KRnetHeads, I've already made a lot of friends out at MDQ. Chris, the A&P that held the flashlight for me last night while we installed the wings, dropped by every half hour or so to see if I needed a hand, and a new guy came by and pretty much made a day of it, helping me remove the wings again so I could route the cables around the pullies at the roots. I'd forgotten to do that last night in all the excitement. They not only bought me a BBQ lunch, but "flew" to get it and insisted that I stay and keep rigging the controls so I could taxi test before quitting time. They bought lunch because I was the "entertainment" for the day. Everybody there loves the Corvair, based on sound alone, and nobody's actually seen it yet! There's a picture that my 10 year old daughter took at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/05051642m.jpg .
I need a little advice here. I got the controls rigged and did about 10 runs down the runway today, and fortunately only almost lost it once. I think I had one wheel off the runway completely (it's "only" 100' wide). The last two runs I just gave it a good bit of throttle and got the tail up immediately, and then backed it down to slightly above idle to keep it up 3/4 of the way down. Towards the end I'd slow it down enough to let the tail drop, and at that point it got real interesting, but I maintained control. My Flight Advisor guy said he wouldn't do high speed tests at all...his theory being that it's way too dangerious to go through that transition period repeatedly, when I could be flying it for an hour between each of these flirts with disaster. But I definitely got better as the day went on. The thing taxis great. At one point the tailwheel quit working, so steering became a real problem. I parked it and took a look back in the fuselage and found the cable lying loose on the floor, with no evidence of there ever having been a nut on the connection, much less a cotter pin. The other side had no cotter pin either, so I remedied that and went back to the runway for more. At one point Chris and Mike appeared with scissors saying "4:19 PM, first flight...let's have that T-shirt". I don't know that I was flying, but I wouldn't be surprised. About two more days of this and I might start thinking "if I've survived this many runs, I could probably take off and land it". Anyway, what do y'all KR taildragger pilots think I should be doing to prepare myself for first flight? Is tail up all the way down the thing to do, or maybe up and down and up and down would be better... Thanks, Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see homebuilt airplane at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
