For those of you not familiar with the amateur built experimental aircraft world we have to do an inspection similar to a certified aircraft airworthiness inspection, like a Cessna, but it’s called a condition inspection. In an experimental aircraft we never certify it’s “airworthy” but rather say it’s in a safe condition for flight. The rules fall under FAA part 43 chapter D for what a condition inspection must look at. It’s rather broad in its requirements. So many builders, myself included, create their own checklist that covers all of those items and many more. I created mine based off of several other builders checklist that I used to pick the things I wanted as well as add my own items as well.
The idea is you are inspecting all items that could be critical to Flight and making sure that they operate and are secure as they should be. You look at things like flight controls, flight control surfaces, flight control linkages and items like that as well. I broke mine down into Aircraft sections starting with the tail, the wings, the fuselage, the engine, and an interior space.
I have a total of 158.4 hours on the RV for the first year. My inspection went really well, I did not find anything loose broken or inappropriate. Prior to starting the inspection I had a list of things I was going to replace. The list of items for me was: oil/oil filter, brake pads, spark plugs, spark plug wires and two Dynon fluid pressure sensors.
After the inspection was completed I did a engine run up to verify no leaks or issues. I did find that I had two of my ignition wires swapped which revealed itself as a very rough running engine when I did a test. That was a 30 second fix and all was well in the second engine run.
I now just need to do a couple of high speed taxi runs to break-in the brakes. After that I will do a test flight to make sure all is ok and we will be good for another 12 months.
