3rd and 4th Flights Under Their Belt, 5th Underway Now
Eclipse Aviation's flight test program, fighting winter weather
and the necessary ceilings for flight test ops, has recently logged
its 3rd and 4th flights, with a total of four hours flown, thus
far.
On the fourth flight, N503EA executed 7 standard gear
retractions out to an imposed limit of 190 kts, while
also practicing two emergency gear extensions. By all reports,
the gear system appears to be working very well. "We're really
pleased with the progress we've made thus far and how nice the
airplane looks with the gear retracted," boasts proud Papa,
Vern Raburn.
A fifth flight was scheduled for mid-Friday, as this report was
being filed, and gear operations were expected to be expanded,
somewhat, to 200 knots. In the meantime, operations are proceeding
as close to schedule as the weather allows and excellent data is
being compiled via Eclipse's extensive test flight telemetry and
data gathering system. "We have experienced no unexpected behavior
through the flight tests thus far," notes Raburn.
Currently, the speed envelope has been expanded to 200 knots and
the aircraft has flown as high as 18 thousand feet, with higher
altitudes awaiting some pressurization tweaking. Raburn has been
particularly enthused about the behavior of Pratt and Whitney's
"Mighty-Mites," the P&W 610F... which are working as advertised
and maybe even a little better than expected. "These things just
run and run and run," says Raburn, obviously enthused with
the feeling that the worst of his engine problems are
long behind him (the project having been delayed for the better
part of two years, from original forecasts, due to the fact that
the original Williams EJ22 powerplant never met expectations or
promises).
Eclipse expects N503EA to fly about once a day from here on
-- out so long as they have the weather to conduct test ops,
"we're at the mercy of the weather gods here, this time of year,"
says Raburn. He explains that current flight test minimums
require at least 15,000 feet for a mission to be approved. N503EA
will fly for about six more weeks before heading back to the shop
for inspection and a coat of paint, while a more heavily
instrumented N502EA should be added to the flight test schedule
around this time next month. A number of other test airframes are
scheduled to be added quickly thereafter for both flight and ground
testing.