What's new
Van's Air Force

Don't miss anything! Register now for full access to the definitive RV support community.

Where did your RV journey start?

Mine started online circa 2003 (maybe 2002, I don't remember exactly) when Van's first published info on the prototype RV-10. Up until then, although aware of RVs, my focus had been on the 4-place+ composite kit offerings of the time: Lancair ES/Wheeler Express/CompAir 6/Velocity XL. With the announcement of the 10 I also discovered Dan Checkoway's RV-7 build website and the hook was set. Had to wait until September 2006 before my RV journey really began with the ordering of my tail kit.
 
Last edited:
Having the pleasure of hanging out at the airport where it all started for me a long time ago. Sadly found out my first mentor Hal Schultz has passed. Just got me thinking of how it started of other builders.

https://youtu.be/jj8nDVLPHRw

Having attended Oshkosh 32 times, the rising tide of RVs finally engulfed me.

Looking at the incredible list of RVs you've built and owned, I'm curious why you progressed from 7s to 7As.

Jerre
 
As I explained here (with lots more photos)...

In the few years just before and just after I graduated from college, before I could afford flight training (let alone think about owning or building an airplane), I did a lot of airshow photography and writing for aviation magazines and websites. It was in that context that I got to talk with "Team Rocket"s Ken Fowler and Eric Hansen a few times, when they and I were at the same airshow. One of those times, in 2007, Ken offered to take me up for a ride during the media day / practice day, the day before the airshow. This was my first ride in an “RV” (yeah, a Rocket, but y’know, close enough…). As I’m sure you can imagine, I basically fell in love with the airplane. Four years later, less than a year after I became a private pilot, I bought an RV...

Here is a photo from 2012, of me thanking Ken for introducing me (five years earlier) to our favorite series of airplanes:

ZiJ0WEk.jpg
 
Having the pleasure of hanging out at the airport where it all started for me a long time ago. Sadly found out my first mentor Hal Schultz has passed. Just got me thinking of how it started of other builders.

https://youtu.be/jj8nDVLPHRw

That's a name from the past! Fine gentleman! I had Hal inspect my first homebuilt (purchased) project, a Maranda, sold it when I realized I couldn't fit in it. The second one, a Cavalier, did fit me, kind of. Frustration with that one lead me into a string of RVs...
 
I started looking at RVs in 2016 (SnF and OSH). I really wanted to build an RV-14 and was doing all the research. However, I lived in a house with a one car garage and didn't want to rent another hangar because I knew we'd be moving in a few years.

Fast forward to 26 May 2019 and the phone call that changed everything. My friend Tom Swartzlander was building an RV8 and had it at the quick build stage. He was in the hangar across from me and I spent lots of time helping him out when he needed extra hands. The call was nothing but bad news. Tom had an inoperable brain tumor and He wanted me to buy his kit, finish it and fly his wife. My wife was (and has been) very supportive and told me to get it done.

I thought I could finish it before the cancer won. I even took 3 months off work during covid but even from the quick build stage these are huge projects. Tom will never see his project fly but his Wife Barb will be the first passenger. I've tried to keep the plane what Tom was striving to complete. It's been an adventure.

TOM'S DREAM
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0086.jpg
    IMG_0086.jpg
    67.5 KB · Views: 75
Mine started with the RV6 in Microsoft Flight - first time I'd ever heard of an RV. I picked up a partially started kit out of Calgary in January 2015, 2 weeks after my first solo. Went on a build course in Washington (Axsys Air) the next month and saw my first RV in person. As it turns out, it was the exact RV6 that the one in Microsoft Flight was modelled from. That plane was also my first flight in an RV.

But what really stood out in your post Stu.... Snowbird #9?? That's amazing, I see you joined them last year. Congratulations!
 
Mine started in 1988. Got back from a instrument lesson and my instructor asked if I could help with some riveting. Finished in 1993 and with 40 hrs finished n the tach we went to OSH. On that trip he signed me off. Wife and I went many places, in 2003 he sold to to help finance the 10. Finished in 15 months and enjoyed that plane till he passed. Family offered me the plane for 100k. If I only known.
 
My Uncle Ron is responsible for this affliction/addiction and I could not be happier with my aliment!

  • Pictured below is the wife, our boys, and myself alongside my Uncle Ron's RV-6A that he built.
  • June of 1999 he flew from Utah to Texas and took us for a ride and I was hooked.
  • My Uncle's RV recently found its 3rd owner and it still going strong.

Uncle%20Ron%20RV.JPG


  • In 2016 we purchased a RV-6 kit that was started in the 90's.
  • We finished it 2019 and flew it to Utah to see my Uncle in 2021.
  • Our RV 2022
rv6.jpg
 
Oshkosh 92

Jerry VanGrunsven took me for a demo ride in Van's RV-4 during Oshkosh 92. It was a beautiful sunny day and we did a barrel roll over Lake Michigan.
 
Pat Hatch (PH Aviation) did it to me..

Back in the early 90's while working heavy overhaul for Piedmont/USair in Winston-Salem (KINT), I spotted this really cool looking plane sitting outside the neighboring hangar. Inquiring minds got the best of me, and I engaged the owner, who happened to be Pat Hatch (PH Aviation). He had built his RV-4, and 2 other of his fellow corporate pilots had built a -4 and a -6. He gave me my first ride in the back of his -4 , and I was hooked. Within a year, I had acquired an RV-4 tail kit and never looked back. Thanks Pat !
 
