I had my paint scheme designed back in 2020 by Jonathan at Plane Schemer (now Evoke Aircraft Design). I also was put on the waitlist for paint in 2020 or 2021 with a May 2023 drop off date. Of course, I wasn’t ready for that slot when it came up, so I pushed it out to October of 2024. Evoke Aviation has been really busy and drop off dates kept getting pushed out. When I looked at the schedule right around the time I finished up the plane, I saw my slot had pushed out to June/July 2025. I was sort of bummed. I really wanted my plane painted by Oshkosh 2025. Not long after that, I heard that Evoke was changing their waitlist to more of just a list without drop-off dates. Only the next 4-6 airplanes would be scheduled per quarter and you had to be flying!. It makes a lot of sense. With the amount of changes going on in peoples builds and having to maintain drop off date for a waitlist that is several years long. Having to adjust those dates all the time has got to be time consuming.

Looking at the list of planes in front of me marked as flying, I was figuring I might get in early 2025. However, Evoke contacted me to say they had a Nov 1st drop off date and if I wanted to take it. Yes! I do!

My friend, and CFI, Scott had asked if he could tag along for the trip, so we shoved off on Friday Nov 1st to drop the plane off at Evoke. My plan was to leave Friday and we had a commercial flight scheduled late Sunday afternoon in Atlanta. That would give us a couple of days to account for weather, if needed. The weather turned out to be decent for the majority of the day. It was, however, breezy. Another gusting into the lower 30 Kts on the surface kind of day. Winds aloft were also brutal and my plan to fly down to Frederick, MD area had us pointed directly into the wind. We stayed low at 4500′ to keep out of the wind as much as possible. Even so, we saw 40-50 Kts headwind on the nose.

My original plan was to make the first stop at KCHO (Charlottesville, VA), via Frederick, MD to avoid the Washington DC ATIS area. However, the wind killed those plans. It was already looking like 3 hours just to get to Frederick and it was already lunch time. So we decided to stop a little early for a bio break and to eat our sandwiches that we brought for lunch.

The winds were really gusting and it proved to be a very challenging approach. I was fighting it with airspeed deviations of +/- 10kts. I, once again, made a smooth landing given the conditions.

We then stayed to the east of the mountain range all the way to our 2nd stop in Canon, GA. This was a small little airport in the middle of nowhere with nobody around. Thankfully, we found the code to the door to use the bathroom, fueled up, and headed back out.

The weather was very marginal through the hills between GA and our final stop in Gadsden, AL. Again, we were both constrained to VFR only as neither of us had been able to complete an IPC, despite our best efforts. South of Atlanta seemed to provide a VFR path around the weather and allow us to get in on Friday. We planned to head to the SE corner of the Atlanta bravo where the floor of the shelf was 3000′. So we ducked down to 2500′ and transited under the rectangular shelf of the Bravo. Once through, we then headed NW to our final destination.

We pulled the plane inside the Evoke hangar and decided to come back the next morning to discuss the details and go over the plane and take a tour. It had been a long day of travel and it was a good idea to get some dinner and sleep. Scott and I headed to a hotel and grabbed a room, then headed downtown to Blackstone Pub on Jonathan and Autumn’s recommendation. It was yummy.

The next morning we met at 9am and Autumn and I went through the design and any last minute changes. We also picked out colors.

We went over the plane and discussed areas that needed attention etc.. Jonathan mentioned that it was just things that the typically see and nothing too bad. Then we took a tour of the facilities. We were originally thinking of heading to Birmingham for the night, however Jonathan and Autumn suggested Chattanooga, TN as an option with stop in Fort Payne for lunch about half way.

I recently got an update that everything had been disassembled, cleaned, sanded, and the aluminum has been treated.  Everything has been primed except for the engine cowlings. The rivets have been wiped as well. Almost everything is prepared for the bodywork to begin

Here is the final scheme. I do feel like the blue here is a little lighter compared to what it’ll be in real life.

The Evoke team puts so much effort into the body work and making the fiberglass perfect. As a result, it’s a really long process. I was told 4-5 months, but I’m, of course, counting on 5. So I should be getting the plane back sometime in March.

With it being our 10 year anniversary this year.. One of the things we wanted to do was to return to Savannah where we got engaged. Seeing we didn’t make it down for the actual date, we decided to hold off until fall when the weather was a little more tolerable down there and the plane was done and past phase 1. We opted to schedule the trip for Columbus day weekend. I took Friday off to give us a 4 day weekend.

We were blessed with perfect weather as High pressure moved in after the hurricane moved through. On the trip down Friday there was not a cloud in the sky and a slight tailwind the whole trip.

