By Lisa Turner, EAA Lifetime 509911
This piece originally ran in Lisa’s Airworthy column in the February 2021 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.
“Larry, can you help me out here?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
Larry, an A&P mechanic at the shop, had just walked into the hangar. He saw a new arrival — a beautiful low-wing composite homebuilt in white with a bright blue stripe.
Whistling, Larry shook his head. “Wow, that’s a beauty.”
“I need you to look it over with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Okay, give me the comb.”
Both men laughed.
Rick was confident that these A&Ps would discover any awful mistakes he’d made. He knew that he’d rushed the final details, but he just could not stop thinking about his first flight.
“Beth said it would be okay to finish assembly and hangar it here in your maintenance shop, in the corner. It’s so small.”
Rick had known Beth, the shop owner and A&P/IA, for years. It was the top facility in the area.
“Right, well this tiny airplane will tuck in under the wing of that jet perfectly,” Larry said, laughing and waving at the Learjet in the corner.
A week later Rick looked over the airplane one last time.
“Are you ready?” Larry asked.
“You’re the one who has gone through the airplane to find what I missed. You tell me.”
Larry shook his head from side to side.
“Rick, you’re the builder,” he said. “I’m an A&P who works on production airplanes. Yes, I took a look, but I could have missed something, too. Beth said she found missing cotter pins and missing safety wiring, and loose jam nuts. Make sure you double-check the hardware.”
“Right, I know, I know. It’s just that I am so anxious to get in the air.”
“Okay, well, good luck and be careful. Where’s your flight advisor?”
“Ah, I was going to get a flight advisor, but the time got away from me.”
“Well, your taxi tests have gone well, and the fuel tests we helped you with were good, but I’d definitely go over it again in detail before your flight.”
“Right. Thanks, Larry.”
Rick was so excited he couldn’t think straight. He’d spent six years building the aircraft. Tomorrow he would fly it.
The next morning was cool, with a light breeze down the runway. As the sun shimmered and skipped against the small ripples on the nearby lake, the hustle and bustle of the airport was yet to begin.
Rick took one more look at the airplane after pulling it out onto the ramp.
“I should have put a checklist together,” he said to himself. At least the A&Ps looked at it.
The airplane lifted off just like it did in his many dreams during the build. He smiled broadly as his heart quickened and a thrill traveled from head to toe. He took a deep breath and looked the instruments over as he kept the climb going to 500 feet. It’s so fast!
Turning to crosswind, he felt some hesitation in the stick, as if something was binding. He felt a stab of fear. Keep climbing. You need altitude.
Turning downwind, he definitely felt something catching in the stick. Keep going. Rick leveled the airplane on downwind, but the plane kept climbing. Panicking, Rick reduced power and put the stick forward. He felt pressure, and then something let loose. The control stick flopped fore and aft. The plane started climbing again.
Oh no! Think! What to do? He looked over at the passenger control stick with an idea. Gingerly and hope against hope, he reached over and moved the passenger stick forward. The nose dipped.
It works! But so awkward.
By now he was high and leaving the airport pattern. As Rick started to level the aircraft with the passenger control, he heard his friend shouting into his headset.
“What’s going on? Rick? What’s going on?”
Leveling off and slowing down a little more to assemble his wits, Rick spoke. “Have a small control problem. Am coming back to land.”
Small? Yeah, right.
Making his radio calls, Rick managed to circle back around and line up on final. His heart was beating out of his chest and sweat ran down his shirt. Every time he tried to straighten up to get a sight picture of the runway, he became disoriented.
Sheer will mixed with fear got Rick and his airplane to the ground. It wasn’t pretty. He got the swerving stopped just as he ran off into the weeds at the side of the runway. Rick shut off the engine and unclipped the canopy, pushing it forward. He leaned back in the seat with a massive sigh of relief and a large measure of embarrassment.
His friend ran over to him. “Wow, am I glad you made it back!”
“You and me both. The control stick broke.” He moved the stick. It operated the ailerons but not the elevator. “I had to use the other control.”
As they were towing the airplane back to the hangar, Larry walked up. “That looked like fun.”
“Not!” Rick said.
After an inspection, they found that one of the bolts securing the control stick linkage was missing on the pilot side. It had dropped out. Larry found it in a corner on the floor.
“What the … ?” Larry looked puzzled. “It’s as if the nut never got installed.”
Rick contorted his face and sighed. “My fault. I never thought to remove that center panel for inspection. Obviously, I left the nut off that bolt.”
“Hey, it’s a lesson you won’t forget. Just make sure you use a checklist!”
Accidents involving homebuilt aircraft making their first flight tend to be under-reported for a few reasons. One is that the builders will drag the airplane into the hangar as fast as they can if the damage is not serious and there were no injuries. I’ve seen this happen, and it’s understandable. The other reason is that a lot of accidents are minor and don’t get on the NTSB’s or the FAA’s radar.
If you look at the research that has been done on first flight accidents by the FAA, NTSB, and aviation author Ron Wanttaja (who has smartly kept an accident database specifically for homebuilts), plus the experiences of first flight advisors, technical counselors, and A&Ps, an interesting picture emerges.
