Congrats, Mark, and it is only beginning

Yvon
C-FCPB
Sorel
Québec
Canada

----- Original Message ----- From: "Steitle, Mark R" <mark.steitle@austin.utexas.edu>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 7:58 AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Recent First Time Flyers!! FINAL CALL for CONTACT! Magazine Articles!!!


I'm not Joe, Bob, Jim, Buly, John, et al (whoever that is), but I made a major leap (well, maybe one giant step) forward yesterday.  As some of you know, for the past six years I have been building a Lancair ES powered by a N/A 20B.  I've been in the 90% done, 90% to go for over a year now.  Well, yesterday was a nice day at Lockhart, TX, and I had just finished installing the Skybolt fasteners to the upper cowl and couldn't find anything else to do, so I rolled it out of the hangar and started it up and ran it for 5 minutes.  It was running so well I decided that it was a good day for a taxi run.  With my Lightspeed headset over my ears, I headed off for my first taxi in N208TX. While this surely pales in comparison to an actual first flight, it was very gratifying.  When I started out there were no a/c in the pattern, or on the taxiways.  Ten minutes later there were people and a/c everywhere. We even had an honest-to-goodness traffic jam with three a/c stopped at one intersection.  I guess you can chalk that up to Murphy.  Anyway, all went well and I taxied around for about 20 minutes and then returned to the hangar.  For the rest of the day I had a hard time wiping the grin off my face.  While I still have more stuff to do before first flight, "it won't be long now".

Mark S.
N208TX
Lockhart, TX