First flight, 20/6/2010.
Sportsman TD, VH-ZIF, IO 390, Hartzell 74 inch blended airfoil.
Proud owner and test pilot, Ian Orrman (sportsman.aust@gmail.com)
Just imagine a grin from ear to ear!
Friday 18/6/2010 – successfully completed C of A inspection allowing Phase 1 test flying.
Saturday 19/6/2010 – Went for a 1 hour refresher flight in Sportsman VH – PNN with Peter Nelson at Serpentine and Murrayfield airfields. 8 landings later we stopped. Peter thought I did not need any more time. Very generous of him. It gave me the currency to feel really comfortable to proceed with my own test flight. I went back to Jandakot and completed final ground runs and taxing, confirmed operation of relevant systems and rehearsed test flight sequence.
Sunday 20/6/2010 – first test flight successful, followed by an additional cruise flight.
Started early at Jandakot airport, Perth Western Australia – all on my own, no spectators, no distractions at 6:45 am.
7:30 am – started up and completed a ground run. The Lycoming IO390 was itching to go, so was I.
7:45 am – lined up on 06L, almost nil wind, CAVOK, 6 deg C.
She climbed beautifully to 1500 feet. Carried out 15 minutes of rectangular orbits over the airfield until 8:00 am. Checked control responses, let the engine temps and pressures settle down (or was that my temperature and pressure?!!)
8:00 am the tower opened, and with it the opportunity to complete some touch and goes (there is a curfew preventing circuits before 8 am on Sunday mornings). I had the circuit and the runway to myself for 40 minutes. All circuits were completed well within gliding distance of the field. In close and tight. The flight practice I completed on Saturday (yesterday) with Peter Nelson in Sportsman VH – PNN paid off. All the conversion training completed with Alan Negrin almost 18 months ago came back fresh and clear to my feet, hands and mind.
The result? Six smooth wheel on landings.
I stopped and had a break for a while. Took the cowl off and looked for anything out of place. All was looking good. Put her back together, filled her full of fuel and off I went south.
10:30 am – took off YPJT 06L, turned left for Yangebup Lake and climbed to 7500 feet for Bunbury. The sky was clear and blue, CAVOK and virtually nil wind. Arrived overhead Bunbury at 11:00 am, 7500 feet looking out over the Indian Ocean with the white sandy line stretching North to South below me. Completed a sequence of stalls, no flaps, power off, trickle of power on. First stage flap, no power, trickle of power. Second stage flap, no power, trickle of power. All stalls were great. No dropped wing, just a straight gentle mushing stall.
Turned around and headed north back to YPJT (Jandakot). Kept the power at around 70 to 75 % on the way back. CHTs were all about 180 to 190 C depending on power and mixture applied. No 3 cylinder runs +10 C hotter than the other 3.
11:25 am – decended to 1500 feet and reported at BOATSHED for YPJT.
On joining base for a visual approach, completed my checks and switched on the Fuel Boost pump. This coincided with a terrible chattering noise. Turned the Fuel Boost off, it did not stop, turned the Boost Pump back on. I lifted one ear cup to better identify the direction the noise was coming from. It was a chattering sound that stopped shortly after. Set myself up on final, all checks complete and it was looking good with a 5 knot right cross wind.
11:30 am – executed a beautiful three point landing (my wife’s words, not mine, though I did feel that way about it too Smile .
Looked over her (my Sportsman!) after letting my wife and children though the gate. I found that the fuselage to strut fairing on the right hand side had popped the rear portion over the forward part of the fairing. This was the source of the chattering. As I had decended and turned onto base leg, there must have been enough turbulent air flow on the right side to pop the forward and aft part of the fairing. I have solved this with some tape to firmly pull the forward and aft parts of the fairing together so that it cannot happen again. Glad it was so easy to solve.
After showing my children over her, I took them all for a taxi from the southern apron to the northern apron and back again (as I cannot take any passengers in the 25 hour flight test phase). This kept my 2 very excited children (10 and 7) very happy.
I was planning another 1 hour flight after I had eaten lunch, however the wind picked up with cross wind gusts to 15 knots. So I decided to call it a very, very successful day. I will follow up in the next couple of days with some photos.
A bit over 2 hours flying on my first day. 23 hours flying to go and I can take my family for a fly and really start enjoying the Sportsman flying experience.
Thank you to all contributors to this forum. It has been a great source of information and inspiration for the last 6 months while I have been preparing my Sportsman for this special day.
_________________
Regards
Ian Orrman
Perth, Australia
Sportsman No 7284, VH- ZIF
Time: + 8 hours UTC
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June 23,2010
I thought I could add some details on the preparation I did before my first test flight. The test flying was something I wanted to do myself. However I also wanted to be very well prepared for any serious in flight mechanical failure and ensure there were no pilot induced problems.
My Aim: to successfully and safely test fly my Sportsman IO 390, TD.
