First Flight Sonex 1462 N462SX

[Sonex1462]

Early on the morning of 3/30/2016 Sonex 1462 aka N462SX aka Favorite Lady made her first flight at Phoenix Goodyear airport (KGYR).
The flight consisted of climbing to a 2000ft AGL 'traffic pattern' loop above the airport. Three trips around the pattern were completed.

All the temps stayed in the normal range except on the climb the #3 CHT climbed to 409. I lowered the nose and reduced the climb. The temp then came down to 380. The temps remained in the green for the remainder of the flight.

The landing was probably the best I have had in a long time. I bet I won't be able to duplicate it again for a long time.

I did have radio issues. On the ground the tower had no problem hearing me. However in the air it was a 50/50 thing sometimes it was OK and other times they said it was garbled. I think it might be the mic on my 30 year old David Clark headset.

I also cut the flight short because I started getting high oil pressure warnings. The readings were around 35-40psi most of the time. But then it would spike to ridiculously high readings of 200-500psi for a few seconds before returning to normal. No idea on this one. I am wondering if this could be wiring or the sender because I thought the sender didn't read that high of pressures. I need to go out of town for a few days. I plan to figure this out when I get back.

Overall the plane handled very well. I really enjoyed the flight! Can't wait to get the above issues fixed and take her up again. What a blast!!

I posted a video to youtube. The video was edited to include just the takeoff and landing. The rest was rather boring. In the video the camera must have started vibrating when I applied the flaps. It appears like the wings a rocking at that point. But the plane was very stable all the way through the approach and landing.
The Video - https://youtu.be/fqzF6Httr4E




Some pictures

[Bryan Cotton]

Outstanding John! How do you like the sport trainer controls?

[Sonex1462]

Bryan - The ST controls worked great. I really enjoyed them. Everything felt very natural.

[gammaxy]

Congrats on the first flight. Your airplane looks beautiful. The video is great.

Hopefully the oil pressure indication is easy to troubleshoot. The oil sender acts as a variable resistor and is used with along with another resistor inside the instrument as a voltage divider. The sender's resistance increases with increasing pressure. If it were to somehow become temporarily disconnected, it would be the same as having extremely high resistance and would cause impossibly high pressure readings.

I also had communication issues that took me months to solve. I fly from non-towered airport and nobody told me how awful I sounded until I was in the FBO one day and they asked why I always sounded so garbled. I think the problem ended up being that I set the microphone gain too high. When the airplane is quiet it worked fine, but I think the engine sound or my louder voice while flying were saturating the input.

[Sonex1462]

Thanks for your comments.

I wasn't sure how how the sender worked. I think I will try a new wire run from the sender to the RDAC.

I will try adjusting the mic gain.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sonex1517]

Congratulations John!


Robbie Culver
Sonex 1517
Chicagoland
N1517S

[ScottM-Sonex1629]

Congrats John, awesome news to hear of Friday, April 1st!

[Brett]

Well done.... :).

[samiam]

Awesome John, congrats!

[mike.smith]

Hooray! Wonderful feeling, eh? Enjoy your next flights!