Comfortable seats are important in a cross-country airplane. Abby at Flightline Interiors
did a fantastic job for me.
What are your plans for the second and
subsequent flights you will be making?
Even if you don’t perform the initial test
flight, at some point you will be flying the
airplane you built, right? So what are you
going to do? Boring holes in the sky for 40
hours is one way, and that’s a lot of fun.
But, I’m of the opinion that there needs to
be some education along the way, and the
first 40 hours of operation (or 25, depending on the flight-test period you were
assigned) of a new homebuilt airplane provide a perfect stage for learning the
nuances of your creation and what it will
teach you. This being my opinion, I’m not
going to point my finger at each of you
nearing a first flight to tell you that you
need to do this, too. I’m simply going to
write about my experiences with my own
homebuilt flight test program. It worked
out just fine, and I learned a thing or two
along the way.
MY RV- 7
When I found myself at the end of the
parts bin from assembling my Van’s RV- 7,
I started to think about how I would con-
duct my flight-test period. Sure, I had
thought about it many times along the
way and imagined that first flight a thou-
sand times; who wouldn’t? Now that I
was nearing the summit of my project and
was ready to pass over into the land of a
real, flying airplane, it was time to get
serious about it.
