More on My First Flight

As promised in my first flight post, I'm going to elaborate a little more on my first flight.

I had decided a while ago that I was 95% sure I would have someone more experienced perform my first flight. For me, building the airplane was never about a daredevil stunt or cheating death, but was a way to have a great little airplane. If I was going to give up the reigns to someone else, it would be to someone I trusted and to someone who I felt 'deserved' the privelege. Well, it didn't take too long to come up with a name in my mind. Mike Stewart gave me my first ever RV ride (I think a *LOT* of people can say that). I was just telling him the other day that I remember that ride better than I do my first solo. It was just that fun.

Anyway, Mike's got a ton of hours in RVs and knows them well. He also has a good bit of dead stick experience, which I deemed an important skill set on a first flight. Not to mention that he's done umpteen first flights for people.

So the deal's done, I ask Mike for the favor and he readily agrees to do it. The big day comes. Mike fires my RV up and Scott Will and I jump in Scott's -7A and chase him. Lift off, everything looks pretty good. We catch up with Mike as he begins to circle the field and we see a little smoke coming out of the cowl area. It was just a tiny hint of smoke at first. We of course let him know what we see. Then the smoke gets really thick, we update Mike and he notices the oil pressure is dropping off. He turns it back to the runway, kills the engine, calls on the radio that he's dead stick and lands it straight down the centerline of the runway. There's a Cessna in the pattern who kindly gives way. Total flight time? Maybe 10 minutes. We weren't sure if he killed the engine or it quit, and as we were circling we were so high overhead we weren't sure if he was going to make the runway.

I thought Mike would be ticked at me for screwing something up and putting him in danger, but nope, he just laughed it off while I was shaking like a leaf. I wasn't concerned about the airplane, I just didn't want him to get hurt because of some stupid mistake I made.

So what was the culprit? The prop oil line at the governor end. The fitting was oh so slightly loose. It never leaked a drop on the ground runs (.8 hrs). My guess is that when the engine heated up the fittings expanded enough to let oil out. That line is very high pressure so it leaks a lot of oil very quickly. Mike killing the engine probably saved it.

The point of this story is two-fold. 1) Triple check every fitting before first flight, even if you've ground run the airplane a lot with no issues and 2) be sure you're up to the task and that you're ready to do what Mike did. If you're not comfortable dead-sticking your RV, I wouldn't do the first flight.

There was a lot of soul searching going on that night as I cleaned up oil. Honestly my primary thought was "I have no business doing this stuff". I confided in friends that my greatest concern was that now I would be afraid of the airplane.

The next morning we went out and tripled checked everything again and Mike jumped back on the horse and went. This time the flight was flawless. The only real squawk was the autopilot travel was reversed and reversed elevator trim.

Mike landed and I made the next flight. I have to say that for me that flight was just as sweet as if I would have done the first flight.

Be careful out there folks.

.1 on the hobbs

Jamie has a great airplane and his build skills are top notch ... but this is a great reminder to triple check everything. But I have to razz you a little bit Jamie...


that first flight was closer to 6-7 mins as the Hobbs on my plane read 0.1 after landing!!

Great Write-up!

Jamie,

Congrats on the new plane, and thanks very much for your description of the first flight. I think this is a very concise example of what first flights can entail, and how people should think about them. Most of the time, they are benign, exciting and a piece of cake (when all is said and done). But those aren't the ones that the pilot needs to be prepared for. Anyone doing a first flight needs to be ready to deal with the unexpected, in whatever form that might take.

Mike's experience shows in his ability to not let a little problem become a full blown emergency. Dealing with a powerplant problem in the easiest possible way (make the field and shut it down) is far better than letting it get worse, start a fire, or worse - panic because you don't know what s wrong and lose the airplane. Most problems are little ones, and can be dealt with calmly. A great example is the number of -8 pilots who comment on a loud "drumming" noise coming from the canopy skirt banging on the fuselage. It does not damage, and is easily fixed with some felt or other insulation, but if you let it distract you from flying the airplane, it can be much worse.

Glad you're up and flying - have a lot of fun!

