Building my own airplane

We’ve been preparing for it for a while, but my partner Tom Komer and I finally pulled the trigger and bough a kitplane – a Van’s RV-7, to be exact.

I had been wanting my own plane ever since I started flying way back in 1998.  I’m joking there – in terms of aviation, 9 years of flying is really not much.  Tom had his pilot’s license before he could drive, is a registered airframe and powerplant mechanic, a certified flight instructor, and a senior tower controller at the world’s busiest general aviation airport (and our home base), Van Nuys.  I jo9ined the Eight Ball Flying Club while I was just starting out as a student, and that is a very economical way to fly.

Being in many positions in the club, I also learned a lot about the financials of maintaining an airplane (I am currently the maintenance officer), and thought I’d likely NEVER want to own one myself.  Until the highly-skilled Tom Komer approached me about building one.  We did some research, and came acorss the blog of Dan Checkoway’s RV-7 Project, and sson met him to ask questions and to see and FLY his plane.  That was it.  HAD to have one.

So we bought the empennage kit (consisting of the horizontal stabilizer, the vertical stabilizer, elevators and rudder) so Tom could build it and make sure this was something we wanted to do.  My involvement was limited mostly to paying the bills.  That’s where my “expertise” lies.  :)  Nearly finished, we decided to go ahead and pull the trigger (gulp) and buy the quickbuild kit for the wings and the fuselage.  Quickbuild means that most of the assembly is completed – but there is still enough to be done that the FAA would consider us “the builders”.

So the kit arrives mid-February, it will take about a YEAR to build, and then we get to decide on the engine, prop, avionics and paint.  Lucky for me that Pi Software will be making untold millions by then.  I’m going to need it.