Ultralight Flying Adventures!Oscar's first flight at Ryan Airport
Hemet is surrounded on all sides by mountain ranges. In the background you can see the snow capped mountains near Big Bear, California. What a spectacular view!!! Even someone with many hours of flying ultralights gets nervous on the first flight after reassembly. If anything is going to go wrong, this is the most likely time for it to happen.
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After much time spent working on the Cuyuna 430RR engine, final assembly of my Cobra "A" commenced with some assistance from two friends, Mike and Kent. In this photo the wings and tail section have already been attached. Mike and Kent are connecting the control cables to the rudder assembly.
After getting the rudder in place, Kent and Mike rolled the ultralight out of the hangar and helped with the preflight. Then we got the engine started. If you look closely you'll see that the prop is a blur just over the left wing.
With the preflight and warm up completed, I headed out for the most dangerous (and thrilling) part of the day. The first flight!
That being the case, I chose to do a series of "crowhops" to shake things out. Funny thing about crowhops, everything happens very quickly. Very little room for error.Here I'm at an altitude of about 15 ft. Behind me are the mountains leading to Big Bear and below are two gliders. Hemet has a fairly large glider operation on the airport. The gliders use the North runway and everyone else uses the South runway.
Several crow hops and preflights later, I headed back along the South taxiway for the final test, flight in the pattern! It's a long taxiway, so I had plenty of time to think things over, collect my thoughts, and make contingency plans for anything that might go wrong.
Turning onto the main runway in preparation for the big flight! This is the view looking West South West.
Success!!! Cobra in flight and climbing, and a happy wave from the pilot!
