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N731VF Became a Plane

ColoradoSolar said:
My RV-10 passed inspection and became a real plane today. Took 3 years 11 months and 6 days from first rivet to passing inspection. First flight still to happen but now It can (once I put everything back together).
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ColoradoSolar,
That is a massive daily effort.
Congratulations.
Dadduman58
 
Congrats!
I'm about to start pulling mine and hoping to complete it within 4.5years. Can I ask what you averaged per day to keep this pace? Any advice on kit orders, etc to keep the cadence?

Thanks!
 
JeffPeters said:
Congrats!
I'm about to start pulling mine and hoping to complete it within 4.5years. Can I ask what you averaged per day to keep this pace? Any advice on kit orders, etc to keep the cadence?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
I didn't keep track of all the hours I spent on the plane but I usually worked on the plane 7 days a week not including vacations and such. I probably spent an average of 4 hours a day during the week and then I could easily spend 8 hours a day on the weekends. Since I built it mostly in my shop it was easy to go out there for a few minutes here and there unlike once I moved it to the airport where it is 30 minutes each way.

I would order the kits as early as you can afford to. The kit may sit around waiting for you to be ready for it but better than you sitting around waiting for the kit. I sped up my ordering to beat some of the price increases and luckily got my engine a few months before things got really backlogged, otherwise I would still probably be waiting for some of the parts.

There were 2 things I heard that kept me going quickly. First is "Do something on the build everyday, even if it is just reading the next section of the plans", and the second was a double one "I am not building a show plane" and "I build quickly and will make some mistakes". I didn't prime the inside and I only drilled out rivets that were really bad. I have a few small dents where I didn't hold the rivet gun perfectly but in the end I have what I feel is a safe pretty good looking plane and I will never notice the few dents in the skin when I am flying along at 200mph :)
 
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