Next I flew a 172 to the EAA Chapter 18 picnic 45 nm away at Burlington. Met with my flight advisor, Jerry Thorpe. Several of the chapter members are building or flying RVs. Marty Pavlovich has helped me a lot through this whole building adventure. He brought his 6A to the picnic & let me fly left seat for about an hour, going through some more slow flight & a couple of landings. In the last two years, I had three sessions with Mike Seager in Van's 6A, but the last minute polish up with Marty helped a lot.

The plan had been to do the first flight early Sunday morning, but the weather was perfect on Saturday, with rain forecast to move in on Sunday. I decided that we should go for it Saturday evening. We got back to West Bend at about 3:30 & picked up the Airworthiness Certificate that the DAR, Tom Willis, had left there for me - the inspection was completed the day before. I needed about an hour to screw down floorboards & inspection plates removed for the DAR.

The engine started right away & I taxied to the pumps. We added fuel to give me about 16 gals left & 12 gals right. The plan was to use left tank only for a first flight of an hour or less. Kyle, my second flight advisor, thought the tires looked a little soft. We checked & found them right at the 30 psi (mains) & 25 psi (nose) that I had set, but we decided to add 5 psi to each & they did look better that way. Taxiing felt fine, with no tendency to pull left or right.

After the usual thorough engine run-up, I taxied onto runway 13, 4500 feet by 75 feet. The wind was about 5 kts at 110, so nothing to worry about. Brought power up smoothly, getting 2200 rpm with the Sensenich prop. I had no problems keeping it on the center line, with plenty of right rudder countering the 180 HP from the O-360. I took the weight off the nose wheel early, & lifted off in well less than 1000 feet. It felt very stable & controllable, so I climbed straight out, intending to climb to 4000 feet over the airport. At less than 1000 feet AGL the Big Red Light on my panel started flashing at me! I installed the Grand Rapids EIS-4000 engine monitor, & it was telling me that CHT on cylinder 3 had exceeded the 450 deg limit that I had set. In fact it was up to 480 & climbing. I leveled off to improve cooling, but it continued to climb, so I called my ground crew & told them I was coming round to land. As I continued onto downwind, the CHT stabilized. Kyle told me that she had seen CHT at 500 right after her engine overhaul. At this point CHT was dropping so we decided not to land, but to continue the flight test as planned. Studying the engine log afterwards, I could see that CHT3 was at 398 at the start of the take-off roll, & rose to 450 in 30 seconds. It peaked at 488 deg 60 secs later.

The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful. The left wing was slightly heavy, but I had more fuel & me on that side, so I'm not going to take any corrective action yet. The imbalance was not enough to prevent controllable rudder turns without aileron input. Elevator control was fine with good trim control via the Matronics governor. Slow flight at about 60 kts was stable. Stall in the landing configuration was at about 45 kts IAS with a left wing drop, but easily recovered.

It was time to land. I kept the pattern close to the runway, & ended up high on final. I didn't want to slip it in, but full flaps & 70 kts gave me plenty of sink for a steep approach, although my ground crew found the view slightly alarming! Added a little power and made a nice flare. Power off, squeak squeak, hold the nose wheel off, track straight, brakes, turn off at the intersection. Wow! I'd been making mediocre landings all day, but this last one couldn't have been better!

Many thanks to the entire ground crew for their patience & support. Knowing they were there for me gave me the confidence I needed to make this first flight successful.

Also, special thanks to my wife, Sue, & son, Tom, for their encouragement & assistance with this project. I think they were more nervous about the first flight than I was, & relieved to see the successful conclusion.

I'll report performance numbers after some more test flights. I can't wait to get it back in the air, so it won't be long. Pictures & video should be on my website in the next couple of days.

RV-6A(QB) N86CG
O-360-A1A new from Van's with Sensenich metal fixed pitch prop.
2100 hours build time, starting September 97.