The adventure begins!

I’ve been contemplating building an airplane for a quite a while. I remember seeing the EAA displays at airshows where they would have a wide array of RV’s, Kitfoxes, Highlanders, and the like. I remember getting the chance to see my first RV up close was when I was taking flight lessons with Monarch Air in McKinney, TX. The local high school and EAA chapter had built an RV-12 (pictured below) which peaked my interest and made me think this might not be too difficult after all.

I had also watched Trent Palmer’s YouTube channel quite a bit. I loved seeing what he could do to his plane without having too many hassles to go through, and I loved the flights he would go on whenever he wanted. But, my mission was different for my desired plane though. I don’t have much land that I can go land on freely here in Oklahoma like they do in Nevada and Idaho. And I really wanted to travel more with my family and especially my wife when we become empty nesters (in a long time lol)

That’s when I caught the content that FlightChops had put up about his recent visit to the Van’s Aircraft Headquarters and trying out many of the different RV models. I was fascinated by each of them and curious about the possibilities of what I would put in it. Then he started posting his build videos of his RV-14. That’s when the bug really hit hard. I saw that the process (though tedious, time consuming, and very detail oriented) would be something that I could take on and could get a fast airplane, custom built for me, by me, at a decent price.

I ordered a practice kit after seeing it on the Van’s Aircraft online store (as well as a shirt… I’m a sucker for a t-shirt). I haven’t started working on it yet as it just arrived, but I’ve now found other channels and websites covering RV-10 builds specifically. I saw Brian and Brandi’s website with their build, videos, photos, cost log, etc. I then saw the Plane Lady YouTube channel as well as Jason Ellis’ YouTube channel covering their build’s and how they were doing. I was encouraged even more by seeing how the process went in detail through their videos.

I then posted to the Central Oklahoma Aviator’s Facebook group asking if any local pilot’s had an RV-10 that they wouldn’t mind walking around with my wife and I. I quickly had 9-10 answers of people telling me where they knew an RV-10 was and I even had a few pilot’s willing to give me some of their precious time to see their babies. We plan on going to see them this weekend if everything plays out and I know I am super excited. So excited that I reserved a tail number and created this site! The tail number will be…

N983RV

I hope you join along with me while I go through the practice kit and go with me all the way through till the day I finish her! I plan on then converting this to a site covering our flying adventures, costs associated with the upkeep, and my whole experience with the RV-10 platform as it becomes a part of our life.