For the last 2 months I have been helping my friend Tim get his 1100r ready for its first flight. It was built back in 08 but was never quite finished or flown. The trailing edge had popped loose when the builder shrunk the fabric and after that the project was abandoned til my friend aquired it. Over the last few weeks we repaired the trailing edges, cleaned her up, rigged the flight controls, did the W/B and got her ready to go. She is a box stock 1100R powered by a hirth F33 and has a single 5 gallon nose tank and flaperons.
Sunday we got good weather with sunny skies, warm temps and a light breeze at 6ish kts, unfortunately a direct crosswind but the plane was ready for her first flight. I made a series of 6 hops down the runway making final adjustments to the aileron rigging and elevator trim. Satisfied that all was well I back taxied down the 3500ft strip a final time, lined her up and opend the throttle on the little Hirth F33. I was immediately impressed with the punch the Hirth provided, definitely pulled harder than any 277 i have flown. The takeoff roll was short, well under 200ft and climbing out at 40mph and 6k rpm had me above 300ft by the end of the runway. I leveled at 400ft, turned downwind and throttled down to 5700rpm, airspped indicated 55mph and the airplane was flying wings level but requiring slight foward pressure on the stick. I continued on about a mile south of the field before swinging her around to line up on final. Throttled back and crossing the numbers at about 50ft i let her settle into ground effect and added just enough power to keep her floating, upwind wing low, to the taxiway turnoff at the far end. 200ft from the taxiway i cut power completely for a butter smooth 1 wheel landing and rolled onto the taxiway passed a few excited onlookers.
My takeaways from the first flight are:
1. Wayne Ison sure got it right with the 1100, keep the plane light with minimal extras and a small engine. There is not a sweeter flying bird in the sky, so easy to fly and land. Just thinking about it makes me smile!
2. The elevator trim needs backed off a little more as she likes to climb.
3. Prop needs to lose a degree or 2 of pitch as she would only turn 6280rpm in flight.
4. Rudder may be a bit out of rig but with the crosswind it was too hard to tell. Future test flights will determine if it is.
My friend Tim was overjoyed to see his plane fly, now he just needs to taxi taxi taxi and get his feet used to flying tailwheel. (Hes a tri gear pilot with GA time and about 50hrs flying weedhoppers).
A video of the first flight can be found here:
https://youtu.be/FO46YSYFFokChris
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