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How many RVs are in the air right now, world wide?

Ed_Wischmeyer

Well Known Member
The answer is on flightaware.com. In the upper left is a tab marked LIVE FLIGHT TRACKING, and the seventh item in that menu is Browse by Aircraft Type. Select that and type in RV. I woke up early this morning eastern time, and the only RV flying right now in the world is an RV-14 in southern California where it is oh-dark-thirty. At least, according to this data source.

You can also type in specific models, such as RV14.

And for what its worth, the background shows the earth's day and night regions as well as clouds.
 
There are exceptions

Myself and many other RVers I know are still non-ADSB and class G junkies, so there is no way to cover that percentage! One of these days I will join the ADSB crowd, but for now I have no tracks. I'm curious how many are still non-ADSB.
 
Anonymous

There are also a significant number of those who have ADSB who stay in anonymous mode and as such show only as "VFR".
 
i tend to fly in anonymous mode (easily selectable on/off with an app on my phone). Additionally, there’s a substantial lack of ground stations around here and for local flights I usually fly low enough that I don’t show up.
 
I'm ADSB equipped and my flight path on Flight Aware from UT to OSH is 3 short line segments. There are not many ground stations out here in the west. Practically anonymous.
 
J3 Cub

I'm ADSB equipped and my flight path on Flight Aware from UT to OSH is 3 short line segments. There are not many ground stations out here in the west. Practically anonymous.

I guess the ground stations have a hard time pick up signals when one is only 50' off the ground. The new Vans RV 15 cant get here soon enough.
 
Lead times...

I guess the ground stations have a hard time pick up signals when one is only 50' off the ground. The new Vans RV 15 cant get here soon enough.

...on the RV-15 are stretching out with all the other lead times...
 
Myself and many other RVers I know are still non-ADSB and class G junkies, so there is no way to cover that percentage! One of these days I will join the ADSB crowd, but for now I have no tracks. I'm curious how many are still non-ADSB.

You fly someplace where there is still any class G? We call it "Class Gone".

Of course anywhere below 1200 AGL, but.....
 
I enjoy getting an email when my plane takes off and lands and I love watching it on flight tracking. My plane is in Idaho having it's 40 hours flown off and I am in Michigan so it is almost like I am there. Well, not really but better than nothing!

What I cant figure out why the tracking does not show accurate speeds. Maybe it loses connection and then picks it up again. If it was accurate, I have the fastest RV 9 ever built sometimes traveling well over 200 mph! Ha! I can wait to get a chance to fly in it myself!!
 
Let's see the original question was

(((How many RVs are in the air right now, world wide?)))


Anybody got the answer?

I sure don't, But am happy it is a very large number.
Great little plane, and you can work/fix them yourself.
Art
 
I'm sure we can make some statical assumptions and make a reasonable guess. Just guessing, the average RV flies 100hrs per year. Yes there will be some flying much more, and some have been parked in a field for 10 years, so it's an average. That means that each plane, on average, spends 1.1% of the time in the air.

There's just shy of 11,000 completed RVs. If 1.1% of 11,000 airplanes are flying, that's 126 RV in the air, on average. That's a lot of flying! A beautiful spring weekend afternoon will be significantly higher, and a miserable stormy November night will be significantly less.
 
Ya I think the question should have been.
"How many Van's great RV planes are alive and able to fly?"
I'm not flying right now, But, have one and a half RV's in my hangar at present.
So one fly's and the other is waiting to get more work done.
Art
 
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