It's all downhill for RV builders!

Early this morning, over a cup of coffee and the new Sport Aviation magazine, I realized just what an incredibly steep, uphill climb it is for some experimental builders.

A gentleman in the San Francisco Bay area built a Spencer Air car, 4 place amphibious pusher airplane from plans, in a 300 sq. foot back yard and an 800' apartment!!

He had no kits, no factory support and no forums and he'd never built an airplane either. He didn't know how to weld, which he had to learn, nor had he done any fiberglass work or aircraft woodwork, where he had to make every rib, spaced 1 foot apart, by routing each one.

Ten years later, he flew it to Oshkosh, after sewing his own interior, learning to paint, learn to wire the systems, doing even that himself, and we wonder if we can build an RV!!

For us, it's all downhill from day 1. For him, it was all uphill from day 1.
The things we have to do to get flying is oh-so-much simpler. Look at the article and feel blessed, since you'll easily see how easy we really have it.

Best,

Autocar: Amazing Achievement

Pierre,
I agree with everything you said about how amazing some of the builders are and what they do to finally complete their planes. I think living in SF, you don't have the room to really spread the project out. I had a very large garage, one reason living in Louisiana, the land is cheap and therefore a large garage is not uncommon. One thing about working in a small space, you have to be organized. With a large space, I could let one project sit on a work table while I went to work on something else. I keep stuff all over because I had the room.

Subscribing to Sport Aviation is great as you see how difficult it is for most builders. One statistic I heard was RV builders have a much higher completion rate. The general completion rate of a homebuilt project is about 10%. RV builders are much higher completion rate but part of that is once one builder gives up, there are others who take over the project and finish it. Also as you allude to, having a resource like Van's technical support, this forum, and the espirit des corps of the RV fraternity all make the process easier.

Like I tell my kids, if it was harder I would not have done it and if it was easier, I would have got bored and quit.

Pierre, I have 100 hours on my plane and I have you in my head every landing, as a result of transition training. Is there any way to get that voice out? Just kidding, it is a good thing.

S S Anderson
RV 7A Flying
Lafayette, La.

Old School Homebuilts

Dad built a Long EZ from 1980 - 1985. I was a kid at the time. The plans were considered revolutionary at the time because they were more than simple blueprints. They were laid out in a logical step by step order.

Beyond that, though, the airplane was completely built by hand. Metal fixtures were cut out with a hacksaw and the airframe was built with blue or green styrofoam, fiberglass cloth and epoxy. It took more than 4 years of steady work.

The RV was much easier.

Doug Palmer's Aircar in this issue is simply amazing, both from a craftsmanship and complexity perspective. I was at Half Moon Bay when that project was in progress and his workmanship is purely outstanding (Doug was also a finish carpenter by trade as well as photographer), especially when considering the poor quality of plans and a very limited builder community. An RV is really a set of tinker-toys when compared to the work that had to go into Doug's amphib! I'm disappointed that EAA put a Husky on skis on the cover instead of the the Spencer; there were a hundred air-to-air photos taken, most of which would have been suitable for cover material. It's really a testiment to what a builder can do when they put the effort into learning the skills and doing their best and the Spencer is really what EAA is all about.

Can anyone tell me why that airplane was not on the cover of Sport Aviation, but a factory-built was (a sweepstakes airplane no less)...?

I think there should be a rule we should all petition the EAA for....only experimentals on the SA cover.

Homebuilt only

I'm with goofy Bob on this one. The Husky on the cover just shows that the fix is in. Of course if you've seen the factory, you'd know that a Husky is just a homebuilt with a bunch of people working on it.

Another view

I don't have any issue with the Husky on the front cover mainly because it is the EAA sweepstakes plane. Otherwise I'm in sort of agreement in that it shouldn't be a current production aircraft unless it's an LSA. Limiting it to only an E-AB flies in the face of what EAA is trying to do with SA's new format (which I love). My only gripe is I wish they would have posted at least twice as many pics of the Spencer in the article. I really wanted to see more of this outstanding example of such a rare bird.

kits planes

I am glad there are kit planes out there to build but I really appreaciate the guy who scratch builds an airplane. If you look at and read the regulations that your RV is licenced under you will understand why the FAA keeps reviewing the 51% rule. I am glad Sport Aviation magazine is finally starting to focus on the builders of airplanes instead of featuring a 400k Glasair 3 that somebody hired out to be built. Building experimental airplanes is about learning skills and using them to build an airplane.
Chris M

OK

"I don't have any issue with the Husky on the front cover mainly because it is the EAA sweepstakes plane. Otherwise I'm in sort of agreement in that it shouldn't be a current production aircraft unless it's an LSA. Limiting it to only an E-AB flies in the face of what EAA is trying to do with SA's new format (which I love). "

OK, I'll give you that that one.

Absolutely mind blowing and more so in person! The attention to detail is astounding. Every time I look at it, i see something new that blows my mind away, because i know how much effort was involved. He had to fabricate EVERYTHING himself from stock materials and figure it out from some crappy blueprints. It still blows my mind away. Here are some other details i know of:

- after forming the main windshield, the optics had become distorited. Thus, he went thru several rounds of sanding and smoothing to get it back to optically clear again. look at how much glass there is.

- hand stitched leather adorning interior items. stitching is clearly visible and aesthetic.

