Marcel Heijmans’ RV-7 | Teuge, The Netherlands RV-7 #74668

Marcel wrote in to let us know about the recent first flight of his RV-7:

After four years of building, I finally finished my RV-7 now known as the PH-MNX.
Since I only have a little over 80 hours ‘under my belt’ and had never landed an RV-7, I decided to take a ‘safety pilot’ for the first flight. Maarten is a retired Dutch Airforce pilot, who flew F104 (Starfighter) and has a lot of hours on his RV-7 (PH-PLP). He’s a great guy and I’m really grateful he joined me on the maiden flight of my RV.

We selected a nice winter day with almost no cross-wind and the run-up and take-off went perfect. During the climb to circuit altitude I already found the first issue. The plane has a left-leaning tendency, it’s minor, but still something I have to fix. Other issues are a failing elevator trim (the fricking thing worked every time I tried it the last 3 months). Also I couldn’t find the ‘efficient’ power setting with the combination of ULPower 520iSA and the Airmaster prop.

The approach on final was a little too low, but the landing went very nice. Maarten didn’t have to intervene. During the second flight we found the stall speed of 49kts clean and 45kts full flaps. Also Maarten showed be how to properly execute a barrel roll and we checked the speed up to 188kts. Next time we’ll need to approach the Vne (200kts). Second landing was better, but I had issues keeping it center (veered to the left). Nothing major, but enough to get a slap on the wrist from Maarten.

All in all a fantastic day which I will never forget.

Marcel’s build blog: http://ph-mnx.nl/2022/01/06/first-flight/