[Wing] hello fellow listers

[Marc Degirolamo]

Hello......I'm Marc DeGirolamo from Saskatoon. I am a firefighter in Sasktoon, am married with three daughters. I have been flying since 1978 but have always been renting with the exception of owning a 172 for a short while. I figured that the only way I would have my own affordable airplane was to build one.....I was landing one day and this 'Homebuilt RV-4' was also in the circuit. I met the pilot, Lowell Johnson and managed to get a ride a week or so later (yes the 40K ride). That plane was soon sold to a fellow in England and Lowell was without an airplane also. I started building an RV-4 serial # 3289 with new partner Lowell Johnson in 1993. We worked slowly but steadily over the next seven years (we were both building families too). Although it sometimes seemed like the project would NEVER be done.......it flew July 7th, 2001 at CYXE 0700 hrs....after 7 years 6 months.
(excerp from my building log.......we were doing high speed taxi testing)
I glanced at the airseed indicator to verify that the needle was alive. When I looked up we were ten feet off the ground ! After overcontrolling for a few seconds I poured the coals on, commited to 'go flying'. I radioed tower that I was going to climb to 5500 ft and proceed north of the city, which we did. We flew over the Martinsville airport (just outside YXE control zone), and felt out the plane. I did some slow flight, turns,etc. while monitoring engine temps. After twenty minutes or so and feeling pretty good about controlling the plane, I started back to Saskatoon for landing. I set up the approach at 80 knots (slightly faster than I do now), over the fence at 75 and made an acceptable three point landing (small bounce).........
    YA>>>>>HOOOOO !!! I can't believe I did that...........What a feeling it is to fly something which has taken almost eight years to complete. I made that first flight at least a thousand times in my mind but the feeling when our plane left the ground was incredible.......(ranks right up there with walking down the aisle, and watching my daughters being born..) 
Lessons learned:
- if you make a mistake (and you will), fix it and move on
- don't look at the big picture you'll get discouraged, focus on smaller easily attainable goals....
- keep at it ( work at it every day even if it is only for fifteen minutes)
- the last 10 percent takes 90 percent of the time......
- it is definitely worth the wait.......:) 
- make absolutely sure that if you are doing high speed taxi test that both you AND the plane are ready for the first flight...!!
C-FRVE:
Engine: Lycoming 0320 E2D
            - 45 amp nippendenso alternator
            - vacuum pump
            - Vetterman crossover exhaust
            - lights, landing,nav and strobe
Prop: Colin Walker 70 x 69
Avionics: Icom A 200 com
            - King Kt 76 transponder with blind encoder
            - Garmin 195 GPS
Instruments: standard steam guages 
Paint: Endura.......White with red and blue markings





Marc DeG.........
mdeg at shaw.ca
Ph: (306)934-4434
Fax(306) 934-4551

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://retrix.com/pipermail/wing/attachments/20011013/caefa54a/attachment-0001.htm