Canadian Student-Built Airplane Makes Maiden Flight

December 16, 2008 — As reported in the current (December 2008) issue of EAA’s Canadian e-newsletter, Bits and Pieces, a group of 12 undergraduate mechanical engineering students at the Universit'e de Sherbrooke in Quebec have built an airplane, from scratch! This week, Tuesday morning, December 16, their creation, the Epervier X1 C-FWMQ, made its successful maiden flight at Sherbrooke Airport. (Read more about the project.) A large number of photos from the flight are available here.

EAA received the following flight report from test pilot, David Rancourt:

• The first flight of the Epervier X1 C-FWMQ happened at Sherbrooke Airport on December 16th at 11:30 a.m. Airtime: 0.5. During this flight, David Rancourt, the test pilot tested some flight performances that will be validated later by some other tests.
• Climb rate: over 1000 ft/min at 90 mph Stability: positive 3 axis
  Roll rate: over 180°/sec
  Cruise speed: unknown now
• The flight went really well even with winds of 12 kts gusting to 20 kts at 30° with the runway. The pilot can affirm that this airplane can handle more than 15 kts of crosswind.
• More tests to come :) We are still interested to go to KOSH (EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2009).
• Last February, the entire team presented their concept and plans at an EAA Chapter 266 meeting in Montreal and received the encouragement and best wishes of the chapter.

For more information, visit the ‘'Epervier Project’ website (www.epervier.ca)