Scott Will said:

that first flight was closer to 6-7 mins as the Hobbs on my plane read 0.1 after landing!!

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Hey...my time perspective was all screwed up! It seemed like an hour to me.

Well here are my 2 cents.
1. Jamie's position on the first flight was a personal one. Although a young guy, young pilot, he made a mature decision. His position was "Although I don't want to give up the first flight, if I look at it objectively, you should be flying it. If everything goes well, Ill be fine, if it doesn't, I want you flying it."
2. While he was very concerned about putting me in danger, this issue did not put me in any danger.
3. Killing the engine did save the motor, no question.
4. One of the items that in this case I feel would have gotten a new pilot in the weeds was the engine monitor. As soon as I went full throttle, alarms started going off from improper end point settings. On the departure roll it was ack ack ack shut that **** off hitting buttons. Now alarms are off. New pilots are very distracted with many things and watching oil pressure every second is not on the top of their priority list I assure you.
5. While for Jamie the flight was 10 minutes, it was actually less than 3.
6. Seeing the oil pressure drop from 60, 50, and at 40 it was time to kill the motor. This took about 10 seconds from the first sign of oil pressure drop till it hit 40. It was a no brainer. Shut it down right now or in 30 seconds the engine will stop on its own anyway.

On lessons learned.
1. Its not enough to grab every fitting (thats what I did on a cursory pass of fitting before flying), you must take a wrench to every fitting. And not just randomly. But start with a system, like fuel, and go tank to engine, hitting every fitting. If you just stand and work and area of fittings, you might miss something. Follow each set of systems start to finish and you will significantly lessen your chances for missing one.
2. IMHO, If your not comfortable shutting your engine off and flying around. I mean off off off, you should not by flying an experimental and further you should certainly not be flying a first flight.

The only bad thing that happen on this flight was the huge mess of an oil spill that had to be cleaned up both inside and outside the plane. Many many good things happened. Good planning, Good decisions made, good discussions had, and as always with every flight, a few more lessons learned.

Good on you Jamie for telling your story for others to learn from. Just another way for you to give back to all those that have and will help you in the future. Its not your first mistake and it wont be your last. Bank on it, plan on it, practice for it. You will be thankful you did.

Best,

the red knob... all the way back

IMHO, If your not comfortable shutting your engine off and flying around. I mean off off off, you should not by flying an experimental and further you should certainly not be flying a first flight.

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Couldn't agree more. I have told Kahuna a few times that every time I fly with him I learn something new. One day he was teaching me some intro to acro. After that we headed over to a local airport to fill up. He tells me to climb to 4,000 or so over the airport and kill the motor. And he meant dead - no power, idle cut-off, however you describe it.

Let me tell you how nerve wracking this was for me the first time because as a PPL student your instructor (at least most of the current crop) just pull the power back to idle. Never had I moved the red knob alllll the way back. But let me tell you this was probably one of the best flying lessons in my life. I watched as the fuel flow went to 0 and we started descending. I flew different airspeeds to get a handle on the sink rate. What a great experience. Landed just fine... the RV is such an honest and great handling airplane. Gave me the confidence to fly it power off. After we touched down we cranked it back up and took off again.

We ended up doing three or four power off landings that day. What a great experience and I am thankful to Mike for that.

The only downside to the day for me was not having the GRT record all the data. I set it to record but forgot to "STOP CAPTURE" right before I cranked the engine again. Don't have a backup battery to run it on during engine start like has been described here in the past.

Was flying all different airspeeds to determine sink rates. Guess I'll have to go out and repeat the test someday. Good practice.

This thread spawned some great discussions on practicing dead sticks. I split the thread and you can continue to it here
Best,

This thread needs a bump.

Thanks Jamie for your candor in posting this so others may learn and live.

I have dead sticked (engine off) a couple of different planes, but my greatest fear on my first flight was forgetting something or having something break so I wanted to be the PIC of the first flight. I could not turn that responsibility over to someone else and live with myself if something happened. I knew from the start I was go to fly it so that was incentive to make sure I didn't forget anything!