- remember, it's a retractable seaplane, above and beyond our Van's models.

- this is his FIRST build!!! in fact, he didn't get his Private until a year or so before first flight.

- hand made mahogany interior panels, stained, clear finished. i don't have any furniture as fine as this. here's another photo that shows that wood detail



- buying a leather sewing machine, so he could make his own upholstery.

- this could be a really really long list.

When I first met Doug, i thought, holy ****, you've been working on this beast for 10 years?! At the time, I thought I might finish my -10 in 3 or 4 years, like others had.

Now, 5 years into my build and who knows how many more to go, I am thinking, how the heck did it ONLY take him 10 years? Now that I know more about what is involved, finishing in that short a time is astounding to me. My biggest challenge with a new part, was opening up a cardboard box and peeling off the blue plastic!

I am amazed at that plane. Also at the builder, and the designer. I had the pleasure of meeting Percy Spencer several times. Design ran in his family, BTW. His father designed the Spencer carbine, the most advanced weapon of the Civil War, and he became friends with Abraham Lincoln. It is no wonder Spencer's designs are so delightful--and complex.

Bob Kelly

I helped build RV6 serial #607 the 7th RV6 kit in 1986. Everything came in flat boxes with no prefabrication. Took him 6 years to build it. How times change, I did my RV7 in 16 months with a quickbuild kit. I really admire the builders that can do a plans built airplane. The Spencer is a fantastic piece of work. DOn

my two bits worth....

SA mag must cost $12,493 a page, so the limited photos are understandable, hopefully they will use their online content to fill the void.

the Air car is a tour de force, absolutely. My Dad built a good part of an Osprey 2, and to be kind, the plans were sketchy, or wrong!
Not only did Doug build a masterpiece, an amphib is like building a plane, then a boat around it, then a car inside! Not only did he build almost 3 machines, surely you know that a perfect mahogany switch panel means a full size template, then another trial, then a pattern, then a backing panel, then the actual wood face, then disassembly of all for fasteners, and finishing , then re-assembly etc etc.

Holy smokes; not in my dreams could I built that.

SA mag must cost $12,493 a page, so the limited photos are understandable, hopefully they will use their online content to fill the void.

Here's an EAA online photo gallery of the Spencer Air Car - -

http://www.eaa.org/apps/galleries/gallery.aspx?ID=294

The Spencer Aircar is a beautiful piece of aviation art. PH Spencer was an amazing man. His father designed the Spencer Repeating Rifle used in the Civil War (or, as my friends in Charleston used to call it, The Late Unpleasantness). If any of you played with the Wham-O Ornithopter when you were a kid, you were flying a Spence design! I bought plans for this airplane in 1979, but was extremely daunted by the complexity of the design, so my plans are still in the case where they have been for many summers. Anyone who has managed to complete one has accomplished an amazing feat.

Plans....? Blueprints, drawings? Boy would that be nice when scratch building a plane!

I can tell you first hand that I can appreciate what the guy building the Spencer has done - it's a finished Picasso and it's one heck of an accomplishment! When you tackle a project like that, even the smallest things can take the longest time. Heck, I spent about 8 hours over the weekend just simply shaping the attach angles for my instrument panel. Unlike the many RV panels I've done, on the Mullicoupe I still used the same 3/4" x 3/4" x .063" angle, but instead of making all those little cuts to put the curve in it, I spent hours with both a shrinker and a stretcher to make the curves. In the end it doesn't really matter because nobody can see it on the finished plane (just like an RV, it's on the backside of the panel), and the slit cutting method works just fine....but, I wanted to see if it could be done, and after much cussing and lots of hours it worked. See pic below (I know, the panel is crooked and the picture isn't good, but I just snapped it quickly).

Most people will just shake their heads, but after building a number of RV's, I'm enjoying this super slow build - no plans - no parts - no kit, type of building!

Cheers,
Stein

PS...sorry I had to photochop out most everything in the panel...can't let everyone see what's going to be installed in it just yet!

Museum Piece

Haven't read the article yet but after he is done flying and winning awards for the long and hard work, the Spencer should be retired into a museum - say the EAA Museum maybe??? That way, we all can see and appreciate it.

I, for one, really appreciate my kit from Van's and will spend a reasonable but not extravagant amount of time building it - keep pounding (or pulling) those rivets - you never know how many heart beats you have left!

pierre smith said:

Look at the article and feel blessed, since you'll easily see how easy we really have it.

Click to expand...

True enough....but I suspect quite a few here have created interesting aircraft fabrications from scratch.

Anybody for a little show and tell? You know, a few bits to demonstrate RV builders are not necessarily the shop weenies of the homebuilt world?

Why not...

Before I did the RV-7, I built this Wolf Boredom Fighter. Don't let it fool you, it's 8 years of work from nothing but a set of so-so plans...

decades

This is my CP328 super emmy rescue. It was started from prints in Ontario. I have spar sign-offs etc. from 1969. Three Provinces, two States half a dozen owners, and almost thirty years later I rescued the woodwork and finished it. Solid, quiet, almost radar invisible, it flys off 8500' DA in about 800 feet. Lands on a dime, but too slow (115k). I think the old Spencer is at Greg Herrick's in Minn.

oops

Here is an example of some of the hand stitching i mentioned earlier.