Well, It flies!

Well, all of these glued together Popsicle sticks actually fly! It only
took 10 ¼ years! The FAA inspected my Spencer Aircar project on Tuesday &
blessed it as an airplane. Today, My Test Pilot and friend Brian Branscomb
made the first flight of N351DP and everything went pretty well with the
exception of high oil temperatures. Brian reported that the aircraft has
impressive power with the Continental Tiara and MT propeller. During the
ground testing the brakes would not hold the plane, it wants to GO! It was
a pretty hot day but Brian radioed that he was climbing 1000 fpm at 100 MPH,
full power. The stall should ba around 53 clean so eventually we should
find we have a pretty impressive Vx ROC. Most of the flight he was having
difficulty staying below 100 MPH, this with the gear down. The Tiara engine
is super smooth and has a lot of power. The MT reversible propeller was set
up so well from the factory that I have not had to touch a thing, perfect
RPM settings, I don't know how they did that... As soon as we can get the
oil temps down we will try to get some more quantitative data and spend some
more time in the air. BUT the aircraft flew nicely wings level, requiring
no overall trim adjustments, it does apparently however require attention
to what your feet are doing. We only have one hour on the aircraft but I am
walking on air. Thank you Thank You, Mucho Thank You everybody (esp.
Caroline, Brian, Dave, Tom, Jim and Carol Butterworth, Sid, The Rons,) that
helped me with this adventure, I am a happy and proud papa.
(there is a photo on my webpage at http://www.whitealbatross.com/plane/ )