Dan Heath Maiden Flight UL350iSA Panther

Dan Heath had the extreme pleasure of piloting the maiden flight in his Panther and shared this awesome video below with us.  Dan Heath lives in Lexington, SC and has Panther SN020.  He has powered his Panther with the UL Power 350iSA engine and Whirlwind 3 blade propeller.  Congratulations to Dan for his accomplishment and we wish him all the best!  Here is a note that he sent over with the video.

On 9/3/2020 at about 8:30am, N320BC – SN020 became an airplane.  Starting off, it was surprising but uneventful.  By surprising I am referring to how fast the Panther became airborne.  At one point, it was climbing at around 1275 FPM.  However, when picking up speed, I could not keep the nose down without a lot of force on the stick.  I tried to trim ( Ray Allen electric trim ), but it would not work, so I slowed down to where it was easier to maintain level flight, I think, around 100 MPH.  My first two attempts to land resulted in going around as I was too high.  Then the pilot of the chase plane suggested a lower pattern altitude.  I chose 800 msl, which is about 600 agl.  The approach and landing were practically uneventful.  You be the judge.

I will do some more, as soon as I can figure out what to do about the high CHT.  Everything else was good and the problem with the trim turned out to be operator error.