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It's also nonsense. And unlike fantasies about winning the Indy 500,
climbing Mount Everest, winning the Presidency, or scoring with Kim
Basinger, this is one fantasy that could kill you because you might
actually attempt it. Homebuilders seem driven to do their own first
flights, as if their manhood were at stake. Some see it in terms of a
christening or wedding night. They built the airplane, and of course
they are going to fly it!
But let's take a look at this decision in a coldly rational way by
listing the major points involved.
1. The aircraft has been built by an amateur who has never built an
airplane before. Let's face it, putting aside all the personal pride
you may have in your work, you've never actually built an airplane before.
The machine is most certainly not something that has come out of a series
of accurate, proven production jigs and fixtures.
2. Most homebuilders don't do a lot of flying while they are
building the airplane, in fact, many stop completely. Very few
builders, at the time of the first flight, are current to the point that
normal flying is instinctive, much less current enough to deal with
serious problems on a first flight of a new, unproven airplane.
3. The aircraft, even if properly built, will have flight
characteristics which will surprise you if you are not completely checked
out in that type. All homebuilts aircraft have some exceptional flight
characteristics. Many of the best ones simply have responsive controls,
but others have high landing speeds or require unusual landing techniques.
We all know that the Falco is a great classic airplane with legendary
handling, but it is also not an airplane that a Cherokee/172/Mooney
pilot should just get in and go fly, much less flight-test. It takes quite
a bit of getting-used-to before you can comfortably land the plane.
The Glasair III is a very high-performance machine that requires an
unusual landing technique. Frank Strickler once told me, "I have now
test-flown three Glasair III's on the first flight, and I'm never going to
get my hieney in one of those machines again." This is a former Air
Force instructor who flies SF.260s and numerous warbirds in his time off
from his regular job of flying airliners. If this jet-jockey and P-51
pilot is uncomfortable with a popular kitplane, how is the average
homebuilder with very few current hours going to fare in the machine?
Or take the Kitfox. Here is a slow-moving, conservative design that
everyone likes and rightly so. The engine is on the front, the tail is on
the right end, and it lands and takes off in no space at all. But the
Kitfox has distinctly different handling characteristics, so much so that
one experienced Kitfox pilot has written a short book about flying the
airplane. When you flare the Kitfox, it is so light that it lacks the
inertia to keep flying, so it's quite easy to flare and drop it in hard.
Fully 25% of the Kitfoxes in England have been totalled -- thankfully
without any fatalities due to the slow flying speed of the plane.
Don't get me wrong, I really like the Kitfox and in particular I
think that Phil Reed, who owns the company, is the best new face to hit
sport aviation since Frank Christensen brought out the Eagle. But anyone
who says, "Aw hell, it's just a Kitfox. I'll fly it for you!" is
being grossly irresponsible. It's an airplane that can crash like any
other. Before you fly one-and especially on its first flight-you need to
be checked out in a Kitfox just as you would a Falco, SX-300, Glasair III
or anything else.
4. By far, the largest number of accidents in homebuilt aircraft
occur on the first flight of the pilot in that aircraft. In 1992, 14%
of homebuilt accidents occurred on the pilot's first flight in the
aircraft, and 5% on the second flight. In all, 24% of the accidents
occurred during the takeoff or landing phases due to inadvertent stalls,
rolls or veering off the runway, thus 40 to 50% of the accidents seem to
indicate a lack of familiarity with the flight characteristics of the
aircraft.
This pattern of accidents in homebuilt aircraft has been confirmed by
insurance companies (see "How to Kill Yourself in a Homebuilt
Aircraft", Falco Builders Letter, March 1992), who now insist
on pilots being checked out in many types before they will sell insurance.
These statistics are for the pilot's experience in a given aircraft,
and they do not isolate the first flight of the aircraft. However, there
is nothing to suggest that a test pilot with no previous experience in the
type would be less prone to have an accident than the general statistics
indicate.
5. Flight testing is a dangerous activity. We all instinctively
know this, but we need to remind ourselves that the streets of Edwards Air
Force Base are named after dead test pilots. Over the years, a lot of
pilots have died flight-testing new aircraft.
In the early days of aviation, the military would simply let their most
skillful pilots have-a-go at a new aircraft, but it didn't take long to
notice that a lot of the pilots ended up dead. Since those days, they've
learned and have developed a methodology for flight testing to minimize
the risk.
If you put all of these factors together, they bring you to a very
sobering conclusion that test-flying a homebuilt airplane is potentially a
very dangerous activity, and any rationale that says otherwise is just
wishful thinking. If stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and
expecting a different result, then the decision of a builder to do his own
first flight really comes down to emotion and ego, not intelligence.
If nothing goes wrong on the first flight, then almost anyone can do
it, but how quickly would you react if the engine quit on takeoff? On a
first flight, you have to assume that the worst will happen. The airplane
will be badly out of rig, the cockpit will fill with smoke from an
electrical fire and the engine will quit. You need a pilot at the controls
who can calmly put the airplane back on the runway. In short, you need the
best pilot you can get your hands on, and if that pilot isn't you, then
you are letting your ego and emotion do your thinking, not your brain.
My apologies I have lost the link information for
where I obtained this story from. U.B. Judge |
