David Edgemon - RV-9A at the airport.
August 19, 2004: David hosted this month's TVRVBG
meeting at his hangar at the airport. These guys have been doing this monthly get
together for quite some time, but this is the first for David's hangar since there is now
something to see. I got there first before all the guests to get these pix before
the crowd gathered.
He has not hooked up the flap motor links yet, and he is still working on the
firewall forward connections to the engine. When the others arrived, I found myself
doing the same stuff I did at OSH, helping those who are building "behind me" on
the ways that Van's puts this thing together. I had taken my laptop computer and it
came in handy when the first question was about David's home paint shop. As you know
from looking at my web pages, I had the pictures to show when asked.
October 10, 2004:
David flew his RV-9A on this Sunday. I did not get the photos until Monday the 11th
when I got to my hotel room in the Miami area. I talked with him later that day and
he was pumped up to say the least. He told me that he had is 160 HP, 0-320 engine
running at 2300 RPM and 23 inches of manifold pressure on the climb out and was indicating
90 knots and 1900 feet per minute climb rate. The flight lasted about 30 minutes
which was the plan and he only complained about the left wing being a little heavy.
He says he will have the flap linkages tweaked to cure the problem before next weekend
when he expects to get in more flight time, weather permitting. His wife asked him
to wait until she arrived at the airport before he took off. Here is her "photo
of the take-off" and others.
It seems that David's airplane was just too fast for his wife to catch with the
camera. She discovered the same thing I did about my digital camera when I was
taking pictures of traffic on an interstate highway. There is a definite time delay
from when you push that button and the time the camera actually captures the image.
Here he comes back to the hangar after the first 30-minute test flight.
If you have seen the previous pages on David's airplane, you know that he painted it
himself. I thought that he had already painted the spinner, but we can see that it
is still bare. He left the wheel pants and gear-leg fairings off for this flight and
expects to get another 15 knots of top speed when they are installed.
And here is what we RV builders live for -- THE RV GRIN!! For David, this
day has been coming for 2 years and 7 months since he began construction on his RV-9A.
Meanwhile, I keep working to get mine ready for 2005!
