HOVA's lineman filled both 15-gallon main tanks. We left the two 10-gallon aux tanks empty. Our carefully selected test pilot, Peter Braswell, a long time friend and previous GlaStar builder, spent time in two previous visits to our Hangar E8 where he inspected and familiar with our Sportsman. Doug Hanson, our avionics and electrical guru introduced Peter to our totally stuffed panel with triple GRT HX EFISs, Garmin GTN-650, Garmin GTX 327 transponder, Vertical Power VP-200, PS Engineering 8000BT audio panel, Trio Pro Pilot and more. As planned, Peter used the EAA Test Flight manual with test cards. A requirement for the first flight from Test Card 1 was not to use flaps! (An interesting fact is that the Sportsman has the same low drag airfoil for its wing as the famous, very fast, Glasair, so flaps make a huge difference for slower flight and landing speeds.) On this third day, Peter said he and the weather were a "Go"! As the DAR required in our Certificate of Airworthiness, the first takeoff must be from Runway 34 due to minimal housing off that end of the runway.
Unfortunately, our forth partner, Stratford Ward, could not be there for this first flight.
Peter took off, climbed very rapidly to 2000 feet and checked to control feel and response before continuing to climb over the airport to 5000'. He stayed at that altitude performing the actions called out on Test Card 1 for some time speaking to the voice recorder his comments. Doug had mounted a Go Pro camera on the BAS dual shoulder harness 1 ⅛" cross tube for a full view of the panel. He also mounted a second Go Pro on the left wing strut, and a voice recorder in the cockpit.
As Peter entered the traffic pattern, three of us builders, Dee Whittington, Brutus Russell and Doug Hanson, positioned themselves near the parallel taxiway to Runway 16-34 and shot videos of our Sportsman descending, entering the pattern and landing. We continued to video with great excitement as Peter taxied back to Hangar E8, shut down and exited the plane.
In a minute or so after shutdown and after stepping out of our Sportsman, we three awaited his report on the flight. Peter's first words were, "You guys built a beautiful airplane!" We were ecstatic! The rest of his report was wonderfully complementary as to how the Sportsman flew. Of special interest was his report that after he got to 5000', he set the throttle to cruise power, trimmed the elevator, then took his hand off the stick and feet off the rudder pedals and...the plane flew straight and level! That was joy to our ears since the fuselage we received had a twisted and leaned-over vertical fin. After much thought and planning we came up with a method to use a Sawsall to split Bulkhead B, pull and straighten the fin as much as we could using a plumb bob and pencil laser for reference, and then re-glassing Bulkhead B. Just in case we didn't get it correct, we chose to install an electric trim tab on the right aileron. Peter reported he did not have to adjust that tab at all!
Here is a hot link to video of the first flight and Peter Braswell's report:
https://bit.ly/3sYXDCf This flight began our 40-hour Phase 1 flight test program. The reason we have to fly 40 hours and not 25 hours, because we bought an 850-hour Lycoming O-360-A1A engine from an RV-6A builder, Rick Solana, Originally Rick bought the engine factory new, and then through the years up graded the engine with dual eMags, a Vetterman tuned exhaust, a remote ADC oil filter and a Reiff engine heating system. As the detailed logs indicated, he had taken superior care of the engine with regular oil changes, compression checks and borescope inspections.