Results are in!

Well, sorry about the last post, I was trying to upload some video, but it wasn't working. I guess I just forgot to remove the post. Anyway, thanks for the comment, Scott; however, that's not the way it worked out.


SCORE:

N827DG - 1

NATE - 0



The airplane whipped my tail. And it performed fantastically while doing so.



The test flight began with somewhat of a hiccup. Denny Dyvig (AIM AIR General Manager) ended up being the test pilot, and he and I were all strapped in a ready to go. He decided to call tower before we started the plane. The controller told us we needed to file a flight plan, even though we were just going on a maintenance test flight in the local area. Sigh. So we sat there and talked about a few things while a dispatch guy zoomed down to the tower with our information. After about 10 minutes, we got the call and started the airplane, ready to taxi for departure.

The take off was ops normal (except for a directional gyro failure), yet thrilling as we roared skyward in our newly overhauled 206. We turned out over Wilson Airport and headed for the Ngong Hills and the Rift Valley beyond.

The first flight was basically just an engine break-in flight. Fly the first hour at 75% power and the second hour alternating between 75% and 65% power settings. We headed toward the town of Magadi to do our flight, as it has a landing strip that could be used if needed. Magadi is famous for its lakes, where they harvest the world's largest supply of soda. We flew long ovals around the lake for 2 hours. Much of it was uneventful as I scribbled numbers down, keeping track of the engine gauges while Denny and I made small talk. However, 75 minutes into the flight, the plane decided that it would hit a very hard patch of turbulence and make its mechanic barf all over the place. Yeah, you heard that right. For most of the flight, there was very bad turbulence, and while Denny is used to it as a pilot, I am not used to it, seeing that most of my time is spent on the ground. At 75 minutes into the flight, I just lost it all. Luckily, I hadn't had much to eat that morning, so it wasn't too much to clean up afterwards. I apologized over and over to Denny and he did so to me, too. We laughed about it afterwards, too, because if you can't laugh at yourself for doing it, then what can you do? Oh, well... Candace says that it just goes to show that I'm meant to be on the ground and not in the air.

The rest of the flight went well and we headed back to Wilson Airport after our designated two hours of flight. We landed with a crowd from AIM AIR watching and taxied up to the hangar and shut down, ops normal. Success!!

I have some pictures from the flight of Magadi, the Rift Valley, and the Ngong Hills, as wells as a video of us coming in on 7DGs first landing in Kenya. Hopefully I can get some of those uploaded. I also have a video of some of the startup, taxi, and takeoff, courtesy of a fellow mechanic.

All in all, things are looking very positive. The only major squawks we had was the directional gyro failure and an engine parameter where we did not get max RPM, both of which should be relatively easy fixes. We also have to do a few more test flights to do flight manuevers and stall horn tests. Yikes...not sure if I'll be on those. The plane already beat me once...maybe its time for me to win one. :)

Thanks for all the hard work on the airplane by so many people here at the AIM AIR hangar. The guys really have done a great job. It has been fun to able to oversee such a project that will enable AIM AIR to have another plane to serve missionaries here in East Africa.

AIM AIR...serving those who serve.