Nice day to fire up the engine for the first time (first time for me - I bought it used). Tethered on the table outside.
Like my DLE 20 and RCGF 32, this DLE 30 does not want to flip-start cold - I left the windshield off so I could see the tank and it's just not drawing fuel with hand flips. But the drill did a fine job as usual.
There was an issue with delayed idle so I cracked the low end open a tiny bit. That solved the problem.
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So, you may ask, why didn't you just take it to the field, start it, tune it and fly it?
My usual answer is that I like to tune my engines at home. It doesn't come naturally to me and I like to take my time and follow a set procedure. For any plane that I'm starting for the first time I also like to see if any problems make themselves apparent, and in this case there were 3 of them.
To start with, there was some oil spatter on the table. I expect that, but I also noticed that there was some spatter on the firewall and the top of the muffler. Looks like I need to check out the seal between the engine and muffler.
The other two were inside. The first thing I noticed as I was packing the plane up was that the pull-pull cables for the rudder were slack. What the?! I looked inside and the arm was off the servo... looks like I forgot to reinstall the screw!
The second issue was with the receiver - it had slipped out from under the velcro tie. Both issues are fixed now.
Either of the latter two issues may have proven fatal to plane if they had happened in flight... so it only reinforces my habit of test running the engine of any new plane at home first.