REFLECTOR: 1st Flight of N173DK

[Dennis King]

I made the 1st flight of my 173RG Elite (IO360 C1E6/MT hydraulic cs prop) this morning, 16 years after receiving the kit (stuff happens).  The flight went very well, and I even made a pretty good landing (thanks to John Abraham's exellent training and patience in Florida a couple of weeks ago...sorry for putting you through so many bad landings John).  I made the flight at my home field in Columbus Indiana (KBAK).  During my intial climb-out, I thought I had a very heavy right wing, but then I realized for some reason I was holding a lot of pressure on the right rudder pedal.  When I released pressure on the rudder pedal, I found out the Roll trim was perfect!  I think I was holding right rudder out of habit because my old Kitfox IV needed that during climb-out.  When I got up to smooth air and leveled out, the plane flew hands-off with the ball in the center.  I was in the air a little over a half-hour and stayed within gliding distance of the airport, but the engine ran well.  I kept the gear down on this 1st flight and never went much faster than 100 knots IAS.  I had previously verified that my IAS is very close to the GPS speed during a 60 mph fast taxi down the runway on a calm day.  I made the flight without the main gear doors in case I accidentally went too fast (at John's suggestion).  The only issues were a fairly high oil temperature and brake fade after landing.  As expected I didn't do a very good job looking at temperatures during flight, but luckily I can look at peak values after landing with my engine monitor system.  The CHT's weren't too bad, but the oil temp hit a peak value of 230 degF at some point during the flight.  I'm not comfortable with that because the ambient air temp wa s only about 70 deg at the time of my flight, and I only have 20 more degrees to the 250 deg limit.  I just have the one oil cooler in the nose.  Based on what I've read here, I may have to look at adding a second cooler.  My engine is zero time after rebuild, and I've read here that that can make CHT's high for awhile, and I assume this applies to oil temperature as well.   



I have the old MATCO brakes and I've seen a lot of dialogue about them here also.  When I landed I may have gotten on the brakes a little harder than I thought to make the mid-field turnoff from the runway (I was using the shorter 5000 feet runway at KBAK).  While taxiing back to the hangar, I barely had enough brakes for steering.  On the way out to the runway before takeoff, they worked a lot better.  After shutdown I got out and touched the disks and they were pretty hot, but at least there was no smoke or smell .  I've previously made sure the pedals aren't hitting the canard bulkhead and are not being limited by rudder travel.  I guess I'll be looking at upgrading the brakes and/or learning to not work them so hard after landing.  I didn't think I braked that hard, but when I think about it the midfield turn off is  about 2500 feet from the threshold, and I touched down some distance past the numbers, so it was a pretty short rollout.  But I had about a 9 knot headwind, so it didn't feel like I was braking hard. 



Overall it was a very nice 1st flight and after landing I had that "high" that I remember from my 1st Kitfox flight several years ago that is better than any drug could ever provide.  I strongly recommend the factory training to anybody about to make their 1st flight, especially if you are a low time pilot like me.  A friend shot some video, but he wasn't used to my camera so some of it is pretty shaky.  I will cut and paste the best parts to make a watchable video and post it to YouTube later. 



Dennis King
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