mike Seager teaches you. My brother has some great shots of the landing sequence. I'll just include a few.

First Flight N014XP - Part 5




Once the smoke came off that first wheel it was time to relax and celebrate.





Now I need to fly off another 24 hours and then another 25 of rides but that is the fun part.

I would definitely recommend some transition training for your first flight. When I initially called for insurance they quoted me 10 hours of total RV time with one hour in an RV-10. They apparently are now requiring 10 hours of RV-10 time! I have argued with them that this is going to be impossible for the whole RV-10 community to get but that is what they said. They allowed my training to count but start calling your insurance now and check on that.
Also, having a chase plane was nice to relieve stress and to keep an eye on the outside of the plane.

I'll see you all soon I hope. I am going to try and make it to Copperstate but that is a lot of flying between now and then.

Way to GO!

She looks gorgeous!.

Well done

Frank

way to go

you the man

Nice job on the plane and great report!

Great pix and story. Congrats!!! Beautiful aircraft.

I'm going to work on mine right now!

Not to divert attention from the real point of the thread (congratulations, by the way), but your brother takes some great photographs. You wouldn't happen to know what kind of rig he's running, would you?

jrsites said:

Not to divert attention from the real point of the thread (congratulations, by the way), but your brother takes some great photographs. You wouldn't happen to know what kind of rig he's running, would you?

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This is what he told me. You asked!

"I was shooting with a Nikon D200 SLR, 50-500mm Sigma zoom lens, iso 100 f11@1/125, expo disk for custom white balance, Sekonic 599 light meter using the dome reading, fisheye shots are from the Nikon 10.5 mm fisheye, expo disk used in the hangar also to balance the blue light specturm out of the overhead lights."

cool

very very nice. esp the left tire smoke on touchdown those wires in the distance seem to scare me
congratulations.

ScottSchmidt said:

This is what he told me. You asked!

"I was shooting with a Nikon D200 SLR, 50-500mm Sigma zoom lens, iso 100 f11@1/125, expo disk for custom white balance, Sekonic 599 light meter using the dome reading, fisheye shots are from the Nikon 10.5 mm fisheye, expo disk used in the hangar also to balance the blue light specturm out of the overhead lights."

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. He's an even better photographer than I thought. He's coaxing photos THAT good out of a Nikon!

Tell him that a Canon EOS 10D shooter was admiring his work.

Oh, and I was admiring the airplane too!

Great pic of the cork blasting off!! Oh, cool airplane too.

Congratulations and keep it high and close for a while.

Oh, and ten hours dual for insurance?? Egads. Is this with Nationair? Falcon?

Absolutely beautiful plane. I love the paint scheme and the colors. What color red is that?

Again...congratulations!!!

Nice dog-- we had one like yours when we were kids until someone stole her.

nice plane too! congrats.

praterdj said:

Absolutely beautiful plane. I love the paint scheme and the colors. What color red is that?

Again...congratulations!!!

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I will have to check when I get back in town, just give me til Saturday and I'll let you know.

I initially asked Lancair for thier colors and then modified them slightly. I will take pictures of the cans and post them.

Thanks Scott. Again...beautiful plane!

Way to go SCOTT!

Gorgeous plane- look forward to seeing it soon. Love the paint scheme.

OK, here are the paint colors.

White


Red


Silver


Dark Grey

What a great Christmas Gift

I showed up to work and everyone was of course handing out there Christmas nuts and fruit cake to fellow workers. Well, I got some used duct tape for christmas, what a great idea, right?

OK, here is the rest of the story. The morning of my first flight I was working on installing a tri-pod in my plane so that I would have some cockpit footage. Well, my friend Danny and his wife walked into the hanger just as I pulled a couple of feet of duct tape off the roll,and appeared to be putting it in the area of the wing attachment.

Well, after my first flight I took the tri-pod out and threw a peice of duct tape out of the plane, made a comment, and Danny picked it up. We were planning on placing it on e-bay to see how much we could get for first flight duct tape and then give it to charity, but I forgot about it until today when I received this gift.

Pretty funny I thought.