I want to give special thanks to Terry kohler. I live in the Tampa bay area and he lives in Michigan. So it seems crazy that the first person that was willing to take me up on a demo flight was a RV owner from Michigan.
A while back I posted on this forum of anybody who owns a RV-9a that I might go up for a demo flight. I asked this because I plan on building one hopefully at the beginning of 2011. He responded by saying he has family down here in florida and might be able to take up my request.
Well that request came true on this cloudless morning. Terry not only spent all morning talking about what he did on his airplane but offered to take me up on a hour long flight up the coast. He also with my surprise let me take it off and land. Now I told him after the flight that this seemed unbelievable that somebody who spent nearly 2000 hours building his airplane and not knowing me more than 1 hour would let me at the controls, even if he is a CFI.
I have to say that the performance, handling and comfort of this aircraft exceeded everything I heard about the RV-9a. From the quick take off, fast rate of climb, controls that needed only slight pressure one way or the other as well as even the stalls were incredibly easy.
I am still look at building this aircraft with a little apprehension, but then again the rewards look to great to pass up.
One other thing....What Terry did was not only give me a ride and spend time talking about any questions I had, but he is an incredibly nice guy and cemented what I have been noticing already. There seems to be such a large group of passionate group of people that would be willing to bend over backwards to help you. I look forward to not only building such a nice plane, but look forward to meeting other nice people that comes with the territory.![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
A while back I posted on this forum of anybody who owns a RV-9a that I might go up for a demo flight. I asked this because I plan on building one hopefully at the beginning of 2011. He responded by saying he has family down here in florida and might be able to take up my request.
Well that request came true on this cloudless morning. Terry not only spent all morning talking about what he did on his airplane but offered to take me up on a hour long flight up the coast. He also with my surprise let me take it off and land. Now I told him after the flight that this seemed unbelievable that somebody who spent nearly 2000 hours building his airplane and not knowing me more than 1 hour would let me at the controls, even if he is a CFI.
I have to say that the performance, handling and comfort of this aircraft exceeded everything I heard about the RV-9a. From the quick take off, fast rate of climb, controls that needed only slight pressure one way or the other as well as even the stalls were incredibly easy.
I am still look at building this aircraft with a little apprehension, but then again the rewards look to great to pass up.
One other thing....What Terry did was not only give me a ride and spend time talking about any questions I had, but he is an incredibly nice guy and cemented what I have been noticing already. There seems to be such a large group of passionate group of people that would be willing to bend over backwards to help you. I look forward to not only building such a nice plane, but look forward to meeting other nice people that comes with the territory.