Hello, VAF community!
My name is Carlos Sanlley and I'm writing from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Which, as far as I know, makes this one of the few RV builds happening in the Caribbean.
Back in early 2021, I joined forces with two good friends Andres Sanchez and Alejandro Marranzini; and we decided to finally do what each of us had been quietly dreaming about for years, without ever having said it out loud to each other: build a Vans RV-8 from scratch, here in the DR. When we finally had that conversation, it turned out we had all been thinking the same thing. We figured it out one rivet at a time.
Four years later, we are just days away from receiving the airworthiness certificate for HI-1121EX. It's hard to put into words what that means to us, what started as a project on paper is about to become a flying airplane.
I'm starting this thread to introduce myself and to share the full journey with this community. Over the coming posts I plan to go back to the beginning and walk through the entire build process, the decisions we made, the challenges of building in a country where almost no aviation infrastructure exists, the mistakes, and the moments that made it all worth it.
To everyone on VAF who has posted a tip, a photo, or a lesson learned over the years, thank you. This community was an essential part of building this airplane. Now it's our turn to give something back.
Carlos S.
My name is Carlos Sanlley and I'm writing from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Which, as far as I know, makes this one of the few RV builds happening in the Caribbean.
Back in early 2021, I joined forces with two good friends Andres Sanchez and Alejandro Marranzini; and we decided to finally do what each of us had been quietly dreaming about for years, without ever having said it out loud to each other: build a Vans RV-8 from scratch, here in the DR. When we finally had that conversation, it turned out we had all been thinking the same thing. We figured it out one rivet at a time.
Four years later, we are just days away from receiving the airworthiness certificate for HI-1121EX. It's hard to put into words what that means to us, what started as a project on paper is about to become a flying airplane.
I'm starting this thread to introduce myself and to share the full journey with this community. Over the coming posts I plan to go back to the beginning and walk through the entire build process, the decisions we made, the challenges of building in a country where almost no aviation infrastructure exists, the mistakes, and the moments that made it all worth it.
To everyone on VAF who has posted a tip, a photo, or a lesson learned over the years, thank you. This community was an essential part of building this airplane. Now it's our turn to give something back.
Carlos S.
