Finding The RV-1
Sorry to make everyone wait, but it’s been a busy week and this is the first chance I’ve had to sit and “answer the mail”, so to speak….(It's aso fun to read the speculation ....)
As Bob found in his search, yes indeed, this is the airplane that we were shown in a hangar at Dunham Field on the east side of Houston a couple of years ago. I had dropped in to do a TC visit for builder (now flyer!) Chuck Elsey, and he said that he had something to show me before we looked at his RV-6. The RV-1 was tucked back in a corner, recuperating from a ground loop. I took some pictures and asked a few questions that eventually lead to the owner of the airplane. At that point, I put the proposition of acquiring the airplane to some RV friends here in Texas, and that set the wheels in motion. In several visits with Dick VanGrunsven over the intervening time, we became quite sure that this was, indeed, his first “RV”, and when the opportunity came to close the deal a few months ago, I reviewed the logbooks.
Talk about an amazing set of historical documents! The airplane did, in fact, start out as a Stits playboy which Van bought several years after it was constructed. He upgraded the engine right off the bat, and flew it for awhile before again taking it out of service and changing the wings, tail, turtledeck, canopy … and relicensed it as the “VanGrunsven RV-1”. He flew it for about 600 hours before selling it to someone near Dallas/fort Worth. It eventually found its way down to the Houston area where it had a couple of different owners.
Soon after we picked up the airplane from its previous owner, I wrote up a brief history of the airplane by paging through the logbooks, and we’ll certainly have this available on the “Friends” website as soon as that gets up and running. I passed this history by Van and his comment was that he might have to help me “flesh it out” a little as we go through the restoration. This is going to be a heck of a fun project, and it is going to take a lot of people to make it happen – look for the web site to be online soon (I hope – I am not a webmaster, but we have “top men” working on the project right now….), and figure out a way to contribute if you want to be a part of this airplane’s unique history!
Paul
P.S.:There were a couple of mentions of photos of the RV-1 - any and all would be appreciated!! We are going to have our agents in Oregon involved in getting whatever is available, because we know that the cowling, canopy, and canopy skirt are significantly different at this time than they were originally.