I’m way overdue for an update to this site, so here goes.
I was contacted by a friend in July 2017, who informed me that they were looking for experienced test pilots for the Mitsubishi MRJ program in Moses Lake, WA. I signed on to the program in September 2017, and immediately started a prolonged series of back to back courses to do all the steps required to obtain a Japanese Airline Transport Pilot License. This process kept me busy until Christmas.
Terry handled the packing and moving while I was off on training, and we set up house in Moses Lake in November. There was no free time to fly the RV–8 out there before winter hit, so it is in storage in Smiths Falls. I’ll take some time off in the spring to fly it west.
Moses Lake is fairly small town in a very dry area on a plateau between the Cascade Mountains and the Rocky Mountains. It only gets about 9 inches of rain annually on average, so there are usually blue skys. The airport was used as a B–52 base before Larson AFB was closed in 1966, so it has a very long (13,500 ft) and wide runway. The good weather, long and wide runway, and little air traffic make it a perfect place to conduct flight testing.