Since getting the airworthiness certificate for my Velocity, I’ve been preparing for first flight. Over the last week or so, I’d run out of things on the list and little issues to take care of. On Thursday, I took the day off, prepared to fly. I started by doing some high-speed taxi tests. KORH has two runways, the main, longer 29/11 (7000′) and a shorter 33/15 (5000′). On Thursday, the winds were right down the shorter 33. High speed taxi tests were made a little tricky by the fact that where 33 intersects 29, it gets a little bumpy. That’s just where I was hitting ~60kts and starting to lift the nose wheel. So, I wasn’t able to do a nice run down where I lift the nose. Also, my Dynon Skyview kept giving me a warning that my compass heading was off and GPS was taking over. So, I shut it down for Thursday and headed back to the hangar to sort out the magnetic compass issue. It turned out that I had the ADAHRS (unit for measuring air data and heading info) too close to the hydraulic gear pump. Also, I found that SCAT tubing gives off a healthy magnetic field. I relocated the ADAHRS further into the nose and was able to get a good calibration with it.
So, today, Saturday came – nice weather. It had rained at night and in the morning, and lots of clouds still, but they were above 5K and the winds were calm. After completing the reposition and calibration of the ADAHRS, I did a few high-speed taxis. This time on the nice, long 29. Taxi tests went well. I was able to get a nice, sustained nose lift as well as a couple hops during the runs. But when I returned to the hanger to check if all was well, I noticed a couple drips of oil on the lower cowling that weren’t there before. So, off came the cowlings and plenum inspection plates. After a thorough search, I located the leak (more of a seep) to the oil sump gasket. The bolts/nuts holding it on were a bit loose. So, I re-torqued all the 1/4-20 bolts on engine – seems like a few heat cycles had loosened a couple up. Cowls back on, and head out for another stress test down the runway. Another good run with a couple hops. Back to the hangar – no oil drips/seeping. So, its time. No more excuses. Gave everything one more good going over and headed out. Run up again, then taxied to 29. Tried to get the camera started, but I’d wasted all the batteries videoing the high-speed taxis. Lined up and pushed the throttle forward. Speed came up and I rotated and lifted off somewhere b/w 70-80kts. I think I got a bit too excited wanting to gain altitude and kept it too nose high and sputtered along at ~85kts until I smartened up and put the nose down to gain speed. I’ve got a pretty “long” cruise prop on it, so I think I need to be sure to keep the nose down on takeoff and build up speed. Lifted up the gear and pretty soon found myself needing to turn cross. As I turned cross, I noticed that the gear unsafe light was on…hmm. I’d cycled the gear many, many times and it always worked flawlessly. I figured something wasn’t quite sitting well under airspeed loads (it turns out that I had inflated the tires to 55psi earlier in the day (they had been at ~40psi) and the more inflated tire on the pilot side was not clearing the wheel well opening – I found this out after landing and putting the plane up on the jacks).
I did one go around the pattern, then told the tower I was coming down. Went thru my landing checklist. The Velocity I flew at the factory had a CS prop, so I never used the landing brake (the CS prop does a good job slowing it down). So, when I put the landing brake down, that’s the first time I’d ever used one – it makes a bit of a racket. I had no trouble getting it down and made a very smooth landing. Taxied back to my hangar to investigate the landing gear issue. After seeing the problem, I was able to open up the gear hole a bit so the gear was back to operating fine. No significant oil drops on the cowling. The only issue was that the Skyview complained on several occasions that it was going into GPS assist mode, again, meaning my compass was not in calibration. I’ll check into that tomorrow, tho. If I go up tomorrow for flight #2, I’ll be sure to have my camera charged an have a video to upload.
A good day.