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Finish Kit Update August 2012 Updates August 23, 2012 First Flight is Here...... - 3.0 hrs Well today was a long day. No sleep get up early for work. Waiting for the end of the day to arrive. Then the weather started to look like it was going to rain us out. When I left the office I called John and said hey its breaking up and the sun is out. He agreed! I got to the hangar abut 5:30 and opened up the doors. Pulled off the covers and prepped the plane for takeoff. Jim showed up and helped me move it outside and started preflighting. As John showed up we started getting a small shower that lasted about 5 minutes just enough to get the ground wet but nothing major. Next we got out the handheld radios for communications and discussed the plan. The goal was to fly overhead and keep the field landable at all times. Weiser is located under class B airspace so he had to stay under 2000 feet. The plan was to stay around 1800 to give some margin. Engine is new so had to run it hard towards breakin. Then it was time. John crawled in and got ready to start it up. I won't go into the first runup.... that's a story for another day. However on the second try the runup was perfect and he took runway nine for departure. From my view he taxied out to the numbers and added power smoothly. It reved up smooth and was off the ground before he got to where I was standing. Unreal... what an awesome feeling to see it come off the ground and fly so smoothly. After John let it get up to speed he started a smooth climb to keep the CHT temps from climbing too much. Then it was like watching a NASCAR race. The goal was to fly around 30 minutes as long as everything stayed the course. A rain shower was off towards the east but pretty much stayed put. After about 20 minutes it was time to come on down. John started to slow things down and do some slow flight testing letting the engine cool nicely. As the speed came down he put in some flaps and tested going almost to stall speed. Then he went all the way to a slight power off stall. He called all normal and then started to join the pattern for the landing. Unlike normal at Weiser the wind was pretty straight down the runway, not the usual crosswind. As John was coming in it was a nice easy approach even sink rate until he got over the buss barn and then the usual sink. And then a nice smooth touchdown and roll out. All I can say is what an Awesome day! No way to describe it. After more than 8 years if flys and very good. And Mr. Bixby thank you for making this day special. I had so much confidence in your flying this plane and you have helped me understand so much more now. All those years of jumping in rent planes and trusting them to keep running seems crazy now but now I have my own that I built! I cannot thank everyone enough over the years. All my flying buds that helped (Jim, Jon, John, Gary, Dave, Jeff B, Etc.). And especially my family and my sweetheart KIM. I guess the build clock can finally stop at around 2,487 hours except for some tweaking and finishing up the fairings. Now its Phase I testing and then time for flying. YOOOOOHOOOOO! This website was built to document my work in compliance with the FAA requirements needed to certify my aircraft. My experiences and comments are by no means to be considered as instructions on how to build any aircraft.