My skills and experience: I have a long history of flying, from the age of 6 as a young child with both of my parents as private pilots, mostly flying vintage aircraft. Much of my flying ethos has been ingrained by them at that very young age, however I am a fairly low time pilot – just over 300 hours. I have about 100 hours of this in Tiger Moths, flying at a small country airfield, where I can typically get in 500 foot close in circuits. So one hours circuits in a Tiger gets me about 3 times the landing practice I would get at a larger airfield. I also had an intense 3 years of hang gliding in my early 20′s that improved my flying skills immeasurably.
Recent preparation:
Having only flown just enough to maintain minimum currency in the last 15 years (money and time limitations), I set about getting myself up to speed a little over 2 years ago. Firstly I was off to the local Aero Club in Perth (RACWA – Royal Aero Club of Western Australia). I started with C172′s, moved onto C172 RG (retractable, and variable pitch) to get the next endorsements, then onto C182′s. I cannot praise RACWA enough for their professional approach in all areas I have been involved with the club.
The next stage was to get type experience and instruction. This is not available in Australia, simply because there are so few Sportsman. When I planned my TWTT (Two Week To Taxi) program at Glasair, I specifically wanted to ensure I gained significant training time in a Sportsman with the same set up as mine.
Harry deLong put me in contact with Alan Negrin. While in Washington State, I did 12 hours conversion training with Alan. A little more on this later. I can say now that this was the most valuable part of the training I carried out.
On returning home, I continued with some more training and got an aerobatic endorsement in a C152 and converted this over to the DHC-1 Chipmunk. I wanted this specifically to improve my skills in recovery from unusual attitudes (I do wish the Sportsman was aerobatic now).
In the immediate weeks before the test flight, I spent 4 hours with an instructor in the Chipmunk doing glide approach landings, engine failure on take off etc etc. Every combination you could think of in the circuit till it was all automatic. Why the Chipmunk you ask? Well a Sportsman would have been better, though none was available for that type of training here. The Chippy has the same speed on final approach and over the fence as the Sportsman and its 3 point attitude is very close to the Sportsman’s.
My final flying preparation was completing a little more than an hour in another Sportsman the day before I test flew. On getting into my friends Sportsman, once the concern of flying someone else’s treasured aircraft was overcome (thank you Peter), I found that all the training I did with Alan started flowing back very quickly. This was proven when I got back on the ground and Peter Nelson said something to the words “You can do another hour with me if you want, but I don’t think you will get anything more out of it”. This was said in the positive sense!!! 
I looked at all of this preparation the same as preparing my Sportsman mechanically. I had checked every nut, bolt and system in the Sportsman. All critical systems had been reviewed with my Technical Counsellor. I wanted to be as well prepared myself for test flying as my aircraft was.
Here comes the glitch: Two weeks before my test flight, I attended a Maintenance Training course run by the SAAA (Sport Aircraft Association of Australia). At this course, the leaders implored all builders to under no circumstance, test fly their aircraft for the first time. They said that the fatal accident rate is so high in that first hour or two of flying a new Amateur Built Sport Aircraft. This really made me sit back and reconsider my plans. After a couple of days I called one of the course leaders, explained my concerns, then described in detail my test flight preparation. His conclusion was that I had made the effort to reduce the risk factors to an acceptable level.
The final issue I thought through was the emotional side. At the Maintenance course, the course presenters said you can be so overcome by emotion on the first flight (you have spent a long time building this treasured machine), that you may be incapable of making sensible safe decisions in the event of a problem.
So I thought through how to reduce this risk factor to as low as possible.
1. I went and talked to the tower a few days before and asked the best time to fly (I fly at the busiest GA airport in Australia). I wanted no one else in the circuit to worry about.
2. I decided that I would only fly in perfect conditions. Nil wind or less than 5 knots, not on the day I got my CofA (Certificate of Airworthiness). If conditions were not right, I would wait another day.
3. I did not want a large group there to distract or pressure me to fly when something was not right. So I actually did it without any spectators. I went to the airport on my own.
4. The afternoon before I planned to test fly, I went to the hangar, prepared everything and sat in the cockpit and repeated all the checks and drills for my planned test flight.
Once I did fly, all the preparation paid off. I got into the air with a safe take off. Got up to 1500 feet in close to the field. Leveled out and orbited for about 15 minutes. During this time I checked control movement, feel, etc. Before doing my first landing, I carried out a dummy approach and aborted at 200 feet, then did a repeat of the same, this time almost touching down then going round. The first two were intentional and planned to ensure I did all my checks and everything felt right.
After that I completed 5 very smooth wheel on landings. On my next flight I completed a text book 3 point landing. The thing that pleased and impressed me the most was the training with Alan Negrin had all come back so well, despite a fairly large gap between the training and test flying (a little over 18 months).
So after all that painstaking hard work to build your aircraft, put in as much thought into preparing yourself to do the best you can with your test flying too. Prepare for test flying based on your skills, experience and knowledge. And take the time to talk to other pilots you respect and can use as a sounding board to work out what is best for you.
Maybe using an experienced test pilot for the first flight is the best thing for you (your family) and your aircraft.
I hope the description of my test flying experience helps others in their preparation leading up to that important day.
_________________
Regards
Ian Orrman
sportsman.aust@gmail.com
Perth, Australia
Sportsman No 7284, VH- ZIF
Time: + 8 hours UTC
