A fellow flying club member, and friend, is currently building an RV-12. We had got to talking RV’s at the airport one day, and he invited me over to “give it a try”. He said he had some scrap metal we could practice on.

We setup a mutually convenient time on a Sunday morning to meet at his house and get started. Instead of drilling and riveting scrap metal, he pulls out the Van’s toolbox project that he bought several years ago and never used. He looks at me and says, lets do this project!  Umm…. okay, great!

He spent a few hours with me showing me the ropes and helping out build the toolbox.

  

I think I was able to pick up riveting pretty quickly. Certainly some room for more practice and perfection, mostly with making sure I keep the rivet gun and bucking bar perpendicular to the rivet.

While my finished product wasn’t perfect, I certainly walked away with the impression that I could indeed do this stuff.

Thanks so much, Dave!

Some pics of his RV-12 in progress.

The Trinidad has served us well over the 6 years of ownership. I have taken the plane on many trips around the eastern part of the country. They include Tampa, FL, Savannah, GA, West Virginia, Charlotte, NC, Ocean City, MD, Hamilton, OH, Various places in PA, Oshkosh, WI, Upper Peninsula of MI, and lots of places local to the New England states. I’ve probably missed a few…

As with all things in life, some things change. There have been some changes in the lives of my airplane partners to warrant them getting out of the partnership. Thus the decision to sell our bird.

This sale got me to thinking forward to what might be next for me in this aviation world. Of course, the thought to build my own plane resurfaced, and launched me into research mode again.

One of the things that I really wanted to do was to at least see an RV-10 up close, and personal. I wanted to make sure that the interior space and baggage area was sufficient for our needs. So I reached out to the local EAA chapter, which I am a member of, to see if anyone locally was building one. I was connected to a local chapter member who lives an hour away from me, so we setup a time to meet at his house to look over and talk about his project.

Jim’s RV-10 isn’t 100% complete yet. He is a little over half done working on the fuselage, specifically fitting the cabin top onto the structure. Below is a picture of the stage where Jim is at when I went to visit.

I was able to see the baggage compartment and access door, and also sit in what would be the back seat with a cushion on the frame to get a feel for what it’s like inside. Jim and I spent about an hour together talking about his experiences with the build and lots of suggestions if I do end up building. It was certainly a good thing to see the project I’m considering in progress to get a grasp on the magnitude.

Even though this was a very productive visit, I still felt like I really needed to see a finished one in person.

I started thinking about building my own airplane back in late 2008/early 2009. I was part of a flying club that has decent planes to fly, but not really well suited for longer trips that I wanted to take. I started thinking of what I could do to address that issue. In looking over airplane classifieds, it seemed like the only airplanes I could afford were old, with outdated avionics. Everything newer had a very steep purchase price that just seemed way out of my reach. I quickly latched onto the idea of building one myself. I’m an Electrical Engineer by trade, and really love understanding all the intricacies of how things work and are built. I have a reasonable skill level mechanically (doing various home-improvement projects over the years), so I really was convinced that I had what it takes to make a project of such magnitude a success. I really wanted to have a 4 seat airplane, so my choices were somewhat limited. I quickly narrowed in on the Van’s RV-10 for several reasons.

1. It is largely an aluminum airframe (minus the cabin top/doors and cowling). An entirely carbon airframe with no fiberglass experience seemed rather daunting.
2. Relatively fast (160-170kt true airspeed) on somewhere between 9-14 gallons per hour. Dependent on how you run the engine.
3. The large support system. There is a massive community, not to mention support from Vans themselves, when it comes to support during my build. Rest assured that if I ever were to hit a roadblock or have a question, there would be plenty of answers out there.

I did tons of research, and even started taking steps to better insulate my garage and make an attempt to provide heat out there to be able to work during the freezing cold winter months.

During my research, I found there to be many benefits to building your own airplane.

1. Performing your own maintenance. This alone will save lots of money over the ownership of the plane. Not having to pay for overpriced mechanics that seem to only do an okay job.
2. Brand new airframe with state-of-the-art avionics systems for a fraction of the cost of something comparable in the used market.
3. Spreading the money over a period of time, such that one could accomplish the build debt-free.

Around that same time, a fellow club member approached me to see about my interest in buying into a plane that he already owned with some other partners that wanted to sell. Discussions ensued for several months in search of other partners. Eventually, we found enough to make it viable for everyone, and we purchased into his 1986 Socata Trinidad TB21.

That quelled any thoughts of building my own plane… at least for now….