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.

FMI: www.eclipseaviation.com