Aero Expo Bad Weather

Aero Expo, Made it

Aero Expo, Road Taxi

Aero Expo Build Up

Aero Expo Interview

Aero Expo, Hit the Road

Aero Expo, Flying Home

Flying with my Dad

Wheel Shimmy

Flying with my son

Durability Flight

Me and my dad toasting at finishing the RV-7 now known as PH-MNX.
Since I only have a little over 80 hours ‘under my belt’ and never landed an RV-7, I decided to take a ‘safety pilot’. Maarten is a retired Dutch Airforce pilot, who flew F104 (Starfighter) and has a lot of hours on his RV-7 (PH-PLP). He’s a great guy and I’m really grateful he joins me on the maiden flight of my RV.

We selected a nice winter day with almost no cross-wind and the runup and take-off went perfect.

During the climb to circuit altitude I already found the first issue. The plane has a left-leaning tendency, it’s minor, but still something I have to fix.
Other issues are a failing elevator trim (the damned thing worked every time I tried it the last 3 months). Also I couldn’t find the ‘efficient’ power setting with the combination of ULPower 520iSA and the Airmaster prop.

The approach on final was a little too low, but the landing went very nice (again no cross wind component). Maarten didn’t have to intervene. During the second flight we found the stall speed of 49kts clean and 45kts full flaps. Also Maarten showed be how to properly execute a barrel roll and we checked the speed up to 188kts. Next time we’ll need to approach the Vne (200kts).

Second landing was better, but I had issues keeping it center (veered to the left). Nothing major, but enough to get a slap on the wrist from Maarten.
Taxiing back to the hangar to remove the top cowl and check the engine.

Two words: RV Grin.

Video

Addition

Apparently a spotter (Bart Hoekstra) was alert and made this beautiful photo of my landing.

“René was involved in an accident with formation flying in historic Cub’s. Unfortunately his plane sustained severe damage and he was unable to make an emergency landing or eject and did not survive the crash.”

Down-hearted I left work and while driving home I remembered my last flight together with René from Rotterdam (EHRD) to Seppe (EHSE) in his beautiful RV-7 (PH-VII). It was raining that day and René gave me the opportunity to experience the RV-7 in general and specifically the view from the Tip-Up canopy.

Just a week ago I asked René for some advise on Flap attachment and as usual he replied with some advise on how he solved the issue. I will dearly miss him, but in my mind I’ll remember him as I flew with him.

Thanks René for all the work for NVAV, great advise on aircraft building and being their for me.

Also this was my first flight ever in an Van’s RV-7, so I was super exited that René was so kind to take me for a spin. As soon as we started from runway 24, I knew I made an excellent choice in the plane I’m building. The RV-7 is truly a magnificent piece of hardware. Too bad it will take me another 4 years to finish it, however me motivation to build it has doubled (if that is possible).

The flight takes less than 20 minutes on RV-7 cruise-speed (takes 45 minutes by car if there’s no traffic), that’s how fast it is. René was so kind to let me handle the RV-7 in between, to get a feel of the characteristics. Really a great plane!

A nice view over Rotterdam (even with a light drizzle).
Talking about the weather it sucked, however my goal was to check the view from the tipup. And I must say fair and square: “The View is Great”.
In Seppe we visited the plane museum and joined the Seppe flight club drink, where we met fellow RV builders Victor Kruis (PH-OBO) and Rens Verhoeven (PH-RVN, my build mentor from the NVAV).

We left when it was still raining a little, so to prevent pouring water in the panel, we cleaned the tipup canopy before opening it. Some water must have come in, because as soon as we started the engine there was water dripping beneath it.
We took of from Seppe from runway 25 and headed back to Rotterdam.
While approaching the CTR (controlled traffic region) of Rotterdam René tried to contact Rotterdam tower and….
No luck, the radio failed transmitting, it did receive perfectly. Having tried contacting Rotterdam tower for several minutes and circling the CTR, given the commercial traffic we decided to head back to Seppe before sunset and land there (uncontrolled and very quite airfield).

This was the last push for me to know for certain that I will build a slider canopy on my RV-7. Although I probably won’t fly much in this weather, I experienced the problems with water in the instruments. I felt really sorry for René, but he was exceptionally relaxed about it.
Fortunately friends of him (also pilot and living near Breda) would visit him tonight, so we could share a ride in their car back to Rotterdam.

Great adventure and a great lesson in what to do if hardware fails. René is an excellent pilot, he kept his head together and took the right decision not to enter a busy airport without a radio, but take the “inconvenient” route.

Thanks again René, I really enjoyed the flight and gained a ton of experience.