- Using a technical counselor and flight advisor for your build and first flights will dramatically improve your safety and success.
- Using a checklist that is specific to getting the airplane ready for flight can counteract our nature to rush ahead.
- Don’t depend on others to find your mistakes. You need to find them. Let others be your backup.
If we get even more specific and identify what errors are most egregious, we can actually design a checklist that pinpoints the top problems we are likely to encounter. Instead of having a line item that says, “Check the fuel system,” we should have an item that says, “Is the fuel selector labeled with function and direction, and is it accessible and smooth turning?”
If we remember the Pareto principle — 80 percent of the accidents are caused by 20 percent of the errors — we can discover the things to work on that will make the most difference.
With these ideas in mind, I assembled an overall checklist that you can use for your first flight, but pull anything off it that works for your preflights and condition inspections, too.
The first five hours of flight on a new aircraft — whether a kitbuilt, plansbuilt, or a restoration — carry the most risk. This is when hardware falls off, controls jam, fuel leaks cause fires, and electrical systems stop working. As a designated airworthiness representative (DAR) and technical counselor (TC), I found deficiencies that should have been discovered ahead of my arrival — including misrouting of fuel lines, inadequate electrical ground wire attachment, and unsecured control system hookups.
A DAR and a TC can go a long way in helping you identify these problems, but you should take steps to catch as much as you possibly can yourself before your first flight. The two best ways to do this are to use a specific checklist, which I’ll give you, and have as many qualified people as possible go over the airplane.
How We Overlook Things
When you keep going over your work, a little gremlin creeps in, sight unseen. Then you hear a voice. The gremlin, sitting lightly on your shoulder, says, “You already looked at that six times. It’s fine.”
“I’ve looked at this six times. It’s fine,” you say to yourself.
But it’s not fine. You’ve not noticed the missing safety wire six times.
The reason for this is that we tend to go through the airplane assuming that errors will jump out at us. Some do jump out, but many do not.
The way to solve this problem is by adding detail to your checklist. Instead of thinking errors will jump out, think as an inspector would. Look at the areas with a specific list of things to check.
The Psychology of Inspection
Good inspectors have a trick. They stop and reset when they know they will go over something for the second or third time to make sure they caught everything. It’s a mental trick where they purposefully clear their mind. They know that this will enable them to go back to the inspection with a fresh perspective. Instead of thinking that everything is fine, they trick themselves into thinking that there are more items that are wrong, and their job is to find them. We can all learn to do this.
The Checklist
After analyzing what builders miss, I came up with four areas that cause the most problems in the first five hours of operation. I’ve listed the most common issues in each area. Items that are red on the checklist are the things that you and your TC, FA, and other “lookers” should double-check. Don’t think that after checking the red items you found everything. Go through the whole list after you’ve paid special attention to the red ones.
If everything looks great and you do not have to flag anything once you go through the red items, the chances are good that the other items will check out okay. But do use the objective inspector mentality to go through the list more than once.
Top Build Issues Before First Flight
Fuel System
- Fuel lines are of the wrong type for the fuel being used.
- Components in the system not secured or leaking.
- Fuel lines in engine not fire sleeved or too close to the exhaust.
- Choice of low-quality fuel selector without clear labeling.
- Inadequate labeling throughout fuel system.
Electrical System
- System components not adequately labeled.
- Wire bundles not neat and not secured against chafing.
- Inadequate electrical ground wire, chafing, or not secured.
- Incorrect wire types and sizes.
- Crimps, connectors, and splices not done correctly, not grounded, or come apart when pulled.
Hardware and Controls
- Missing components — correct washers, cotter keys, safety wire, jam nuts, pins, rivets.
- Incorrect usage — fiber nut where a castellated nut should be for part rotation; safety wire installed backward.
- Bolts not long enough (no threads showing after nut installed).
- Controls not adjusted for full travel.
- Control cables not routed correctly and/or chafing.
Clearances and Chafing
- Exhaust components too close to other components, including fuselage.
- Wiring harness not secured; chafing on metal areas.
- Travel on control surfaces not per instructions and specs.
- Travel on control surfaces binding.
How to Use the Checklist
First, go through the list and drop off any items that don’t pertain to your airplane; add anything missing from the list that applies to your airplane.
Second, arrange the items in an order that best suits you. If you decide to use a form of this list for your preflights, you may want to order it according to inspection location (walk-around).
Third, if you like, you can convert this list into an audio file and have it read to you as you inspect.
Have as many qualified people look at your airplane as you can, both before and after your flights for the first five hours. Watch what they do.
Here’s to a safe and euphoric first flight, with many more to follow.
Lisa Turner, EAA Lifetime 509911, is a manufacturing engineer, A&P, EAA technical counselor and flight advisor, and former DAR. She built and flew a Pulsar XP and Kolb Mark III, and is researching her next homebuilt project. Lisa’s third book, Dream Take Flight, details her Pulsar flying adventures and life lessons. Write Lisa at Lisa@DreamTakeFlight.com and learn more at DreamTakeFlight.com.