Yesterday was probably the best day flying I've ever had. With the temperature in the upper 80's and an ideal breeze straight out of the south (with occasional shifts to the SE to come off of Lake Michigan) I decided to take my Avistar (with it's rebuilt 0-dihedral wing)
and my brand new Tiger 2 out to the field. When I got there, there were 2 others just leaving.

I wasn't about to try to maiden the T2 by myself, but I was confident I could handle the initial (re)flight of the Avistar. So I fueled it and checked the needle and taxied it out. I throttled up and it lifted off the deck smoothly. I found that without any dihedral, the Avistar was a LOT more sensative on the ailerons than with the stock wing. It didn't really roll any faster, but it was a lot "twitchier".
So I finished the flight and brought it in. I added 15% expo on the aileron and that helped quite a bit. By the time I finished my 3rd flight, a couple more seasoned veterans had arrived at the field. So I felt a lot more comfortable with th idea of maidening the Tiger.

I was a little apprehensive about risking my first build by doing the maiden flight myself, but part of me really wanted to see it through to the end. I had a few apprehensions with my first flight on a low-wing tail-dragger (much less on a maiden flight), but my instructor encouraged me - saying to just taxi it around and get a feel for it that it's not really different than any other plane and once it's in the air, you can't tell where the wheels are anyway!. So I checked it out, fueld up and headed out to the flight line. After a couple of passes, I was really impressed at how stable the ground handling felt. So I brought her back, lined up into the wind, and eased on the throttle. Very little rudder input was needed to keep tracking straight. The takeoff run felt a lot longer than the Avistar, but eventually it just floated off the ground and stayed stayed pretty level. So I climed up and banked left and brought it back around into the wind. 1 click of left aileron and hands-off flight was straight and level at just above half throttle. A few more passes quickly proved that this is one very stable plane! Now comes the challenge of landing. So I eased off the throttle on the downwind leg, banked aroundleveld off into the final approach. I probably could have bled off a little more speed, but she settled right down on the mains and shortly thereafter the tail stuck right to the ground.

The whole time, I'm thinking to myself, "RCKen was right - there's absolutely nothing like the thrill of maidening your first kit and watching it fly!" I took it up one more time and checked out the control throws and responsiveness. On low rates, there wasn't enough elevator throw to comfortably loop over the top, but high rates looped pretty nicely. Ailerons on low provided a nice, smooth roll a little faster than the Avistar. On high rates, the rolls are fast enough to feel really stable and only required a blip of down elevator to be pretty axial. This plane really flies like a dream. If I had known that, I would have had her up a lot sooner. I can't wait to get her back up.

So for anyone afraid to maiden your first kit, I say - Keep a good pilot close by and

GO FOR IT!!!!!!