Seven Months and 150 Hours Later

I've had so much fun flying that I haven't kept up with this blog. I've now got over 150 hours and I'm having a blast. This airplane is much more than I ever thought it was going to be. Sport plane is the closest I can come to describing it. It's fast and has long legs. It's aerobatic and just really fun to fly. It can land and takeoff on short fields. Just a great all around performer. Although we've taken many trips, I'll highlight only a few below.

Austin and I flew to Airventure (Oshkosh) in July. It was a trip of a lifetime. We tent camped next to the airplane with 1000's of new friends. Here's our campsite, landing on the "Purple Dot" and a panorama of the homebuilt camping area.

Here's my dad on his birthday (June 19th) flight. We went to Brenham for lunch at the 50's themed diner right on the airport.

Shelby and I flew to Lost Maples State Park to look for changing leaves. There weren't many but we enjoyed the flight.

I've had many more enjoyable flights and trips with family and friends. I'll try to include some of them when I can but no promises as this plane is too much fun to stop.

Phase II and Free

I've finished Phase I and I'm now free to fly about the country. No problems with just some fine tuning of EFIS settings and such. Paula was my first passenger and our first trip was to South Padre Island. We left in the morning and flew into Brownsville and used the FBO crew car to drive to the beach for lunch and a nice swim. We made it home just as the sun was setting.

Phase I

Here's my second flight. After the first flight, I removed the cowl and spent a full day checking everything over closely. No problems found so it's on to my solo flight test schedule of 40 total hours for Phase I.

First Flight!

Success! First flight with no problems. A 40 minute flight and as promised, it was on a Thursday. I had my friend, Ron VanBeek and my brother-in-law, Stephen there to help. I didn't tell Paula until I returned. She was surprised but happy I didn't tell her before the flight. Thirty nine hours left to complete Phase I.

Ready To Fly

All ready to fly, just waiting and waiting and waiting for good weather.

Took Paula Flying

Took Paula flying today. That's definitely a look of shear joy on her face! Actually, she was being silly and took several photos and seemed to enjoy the flight.

Here's a good one of Canyon High School. The original is large and high resolution so you can zoom in quite a bit. I sent a copy to one of the teachers that I know and hopefully she has some good use for it. Maybe my picture will become as widespread as Paula's cougar picture that she had made when she was the basketball mom. It's everywhere now including the football scoreboard and websites and t-shirts.

Flew an RV-7A Again

I got to fly Norm's RV-7A yesterday for 1.5 hours and 8 landings. Felt great to get back into the air. Norm really did a great job helping me shake off some of the rust. I am really excited about how nice of an aircraft the RV-7 is and how fun it is to fly. Definitely good motivation to keep pounding those rivets (or prosealing those tanks).

RV Grin - First Flight in an RV

I got to fly an RV this weekend! Here's a picture of the plane I flew. That's Norm and his lovely bride.



Norm (he's the Tech Counselor who inspected my plane about a month ago) gave me a ride in the RV-7A that he built. He's an A&P certified mechanic and did a really beautiful job.

We flew for 40 minutes and I did 1 takeoff, 3 touch-and-go's, steep turns and stalls. It had been quite a while since I had flown so I was definitely rusty! I've landed on aircraft carriers and snow covered runways but this was the first time I've landed on a grass strip.

Norm said it would be a motivational flight and it really was. There's clearly a reason why the RV's are such an incredibly popular line of homebuilts. I don't have much small single time but I do have a little flight time in Cessnas and the RV felt like twice the airplane to me. I am certain now that I made the right choice of aircraft to build!

One thing that surprised me was how foreign the EFIS (Electronic Flight Information System) in Norm's RV felt. An EFIS is the computer screen that has replaced most of the older round gauges. I'm comfortable around computers and I've studied the EFIS and thought flying behind one would come naturally but I was wrong. My eyes kept going back to the "steam gauges" that Norm had left as backups. It will definately require some hanger flying to get comfortable with them. Here's an example of a popular EFIS.