Some Tips For Your First Flight – Part 1
Over the last few years, I have received a number of reports of difficulty with the first flight resulting in minor damage (usually the landing gear). In almost every case, the cause has been failure to follow the instructions from Sport Flight, or failure to follow common ultralight flying principles, or failure to follow procedures common to all aircraft.
Never conduct fast taxi tests with and aircraft that is not totally ready to fly. That means the seat belt must be installed, there must be enough fuel onboard for at least 30 minutes, and the pilot should have a helmet. A number of builders have found themselves in the air before they were ready. You should have at least a 1000 ft runway with no obstacles. Grass is much better than pavement.
Test flights should be conducted only in the calmest conditions. (A direct quote from the Sky Pup manual.) Regardless of your experience in other aircraft, there should be no wind. In calm conditions you can fast taxi both directions and land either direction if needed. Also if an off-field landing becomes necessary, you are not limited by the wind direction. Why take chances? The best times are early in the morning and late in he evening. In the morning, conditions will gradually worsen as the wind and turbulence picks up due to heating from the son. Early evening is best as the conditions will usually improve toward sunset. If you are worried about landing in the dark, then takeoff so you will run out of fuel before darkness begins. At least you will have light for your forced landing.
Avoid flying close to the ground at low airspeed. Many experts suggest you make low hops before climbing to altitude. Others disagree. The idea is to find out if the plane is in reasonable trim and will maintain level flight without excess control deflection. Only a few feet of altitude is needed for this test. As long as the controls are somewhere near the middle of their range, you are OK. The most common cause of landing gear damage on the first flight seems to be low airspeed on initial hops. If you are 10 to 15 up at minimum airspeed, and you drift off the runway, the controls may not respond quickly enough to straighten it out. Keep those initial hops low and only in calm conditions!
