N454BW Flies! Continental IO-360

[Flygirl1]

Whee and Dad, congrats!!!! You’ll remember this day just like your first solo! Enjoy the ride, it’s what you guys worked so hard for!! D-n-D

[AKKen07]

Awesome!!!

[Nev]

Great news ! Nice work Whee.

[rodsmith]

Terrific Whee. Can't wait to hear more on performance, general impression, comparisons with the 180HP Bearhawk you used to fly.

[JimParker256]

And can you share with us the cause (and solution to) of the oil leak? Glad you got it resolved quickly, and can't wait to hear more PIREPs and see more flying videos!

[whee]

Hopefully soon I’ll be able to fly it enough to share my impressions. Who would have though it would be so difficult to find time to fly the thing😐

Jim, the oil leak was self induced. I failed to torque the nuts on the tach drive that mounts on the back of engine and is sorta part of the oil pump. Properly torquing those nuts magically fixed the leak. Now I lay awake wondering what else I didn’t properly fasten🤔

[davzLSA]

Congrats Whee, the great reward for a lot of work sweat blood and im sure tears at times. Great job man!!!

[grog]

Nice job! Motivation for those of us on the 'leading edge' of our project...

Eric

[Peter Bishton]

Well done Whee
A fantastic result for someone who contributes eagerly to the forum and has done for a long time.
Awesome news.
Peter B

[whee]

Thanks again everyone.

Screen shot from my dad’s flight last night.

[kestrel]

Congratulations Whee! ...but that picture shows an EFIS. I swear I remember you saying steam gages only! No electronic gizmo's!

[whee]

Congratulations Whee! ...but that picture shows an EFIS. I swear I remember you saying steam gages only! No electronic gizmo's!

HAHA! I did say that and here I don't have a single steam gauge. The EFIS is pretty cool and very capable but I am really missing the classic gauges,

I flew for an hour today; that marks 5 hrs so it's time to change the oil and take a close look at everything. We have a light wing because a flap is drooping just a little. I'm hoping there is enough adjustment in the pushrod to suck the flap up a little.

We have several fairings that aren't installed so the plane is kinda dirty. At max cruise power, WOT and 2600rpm, we are seeing 140mph TAS. I think that is pretty good and hopefully we'll see a bit more speed once we add the missing fairings.

[svyolo]

Don't worry, you will be a glass cripple soon enough.

[JimParker256]

He can’t see your comment...

[whee]

We adjusted the flap and it helped but the left wing is still a little light, or maybe now the right wing is heavy. I’ll make another adjustment tomorrow.

My dad flew for an hour this morning and I flew for an hour this afternoon. I thought it would be fun to deliver the sheetrock jack used to hang the wings back father-in-law using the airplane. Was kinda cool to actually have a big enough airplane to do something like that.

Upon returning home the winds were 240 12G21 which is a pretty typical afternoon in east Idaho. Landed runway 17. Didn’t figure I’d be practicing x-winds so early on while still shaking the rust off my pilot skills. The BH handles x-winds so well with its powerful rudder that IMO it’s only limited by pilot ability.

[whee]

[rodsmith]

Video not coming through, at least for me.