Yesterday my RV-7 project received a thorough going-over from Paul Dye, an aviator who I've been proud to call my friend and mentor. Having found no issues with parts or paperwork, he used his newly-granted powers as a DAR to issue my airworthiness certificate, transforming my long-running project into a real airplane at last.
In terms of calendar time, it's been a little over 19 years since I placed the order for my empennage kit. Somehow it doesn't seem that far in the past, even though this project has been a part of my life for a very long time. I did have several multi-year periods where I couldn't work on it at all for various reasons, and there were a lot of cold winters where progress came to a standstill, plus I have a job that keeps me very busy. Still, if you count only the periods where I was actively building, it's probably been at least ten years of low-rate effort and slow, incremental progress.
I haven't kept track of how many hours I've put into it, but I do have a guess. If you consider the fact that I'm a fairly methodical builder, I'm sure I could account for a couple thousand hours of work and planning that went into the construction of the aircraft. However, I also built my own avionics, or at least was partly responsible for the design and engineering of most of the electronic items in my airplane. So if I include, with tongue in cheek, all the years of my engineering career that have gone into my instrument panel, I can claim that I have at least 50,000 hours in my RV project! With that in mind, maybe 19 years isn't so long after all...
In terms of calendar time, it's been a little over 19 years since I placed the order for my empennage kit. Somehow it doesn't seem that far in the past, even though this project has been a part of my life for a very long time. I did have several multi-year periods where I couldn't work on it at all for various reasons, and there were a lot of cold winters where progress came to a standstill, plus I have a job that keeps me very busy. Still, if you count only the periods where I was actively building, it's probably been at least ten years of low-rate effort and slow, incremental progress.
I haven't kept track of how many hours I've put into it, but I do have a guess. If you consider the fact that I'm a fairly methodical builder, I'm sure I could account for a couple thousand hours of work and planning that went into the construction of the aircraft. However, I also built my own avionics, or at least was partly responsible for the design and engineering of most of the electronic items in my airplane. So if I include, with tongue in cheek, all the years of my engineering career that have gone into my instrument panel, I can claim that I have at least 50,000 hours in my RV project! With that in mind, maybe 19 years isn't so long after all...