I really didnt think many people read this blog... but I've had a number of people say 'where is the update? did you fly yet?'. Yes, I did.
It was a mad dash to get everything ready. Had to get my insurance checkout, test all the little things that were keeping me up at night, find a decent weather window, align with my co-pilots schedule, and the winds had to be favourable. All of that lined up on March 27, 2026,.
All in all it went extremely well. The pilot and airplane are reusable!
I tested everything, multiple times. The rigging was checked over and over. Every snag I knew about was fixed. Had many sets of eyes on anything that was questionable.
We briefed. Scott reviewed everything that was different about GVSW. We planned the flight in detail. Talked about what we would do if X happened.
Normal start up. Normal run up. We taxied to the end of the runway and applied power. She tracked straight down the runway and leapt into the air. Climbed to 1500' and orbited the airport.
We had some COM issues. First the intercom was staticy. I figured out why... imbalance between the headset gain and intercom gain. Easy fix. When troubleshooting this I accidentally isolated scott. That was on me as I did not fully understand how the isolation feature worked (now I do).
At about 26 minutes into the flight the header tank low warning went off, so we headed back to the airport and landed uneventfully, except my landing was not optimal.
All the engine temps were good. No alarms other than the header low warning. Intercooler worked well... temp into the engine was max 42 degrees during the climb, and 37 degrees in a high cruise condition (13 gph).
Now onto figuring out why the header low warning alarm went off.
All in all was a great day.
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