My first annual

G-JONL is a year old!

Golly, that came round quickly. It seems only yesterday that I was finishing off the build and wondering whether it would actually fly. Now, with some 70 hours in the logbooks it was time to see whether it would be allowed to continue to fly.

Tom, my LAA inspector was, of course, his usual helpful self.A fairly rigorous inspection of flying surfaces, controls, engine and avionics followed but it didn't take Tom long to pronounce JONL fit and well. The necessary paperwork took nearly as long to complete, over a coffee in the airport cafe, naturally.

Next was the flight test. As I now have plenty of hours on the Sportcruiser there was no problem with me flying this myself but an observer was needed to take notes. Step forward Don, a radio amateur friend, with whom I had been on a weekend of boozing interspersed with some radio convention stuff. As he used to fly gliders he wouldn't be fazed by stalls and VNE dives, so off we went.

To be honest the flight test was a complete non-event. The aircraft behaved impeccably and the flight results were almost identical to those that we had recorded on the original flight tests a year earlier. I'm still amazed just how slow you can fly a Sportcruiser before it is anywhere near the stall, especially with full flap!

As part of the flight tests we had to do an aborted landing so we popped over to Kirkbride and did it there. After the baulked landing we did a proper landing and partook of a quick coffee in Mike's caravan before heading back to Carlisle, job done.

I must say, the LAA excelled themselves. The new permit to fly was back with me in well under a week, making it possible for me to do the trip to the Isle of Man a few days later (see separate report).