Comment

Comment by Dan Dempsey on May 30, 2014 at 6:18pm

Justin, Thanks for the counter view.  I see some merit to it, but on balance I believe I'm taking the right approach.

 

Comment by John Austin on May 30, 2014 at 7:56am

A contrarian viewpoint from an EAA webinar:

High speed "taxi" tests are necessary for larger, heavier planes where brakes, etc. are critical or for unproven designs, but not for an established light sport design. The EAA webinar "First Flight" presenter, a very experienced test pilot (tens of thousands of hours and hundreds of different planes), discouraged "high speed taxi tests," arguing that you're in a situation where "you're not really taxiing and you're not quite flying." Apparently, a lot of accidents occur when this is attempted. His advice was to carefully inspect and prepare the plane, and simply proceed to first flight. High speed on or near the runway is not a friendly environment - in normal take-off and landings, you pass through this zone only briefly.