My brother and I came out to the airport early and got final assembly taken care of. We bolted on the elevators and rudder, torqued and adjusted the ailerons and hooked up the flaps. My buddy Greg came down and we got most of the safety wire on the propeller done. We did a very thorough pre-flight and then pulled the plane out for first engine start.
We tied the plane off to my car and chocked the wheels. Greg and his son Nicholas were on handheld radios so I could be in contact with them.
We spent a little time trying to diagnose a problem with the Andair fuel pump, but it looks like it’s not working correctly. I’ll have to call Andair tonight to see what they want to do about this.
We decided to go ahead and try the first engine start with just the engine-driven fuel pump. We pre-oiled the engine by pulling the plugs and spinning the starter until we got oil pressure and fuel pressure. Unfortunately, that killed the battery, so we had to hook it up to jumper cables for the final start. After reinstalling the lower plugs, it fired up pretty quickly. Here’s a video of the first engine run.
Everything about the start went beautifully. The engine ran perfectly and we were able to verify all engine controls are working correctly, both ignitions are working correctly, all pressure and temperature senders are working correctly. There is one small oil drip from the cap on the oil cooler, but other than that, everything is tight and there were no problems.