Jeanine sat in the back to keep Declan occupied with games, etc…

With the slight tailwind, we made great time heading down. About 5.5 hours total time. We stopped in Suffolk, VA for gas and they also have a decent restaurant right on the field, which was good for a relatively quick lunch turn around.

We had fun exploring the city. From watching the cargo ships come up and down the river, to the beautiful tree lined streets, the architecture of some of the buildings, and the lovely squares.

Below are some of the pics of the trip.

As the weekend went on, I was watching the weather closely. The majority of the route for home on Monday (as far north as NY City area) was looking clear except pretty windy. However, there was a cold front over New England that was causing lots of uncertainty in the forecast. The forecast continued to show low clouds and visibility improving to VFR by 2pm. So if that forecast held it looked like we could make it all the way home on Monday. Note: I still needed an IPC at this point, so I was restricted to VFR on this trip.

We decided to make a backup plan, and reach out to our friends Gary and Mary in Ocean City, MD. If nothing else, we would make it a fuel stop, catch up, and continue north. Plan B was: we would stay the night in Ocean City and continue on in the morning when things were forecast to clear up in the New England Area.

We launched Monday morning for an approx 1pm arrival in Ocean City. We climbed up to 9500′ to get above the lift line and out of any bumps. The surface winds were gusting in to the high 20kt range, so I expected some bouncing around on the flight, however it was really smooth up at 9500′. Something that never seems to happen is to have tailwinds on both ends of a trip like this. However this day we had some massive tailwinds that just kept getting better as we moved north along the frontal boundary. Those tailwinds had us cooking along at over 200Kts ground speed for the majority of the trip. We made it 475nm in exactly 3 hours.

Winds at Ocean City were challenging, but thankfully mostly down the runway. The winds were 310@18 Gusting to 35Kts. I fought the gusty winds on final, but still made a pretty smooth landing.

Gary was able to capture a video of our landing

When we landed around 1pm, Our home airport was socked in at 400′ Overcast. I was expecting it to at least start lifting by now if it were to actually be VFR by 2pm. Given it wasn’t holding to forecast, I didn’t have much faith that it would suddenly get better. At that point, we decided to stay the night in Ocean City with our friends, who graciously offered to stay with them. We had a great time catching up over a late lunch and at the house that evening. As it turned out, our home airport was still pretty socked in at 9pm that evening, so we made the right call. Refreshed from a good night sleep, we ventured out to breakfast and then we got dropped off at the airport, loaded things up, and launched for home. It was an enjoyable flight at 7500′ and around central MA, we descended down to 3500′ to get below a cloud layer. It was a little bumpy below the clouds for the last 25 minutes or so of the flight, but given the gusty conditions for the whole trip home, I was impressed that only 25 minutes of the trip was a little bumpy.

Some shots of the flight home.

We so thoroughly enjoyed our first weekend away with the plane as a family. It provided a good test run for more trips to come. Wrapping up the weekend: we had 11 hours of flying across about 1600nm of distance to get down and back

After putting up with me building this thing over the last 8 years, it was only right to have my family be the first passengers now that I’ve finished my phase 1 flying.

We decided to head out for dinner at an Asian Fusion place on the airport at Westfield, MA. It was a very smooth night and nice for a first flight with passengers.

A nice night to fly, and it looks like I need to wash this bird as you can see the marks from wiping the wings down with cleaner and towels.. Clearly not a great job. 🙂

A couple of pics of the flight log on the EFIS and the flight track to dinner.

This post is several months after first flight. The main issue I saw during the first flight was my % power indication was way off. It read something like 40% at a very high power setting. This ended up being a simple configuration issue with my fuel flow setup. The vendor had set it up for the “Red Cube” that they provided, however my source was from the SDS ECU. The k factor was off by quite a bit. I spent some time getting this correct by filling the tanks, taxiing and taking off on one tank, and then cruising at a constant power setting at the same altitude for 30-60 minutes, then switch back to the other tank. The amount of fuel burned in that time was compared to what the EFIS said for fuel burn.

For the most part, I followed the EAA flight test cards as a guide for what tasks to perform. I also ran high power settings for quite awhile to make sure I properly broke in my engine, so some of the test cards had to wait several hours.

In the meantime, I did some work to address some baffling issues and adjust mixture with the SDS ECU in controlling CHTs. It took some time, but by the end of phase 1 flight testing, I was happy with my engine temps.

No other major issues surfaced during the test time. The plane flew well with no bad characteristics. I finished up my flight testing on September 17th, 3.5 months after making my first flight.