Inspection and First Flight!

Leading up to the inspection was relatively crazy. Having some final reviews of the systems and the manuals ensuring no parts were forgotten in addition to completing some final clean up tasks for the build.

We spent a good half day looking over the airplane two days before the inspection. We found some minor issues that were resolved quickly. I headed out to Ankeny the day before the inspection, got to the hangar around five, and then was there until shortly after midnight cleaning and finishing my last minute tasks.

The day of the inspection arrived and it was getting somewhat exciting. I met the DAR at the FBO and had a surprise addition from the local FAA office so the FAA could do a routine supervising of the DAR for their purposes. Both of the guys were great and very laid back. We headed out to the hangar to start the inspection. Once at the hangar they started about their business. I ended up with about 10 items to fix on the plane, but they were all minor which was the best part. A few examples were adding On-Off labels to some switches and fixing some marginal safety wire. The inspection took about an hour and then we headed to the FSDO to complete the paperwork. We spent another hour doing the paperwork and talking through some common build errors, first flight mistakes, and a few more questions about my plane specifically. At the end of it I ended up with some fancy documents proving I now had an airplane and we parted ways.

I went back to the hangar to work on my list of discrepancies and accomplished the moajority of them that afternoon. I was pretty wiped out, so I headed back to Iowa City in the evening to get ready to go back to real work the next day.

We weren’t sure what the weekend was going to hold for weather, so we were cautious about committing to any flight times. Friday night it seeemed like the following morning was going to work out great. We made the call and headed out to Ankeny Saturday morning planning to do some thorough preflight inspections and if we felt good, perform the first flight.

We ended up needing to re-pitch the propeller to meet guidelines set by my engine manufacturer, Rotax, so that delayed the flight decision for a little while. After we were satisfied everything looked good, the weather drastically improved and I figured that if the flight was going to happen, there wasn;t a better time for it.

So late morning on Saturday the 23rd of May 2019, I strapped myself into my little RANS S-20 and started her up. Everything was looking good and the temps were coming up to normal ranges. I taxied out to the runway to do a runup and get ready to takeoff. The runup was smooth and I taxied out onto the runway and lined up on the centerline. I think I sat there for about 45 seconds trying to hype myself up before pushing the throttle to the firewall and get the show going. With just myself in the plane it felt like I spent only 10 seconds on the ground before I was climbing my way above Ankeny. The climb rate was very impressive to the planes I usually fly. I was seeing over 1000 feet per minute and I wasn’t really trying to climb to hard.

I climbed to about 2500 feet which was as high as the clouds would allow and started orbiting. I talked back to a fellow builder on the ground about some elevated oil and coolant temps which led to me making the call to go ahead and land.

I hadn’t developed complete trust in my airspeed indicator after flying for only 30 minutes, but it seemed to have me in the ballpark and I knew the winds, so I could get pretty close with GPS. The airpseed seemed quite accurate when I was slower, but I decided to fly a bit fast and tht was easily doable in the RANS and still have plenty of runway margin. I can get stopped very short, so the 5,000 foot runway was plenty enough for me to screw up and float a ways.

I came in about 50 knots and zero flaps. The stall speed in the clean configuration is 33 knots, so I had a ton of margin. I wasn’t sure about the sight picture on landing, but the extra speed allowed me to slowly find the runway after I rounded out at the bottom of the approach. I made a fairly decent three point landing, taxied back to the hangar (pretty proud and happy), and met Maria and a great friend that has assisted me in the build process.

The first flight was an amazing experience after building the plane for 4 years. It couldn’t have been been possible without the help of some great friends and of course Maria. She put up with a ton of nonsense and helped in the construction a lot when she could. This whole project really developed a lot of skills that I never would have gained doing any other project. It also has a sort of weird camaraderie with other people who subject themselves to this insane lifestyle.

My plan is to continue to post updates to this website as I fly the airplane. As I publish this post, I am currently at 22 hours out of 40 in the flight test period. It has been an incredibly honest airplane with no major issues. I have augmented the oil cooling system and I will detail that addition in a future post.

(40 h and done 😎)