The long way to get the AIRWORTHINESS CERTIFICATE
When one starts building, the dream to get to the point when the airplane can fly, seems sometimes impossible, but one day it is suddendly there. Long years of effort and work. Long days rivetting, cutting, bending and painting. Day after day soldering each cable of the PANEL.
When we arrived here to Florida, we said: we just need three months and we have finished the panel and installed the engine. We are almost ready. Six months ago we said again: we are almost ready. Today, after eleven months we are ready, we can fly, but we still say: we are almost ready.
We will find still some bugs, but after all our test fights, can we then say we are ready?
No. Now we know: you are never ready......
Three weeks before the DAR came, our plane still looked like this. One week before his arrival, we made the weight and balance . That day we had the help from Victor Babyak ( the guru RVator) and also EAA technical counselor and from Steve (engine expert), who provided us with his precise scales. Vic inspected our aircraft from top to bottom and gave us this report.
We still were waiting for throttle and mixer cables, so we could not start the engine to test the brakes, nevertheless we managed it somehow. We used Gary´s truck and he pulled us with the rope through the hangar: our brakes were tested. After all this time, our little plane saw the first sunshine of his life, and we made this nice picture of us three.
December 6th 2008. The big day. 8 o´clock in the morning the DAR is here and after all the paperwork was done, we were handed over the AIRWORTHINESS CERTIFICATE.
In the late afternoon we went to a party to see the colourful ships in the harbour. Now we can start thinking about our first flight, but.... some small bugs are still there, and Jim helps us getting them out.
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