Like many, I've been interested in airplanes since I was a kid. I built models and dreamed of becoming a pilot. One day I had a "Gone with the Wind" moment saying to myself, "As God is my witness, I'm going to become a pilot, an aerospace engineer, and design and build my own aerobatic aircraft." I even drew a picture of my ideal airplane in 1978 - still have it. Well, I did become a pilot and aerospace engineer but life got in the way of designing and building that aerobatic aircraft.
Then one day at work, I relayed this story to a coworker who mentioned that another workmate named Ralph was building an airplane. So I introduced myself to Ralph and found out that he was building an RV-8. I did some internet research and found that the RV-8 was very similar to my ideal airplane from 1978. It even accommodated the evolution of my 'wants' from: 1 seat to 2 seats, rag & tube to aluminum, 9 g's to 6 g's. The decision was made. Building an RV-8!!!
 
First step into RVs

Seeing Van when he introduced the RV-3: that was the prettiest little plane and it fired my imagination .
 
Like many, I've been interested in airplanes since I was a kid. I built models and dreamed of becoming a pilot. One day I had a "Gone with the Wind" moment saying to myself, "As God is my witness, I'm going to become a pilot, an aerospace engineer, and design and build my own aerobatic aircraft." I even drew a picture of my ideal airplane in 1978 - still have it. Well, I did become a pilot and aerospace engineer but life got in the way of designing and building that aerobatic aircraft.

Mine was similar to Beagle. As a configuration design aeronautical engineer working for a large defense contractor I had designed many “paper” airplanes and even several X-planes that made it to flight and into museums. I never got to fly or even fly in something I designed. I had desire to design, build and fly my own design someday. One morning when preflighting a rental Cherokee 140 that I always found something wrong with, I saw Jim Cone do a overhead break in his RV6A. I said to myself I got to get me one of those. I joined local EAA chapter and ordered a kit. No real desire to design/build my own design anymore as for what I want, it would be very difficult to do better than an RV.
 
Last edited:
I bought a partially complete RV-6 empennage from a guy when I lived in Halifax, NS back in '92. Didn't know what I didn't know and when I had an RV guy have a close look he said it was scrap because edge distance issues, alignments, etc. (Expensive) lesson learned.

Sun 'n Fun 97 I saw the prototype RV-8, hummed and hawed for a year or two, then started RV-8 80965. Built it in 5 years, IO-360-A3B6D, Catto 3 blade, VFR, a PILE of fun :)

AM-JKLXR4hy5Iw80s1iUwbWr8rE8H7dU-il1xVIMdXZtcka4d8VrJFOk7CWVyCcsv9Gr5llubWspUZTu5ZpWLygIxSJAqSQGWtLb6-jEJWwjngbPTpzjsXFCMCS2kGv1yviwmXJyf6zZgWXeGYceZ1kJU7Br_w=w640-h480-no


Fast forward a bunch of years and we have bought a property where I put in a 1300' grass strip. I started building a 4pl Bearhawk (not even a HINT of the RV-15 back then) and sold the RV. It didn't take long before I realized my huge, HUGE mistake, but it was too late. Bought a Maule t fly out of my grass strip until the Bearhawk is done.

I was thinking the Bearhawk was my last build. Well, I guess we'll see once the RV-15 comes out :)
 
started

Mine started with visiting Inyokern when Axel and his wife (AX-O) had their Ice Cream Social. First time I saw an RV.
 
Mine started in the late '90s. Following the homebuilt scene since the '80s, I was originally attracted to the Avid Amphibian/Catalina but as time passed the Avid company shrank and Van's became the industry leader, so I went with the winner. My RV-8 fulfills both my dreams of building my own aircraft and owning a warbird (substitute), hence the name Falsi-Fighter.
 
My son Bryan and i Butch Milani . Had a 170B needed something more . Got a ride with Van at sunset air park in 1984 ,loaded RV4 parts at the airpark in the same trip. Had a flying RV4 winter of 1988. Have not looked back ,just forward with RV's every since. Try it you will love it. "Butch 76"
 
While working on my PPL, I flew the C172 trainer with my flight instructor to a nearby grass strip fly-in. As aircraft were leaving, I saw one take off and climb rapidly before turning on smoke and flipping inverted. I turned and asked my instructor what kind of airplane was that? He said it was an RV kit plane built in somebody's garage. I said that's what I want some day. Fast forward 14 years: I have an RV-9A I built and am building a -14A. Cool, huh?
 
It started for me when I was a kid during my first trip to Oshkosh in 1985. I distinctly remember three things that changed my life there: Vans Aircraft (made we want to be a builder), an A-7D Corsair static display (gave me the goal to get off the dairy farm and become a fighter pilot), and the Concorde (made me half deaf and wobbly in the knees).
 
May 1980

I got the RV illness when the May 1980 issue of Sport Aviation (The EAA magazine) showed up in my mailbox. It had the factory RV-4 prototype on the cover. After reading the article I was hooked. I went to Oshkosh that summer and saw the plane in person and ordered the plans, (plans #424), plans and kits had different numbers back then. Shorty after that my wonderful wife purchased the tail kit as a surprise birthday gift. Then unfortunately because of the common story of Life getting in the way…. I never finished the RV-4, but when I was finally ready to build again the RV-8 was available. Don’t tell Danny King, but I saw his “Beautiful Doll” at Oshkosh either 2000 or 2001 we decided we needed an RV-8. So that is what we built. Ours has been flying for 12 years now and we love it.
 
Back
Top