Mikeyb
Well Known Member
I’ve been looking forward to posting this for some time. I got the airworthiness certificate today. N36MB SN 83764 is done.
My goal was to build one as close to Van’s original intention as I could stand. It was optimized for solo fun flying, Parallel valve IO-360 M1B, Composite Hartzell CS prop, Minimal MGL avionics. I finished it in 30 months from when the first kit showed up. The longest two and a half years of my life but it turned out pretty well. It weighs about 1065 pounds and has a 78.4 ” empty CG
I spent hundreds of hours on VAF taking tips and tricks from dozens of builders. Thanks DeltaRomeo.
I paid particular attention to posts and advice from the following contributors:
IronFlight, who’s great article in Kit Planes sold me on the RV-8 and who’s build plan I tended to copy.
Dan H, who’s simple diagrams and explanations were always what I was looking for.
SC Smith who did the homework on landing gear bolts and access to them that should be in the plans.
Probably the hardest part of the whole project was deciding what was good enough. It was hard to reconcile my experience, what was in AC 43.13 and what I saw on flying EAB planes. Some of the people on VAF are pushing the state-of-the-art of RV building or working on Lindy prize winners. It tended to raise my level of anxiety. A shout out to Jon at homebuilthelp.com. His Attitude and delivery in his YouTube videos would calm me right down.
I built it in a two car garage in a busy Pasadena CA neighborhood. One UPS driver dubbed it Grand Avenue Aircraft. I moved it to Corona airport 45 miles away at the edge of the LA airspace which is something of an RV8 final assembly area. Mine was the third -8 finished there this year. It’s a mile away from Aircraft Spruce. The exterior was painted with Imron before final assembly by Corona Air Paint which is on the field.
Nothing about building the empennage kit prepared me for what was coming with the other kits. There are a number of areas in the fuselage where the plans were incorrect. Most are just annoying. Some are heartbreaking. Once you get to the finish and FWF the documentation is just an idea.To me, calling an RV-8 an aluminum airplane is laughable. The kits I got were steel, fiberglass and plexiglass with some aluminum parts in between. Every single aluminum part fit perfectly and fell into place. Everything else was a fight.
Strangely this thing I looked forward to and back on the most was priming the parts. Almost instant gratification. I primed the interior with AKZO Nobel and painted the cockpit parts with polyurethane before assembly. I did it in a 9 foot tent spray booth in my driveway with a 20 inch box fan and furnace filter to control the overspray.
My intention is to have a more experienced pilot fly it a bit while I get myself airworthy. We will see how that turns out.
Mike
My goal was to build one as close to Van’s original intention as I could stand. It was optimized for solo fun flying, Parallel valve IO-360 M1B, Composite Hartzell CS prop, Minimal MGL avionics. I finished it in 30 months from when the first kit showed up. The longest two and a half years of my life but it turned out pretty well. It weighs about 1065 pounds and has a 78.4 ” empty CG
I spent hundreds of hours on VAF taking tips and tricks from dozens of builders. Thanks DeltaRomeo.
I paid particular attention to posts and advice from the following contributors:
IronFlight, who’s great article in Kit Planes sold me on the RV-8 and who’s build plan I tended to copy.
Dan H, who’s simple diagrams and explanations were always what I was looking for.
SC Smith who did the homework on landing gear bolts and access to them that should be in the plans.
Probably the hardest part of the whole project was deciding what was good enough. It was hard to reconcile my experience, what was in AC 43.13 and what I saw on flying EAB planes. Some of the people on VAF are pushing the state-of-the-art of RV building or working on Lindy prize winners. It tended to raise my level of anxiety. A shout out to Jon at homebuilthelp.com. His Attitude and delivery in his YouTube videos would calm me right down.
I built it in a two car garage in a busy Pasadena CA neighborhood. One UPS driver dubbed it Grand Avenue Aircraft. I moved it to Corona airport 45 miles away at the edge of the LA airspace which is something of an RV8 final assembly area. Mine was the third -8 finished there this year. It’s a mile away from Aircraft Spruce. The exterior was painted with Imron before final assembly by Corona Air Paint which is on the field.
Nothing about building the empennage kit prepared me for what was coming with the other kits. There are a number of areas in the fuselage where the plans were incorrect. Most are just annoying. Some are heartbreaking. Once you get to the finish and FWF the documentation is just an idea.To me, calling an RV-8 an aluminum airplane is laughable. The kits I got were steel, fiberglass and plexiglass with some aluminum parts in between. Every single aluminum part fit perfectly and fell into place. Everything else was a fight.
Strangely this thing I looked forward to and back on the most was priming the parts. Almost instant gratification. I primed the interior with AKZO Nobel and painted the cockpit parts with polyurethane before assembly. I did it in a 9 foot tent spray booth in my driveway with a 20 inch box fan and furnace filter to control the overspray.
My intention is to have a more experienced pilot fly it a bit while I get myself airworthy. We will see how that turns out.
Mike
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