Project News

As if life isn’t generally busy enough, building an aeroplane and gaining that first Permit to Fly generally takes up any spare time that a builder may have. So I think it’s an act of generosity to squeeze a little extra out of the time sponge by getting in touch with Project News and sharing progress in these pages. These project reports are told from many different perspectives, difficulties overcome, new skills learnt to name a few. Among others, Tony Spence has been in touch this month to share a little of his gorgeous looking RV-7 and explains how he owes his avionics success to his past experience with tractors. Hopefully that ‘click bait’ equivalent has sparked your interest enough for you to go and read his report below!

Steve Lloyd’s focus in his RV-8 report is more on how things have changed relatively quickly with regard to sourcing our aircraft and their sub-systems. Not least how the exchange rate changes have had a significant inflationary effect upon our components. I can recall jumping on one of Sir Freddie Laker’s services a long, long, long time ago when £1 bought you $2.40 – wouldn’t the prospective Van’s builder just love that currency rate now?

Last month John Price started the story of his RV-12iS build, we have the concluding part below. Having test flown, finished the aircraft and had her painted, he includes some performance figures. I think this is an interesting aspect left out of many project reports, it’s natural curiosity to wonder about such parameters of how fast, at what revs, using how much fuel, what disposable load and so on.

Project News relies upon the good nature of our fellow members making the effort to get in touch with Project News. So please, if you are building, do share your experience with us, your fellow members. To tell your story, report a milestone or just to send a picture, email: projectnews@laa.uk.com. Please share your story!

Tony gained his licence 34 years ago and for 10 years owned an aerobatic Robin. Following this he found his way into paragliding and that led him to a paramotor. Then as life intervened, he simply fell out of flying.

A few years ago, having retired from farming, Tony started to get the itch to build his own aircraft and get back into flying. He re-validated his licence and set about locating his local LAA Inspector. Fate put him in touch with Vernon ‘Oz’ Millard, who was an old friend and flying buddy he’d lost touch with some time ago, he’d not only found himself an Inspector, but an old chum as well, all in one go. Oz confirmed that the RV-7 would be an ideal choice for a project but urged he opt for the quick build kit, suggesting that building the empennage would almost certainly satisfy his desire for driving rivets as there is still plenty more building to do even on a quick build. Tony says he was absolutely correct, and was happy to have had the fabrication experience on the tail, but felt he’d done enough riveting by its completion. An RV-7 quick build kit was ordered and fortunately arrived before the world shut down, which meant his build became the ideal lockdown and retirement project.

From the beginning the project was conceived as night IFR and much effort was put into research at an early stage to achieve this goal. Tony said he ‘grew up’ in his flying with steam gauges, but was just amazed upon his return to light aviation at the capabilities of modern EFIS systems, SkyDemon and Electronic Conspicuity that we are now able to fit to a Permit aircraft. As a farmer, he’d been astounded at the capabilities of modern tractor GPS guidance systems but learned very quickly that as capable as they may be, components from different manufacturers are often not very good at talking to one another. So from the outset he was determined to keep everything in the aircraft from one manufacturer. This resulted in a full Garmin system based around a G3X.

He designed and carried out all of the wiring himself and, while not qualified in that area, farmers are generally very practical self-taught people. Tony says that it’s been great fun over the last 2-3 years building the aircraft and that the first proving flight took place on 3 October 2022. At the controls was another old flying buddy, Phil O’Donahue or ‘Pod’, who Tony had also lost touch with until he handled Tony’s licence revalidation.

G-CMDS (LAA 303-15582) Van’s RV-8

Built by Steve Lloyd

Sand yet he is a serial builder with a couple of RVs in his portfolio. He confesses that his passion is for formation aerobatics and, as well as RVs, he’s also enjoyed owning a Jet Provost and a Yak 52 – I also detect a strong interest in classic cars.

When I had a brief conversation with him, he suggested this will be his last RV build as they are just becoming so expensive. It’s not just the kit price and the exchange rate, but also engines and avionics have seen significant hikes. Equally, delivery times have also become very extended for those same items as well. He suggests the cost to build has easily doubled since built one 10 years ago, your money would probably have doubled by now. Try that with a 10-year-old car!

Above Steve is a member of the Ravens display team, so the aircraft carries their colours.

Below left Now, I’m sure I dropped that fiver down here somewhere….

Below right One man, two passions, classic cars and aerobatics.

Steve’s advice to anyone building an RV, or indeed most LAA types is, ‘keep it simple, keep it regular, you’re not building an airliner’.

For his instrumentation he is a keen glass fan but suggests he’ll always go for MGL, just as capable and feature rich, but it’s a brand without the profile or price tag. In fact, viewed in his own very pragmatic way, he suggests most such systems are like a 60 programme dishwasher you may buy, you’ll only ever end up using two of them.