Just wanted to share my experience with the inspection and maiden flight of my second homebuilt 601 XL. DAR inspection on N115AR took place on Saturday, 9/12. The inspection went fairly smooth. I used the same DAR as in my first XL (Tim Martinez). He was very thorough (took 5 hours). I remembered that on my first inspection Tim found a foot long 2 x 4 inside the fuselage, so this time around I double checked and triple checked for any 2 x 4's. Happy to report that he did not find any.... but to my embarrassment he found a hammer inside the left wing. I remember losing this hammer many months ago so I am sure that it was there during the weight and balance... which would help explain why I had such a big difference between the weight of the left wheel compared to the right .... given the long arm length it was located at. Oh well... I am glad he found it.

Yesterday morning Bill Bartlet took me up on his 601 (thank you Bill) so as to shoot a couple of landings before I was to launch myself onto the air with my new XL. After what I considered some textbook examples of how NOT to land.... I decided to give N115AR a try. Maiden flight went very smooth. Wings did not fall nor did I experience any sign of flutter. I am so glad I decided to go with the aileron hinge ... the control stick requires much less force compared to the hinge-less aileron. CHT temps were all within normal range... the new Jabiru's firewall forward kit and engines now have new and improved features such as a bigger oil cooler, larger cylinder head cooling fins and a larger/improved RAM air cooling ducts.

After I took off, my radio had background noise.. It took me a while to figure out that I had not set the squelch on my intercom (duuugh!). I climbed to 6500 ft and did some slow flight and then tried to trim the airplane with flaps, but once again the trim just does not have enough authority to do so. Some tweaking to be done. Other than that.. I can't complain.

I took a memory stick to record the flight... but once again I put it in the wrong EFIS. With the GRT Dual sport you have to plug the memory stick on the display that has the EIS connection (which in mine is #1)... so I guess I will have to wait till next flight.

oh ... Thanks to my wife and kids for their love and support.. and those wonderful airplane cookies we ate to celebrate the DAR inspection.