Actual build times?

[Rick6a]

Originally Posted by Vlad

What's your method of counting the hours?

Build time? That's easy. The time starts the day you take possession of the empennage kit. The time ends the day you receive the airworthiness certificate. The builder can offer up any qualifiers he wants in an effort to explain away all the time....productive or otherwise that passes between those two milestone dates. For instance, even though I completed the empennage kit in less than 3 weeks, it sat almost completely finished in my basement for 2 years before I finally got around to ordering the advanced match hole standard fuselage kit. From that point on, the RV-8 took 24 months of 99.5% solo labor to complete. So in reality although it took only 2 actual years of hands-on labor to build the RV-8, 4 years of human lifetime on this Earth actually passed.



Some would argue the plane is not really done until it is painted. That is an irrelevant, needlessly confusing standard. I would argue the plane is done when by the FAA's standards...it is considered airworthy and LEGAL to fly.

[DanH]

How many hours to build my -8?

Don't know.

Don't care.

Originally Posted by Rick6a

Some would argue the plane is not really done until it is painted.

Yes, they would

[apkp777]

I think he's trying to get an idea about what the difference in build times are for QB VS SL My guess for an RV 9 the the difference is 150-300 hours. Most of my time was spent on finishing and firewall forward kits.

[neilcarlisle]

As a first time builder it took 1200 hours over three years to complete to first flight and QB RV-7a. I thought I was just building to have something I could afford to fly but wound up loving the building process. It is great fun.

[Remyswing]

I started the empennage of my standard RV-8 kit in May 2009, and after working 6 days a week and 8 hours a day, I plan to put the wings on fuselage this month, canopy done, engine installed but not equipped, inst. panel almost finished, planned to fly on spring 2011

[Scott Hersha]

My RV-6 QB took 2700 hours over 4 1/2 years from starting the empennage to first flight (unpainted). My second plane (RV-8) was standard build, except the wings, and took 1700 hours over 2 years, and that was from start to finish, including the 40 hours flown off and painted. Learning curve is steep. I had the fuselage kit on the -8 to QB stage in two months (with a full time job). The only reason I got QB wings on the -8 was because when I called to order the tail kit, they had a set of QB wings on the shelf that nobody wanted. Match drilling takes away a lot of the time advantage of a QB. Whatever way you go, it's still fun. If it's your first build, a QB will save you more time, and you'll end up with a more precisely built airplane. If it's your second or more, you can easily match QB quality, and won't actually save time when you consider the time delay in waiting for a QB to be built and delivered (usually). I would like to build another one (even though I don't need it), because I enjoy it, and if I do, it won't be a QB. If you don't enjoy building things and just want to fly soon, I think you should consider the QB.

[aerhed]

Speaking of hours my RV probably wins. I spent approximately 35,040 hours already (started in 2006) and still not done What's your method of counting the hours?

Are those Cyrillic, metric, or Imperial hours?

[scsmith]

Hi,

I worked about 3+ evenings a week, plus at least one, usually both days of the weekend. It took me 2 yr, 3 months to fly, but that includes 4 months that it sat at the paint shop and I didn't have anything to work on, so really less than 2 years.

My builder log shows 1400 hrs for me, and 400 hrs for a friend that helped a lot.
I spent a lot of time on wiring, and a lot of time on FWF, even though it is a simple VFR day/night airplane. I was pretty slow at baffles, (which paid off, very nice CHT's) and I was pretty slow at FWF arrangement, especially wiring all the sensors for the EMS.

Deviations from the kit add time very fast - and don't matter whether they are slow-build or fast-build. For example, removeable floor panels - something like 300 nutplates over several evenings instead of banging in 500 pop rivets in one night. Also, priming all the pieces adds a lot of time compared to an unprimed airplane.

Hope that helps.

[chinch]

... for contributing to hijacking my own thread by replying to Vlad - but it was too good an opportunity not to share my secret shame!! :-) :-)

My key driver here is that I want to get a realistic idea of how long a build will take for a first time builder who wants to build a really nice airplane. Not award winning, but with attention to detail. Given that my hours per week is likely to be focused but limited (a Doug Reeves type refrigerator contract is likely to call out 15 hours per calendar week), my QB decision will come down to cost versus how long before I can fly my -8.

[Vlad]

Originally Posted by aerhed

Are those Cyrillic, metric, or Imperial hours?

None mentioned. Those are made of New York minutes therefore the fastest ones


Great thread Chris! Now get back to work

Rick excellent points as usual. Great illustration!