Print
Hits: 3499

Jerry Esquenazi made the first flight in his RV-8 today. Jerry started building about the same time I did. We've communicated by e-mail and telephone a whole bunch of times, and I've met him at Oshkosh a few times. It is great to learn that he finally got flying.

Here is the message he posted on the Yahoo RV-8 Group:

Hey Guys,I finally had my first flight today after 9 years 7 months! It was awesome! The weather was good, a high ceiling, calm winds, and about 45 deg F. I had done a couple of taxi tests in the days past. Today I just taxied out, did my run-up and let her rip! During the first couple of seconds I had some propeller surging, but by the time I got around to making the decision to abort, the surging was gone and I was airborne! I climbed to 5500' circling over the airport. Initial numbers looked pretty good. 177 mph IAS at 24" and 2450 RPM 7 deg C OAT, without wheel pants and intersection fairings. GPS seemed to correlate: 150 kts upwind and 178 kts downwind. CHTs were all about 325 except #4 which was 285 with the mixture rich. I forgot to lean it out the first 15 mins of flight! Oil temp was 182 during the climb. I checked it out through the entire speed range and performed some stalls. Flaps up stalled at 60 mph indicated and flaps down about 56 mph. I had a slightly heavy right ring requiring a couple of bars of left roll trim. The ball was centered favoring the left line. I had offset the vertical stab about 5/32" during building, so I guess it worked! Finally I practiced some landing approaches and it was time to land. Not a greaser, but respectable. I was airborne about 45 min. The only squawk is my G-meter. I must have forgotten to unlock it after I put it in the panel. It was a blast! I wanted to go up again in the afternoon, but frankly I was spent. Tomorrow will be a prettier day. My wife was busy with the video camera and she was also manning our 3 year old son, so I don't have any still pictures of the flight itself but here are some ground pics with the famous RV grin. I'll see if I can post the video on YouTube . The runway is about 6500' long, so during the actual takeoff and landing I was kind of far from the camera. We'll see if we can get some better pictures and footage next flight. Thanks for everyone's help. I couldn't have done it without the help of my online friends, Kevin Horton, the late Phil Arter, Danny King, Bill Vondane, Brian Denk, Mark Navratil, and many many more. You guys are the best!

Jerry Esquenazi
N84JE Flying!!!!