It’s been almost a year to the day since I had to put Relentless in the desert in New Mexico after the engine crank seal blew out and dumped all the oil out.
You can imagine my enthusiasm when I hit the start button this past week and she came to life!
On the 6th I rolled her out to the local tie downs and strapped her to the tarmac! Time to put on the juice!!! I couldn’t put the throttle to full but about 30 inches to check all gages and see if I had in fact tightened every hose; everything looked great. I couldn’t sleep past about 4:30 Saturday morning in anticipation of getting down to the airport, so off I went! I spent all morning putting on the cowling and straightening all the wires and nut plates.
After lunch I strapped in and called the tower for clearance for NXT 42-Xray-Tango to 29 for high speed taxi test.
Slow taxi is all you can do when watching the 7 inch video monitor in the panel. The run-up went quick and all seemed good. After asking for the runway I stopped only for a moment to check I was aligned with the centerline in the taxi camera and gave it about 1/4 throttle.
The first thing I noticed is how quickly the tail came up. Moving the engine out 8 inches moved the CG from the back edge of the limit to about 25% from the forward limit.
Perfect! Once I could see the runway I came up just enough the feel the turbos start kick in.
Not long before I was half way down the runway, pulled the throttle to idle and flew the tail until I was slowed down to about 35 and gently set the tail wheel down and finished braking for the end of the runway.
I need to change a few cht probes and figure out why the RPM was not reading but other than that I think I am running out of things to do? I will spend the next week finishing some sanding of the wings and should be ready to take to the sky by next weekend.

Stay Tuned!!! We are Still Relentless!!

Kevin Eldredge