6,000 Flying RV!

I would love to own an RV, but I just can't justify paying so much money for a kit built airplane that someone has built in his spare time. I am not interested in building one myself and can't afford to hire someone to do it for me.
 
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Cool! I have help accounted for 1/6000th of those figures, and soon I will have contributed to 1/3000+th of those figures. ;)
 
Dean said:
I would love to own an RV, but I just can't justify paying so much money for a kit built airplane that some has built in his spare time. I am not interested in building one myself and can't afford to hire someone to do it for me.
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I guess value is a relative term, but I'd think the RV series would be a better buy than many other experimentals due to the size of the fleet - it's not like it's an unknown.


Trapper John
 
Dean said:
I would love to own an RV, but I just can't justify paying so much money for a kit built airplane that someone has built in his spare time. quote]


What does who/where it was built have to do with it? Regardless of whether you buy certified or experimental, you'd get a good pre-buy, right?

The question is what value you place on a good flying, economical, aerobatic, 200 mph airplane.
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Man, I thought you meant 6000 DOLLAR flying RV!
 
kyleb said:
What does who/where it was built have to do with it? Regardless of whether you buy certified or experimental, you'd get a good pre-buy, right?
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A pre-buy cannot possibly find every problem that a builder may have induced. :no:
 
Chairboy said:
This is of course true for a factory built plane as well.
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Yes, but there is a LOT of FAA nonsense that goes on to make sure that factory airplanes are built to a specific (certified) design and that they're all the same. While nothing can be perfect, it gives me a lot more confidence than some random builder. While I know that some random builder can also make a much BETTER airplane than Cessna, I'm not going to know whether it's a diamond or a lemon. :dunno:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Yes, but there is a LOT of FAA nonsense that goes on to make sure that factory airplanes are built to a specific (certified) design and that they're all the same. While nothing can be perfect, it gives me a lot more confidence than some random builder. While I know that some random builder can also make a much BETTER airplane than Cessna, I'm not going to know whether it's a diamond or a lemon. :dunno:
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And that's why I won't build one myself. I know that I don't have the aptitude for it. Some say that you should always plan to build two airplanes when starting out; one to learn on, the other to fly in. Guess what happens to the ones built to learn on?
 
flyingcheesehead said:
A pre-buy cannot possibly find every problem that a builder may have induced. :no:
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I dunno about that. RV's are very, very simple. I would think that in a 4-6 hour prebuy, you could check all structural attach points, check everything in the control system, check the overall construction quality of the airplane, and check everything that has to do with the engine and fuel delievery system. IMO, those are the things that could get you hurt, unless you wanna take the bird IFR before the avionics have proven themselves reliable...

I *think* I'd feel better about the general condition of a 5-10 year old RV than a 30, 40, or 50 year old production airplane. There are sooo many things that can go wrong over that time period. Non-reported damage, poorly repaired damage, corrosion, etc. etc. etc..
 
kyleb said:
I dunno about that. RV's are very, very simple. I would think that in a 4-6 hour prebuy, you could check all structural attach points, check everything in the control system, check the overall construction quality of the airplane, and check everything that has to do with the engine and fuel delievery system. IMO, those are the things that could get you hurt, unless you wanna take the bird IFR before the avionics have proven themselves reliable...

I *think* I'd feel better about the general condition of a 5-10 year old RV than a 30, 40, or 50 year old production airplane. There are sooo many things that can go wrong over that time period. Non-reported damage, poorly repaired damage, corrosion, etc. etc. etc..
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Absolutley, and you can fix them yourself....if you have the knowledge.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Yes, but there is a LOT of FAA nonsense that goes on to make sure that factory airplanes are built to a specific (certified) design and that they're all the same. While nothing can be perfect, it gives me a lot more confidence than some random builder. While I know that some random builder can also make a much BETTER airplane than Cessna, I'm not going to know whether it's a diamond or a lemon. :dunno:
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FAA nonsense just costs more money, it does not insure a better plane at all.
 
gprellwitz said:
And that's why I won't build one myself. I know that I don't have the aptitude for it. Some say that you should always plan to build two airplanes when starting out; one to learn on, the other to fly in. Guess what happens to the ones built to learn on?
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You have got to be kidding me. The one they "learned on" has passed an FAA or DAR inspection and has been issued an AW Cert. Somehow these planes are less an airplane because you don't have the skills (or care to learn) to build one? Have you ever seen one being built? Talked to a builder? Attended OSH?

This thread was started to celebrate a USA aircraft kit manufacturer's unmatched accomplishments in worldwide aviation, not to continue old wives tales about "what you heard someone say". Seems to me you should give US workers (and aircraft builders) a pat on the back for HELPING support general aviation instead of trying to continue 80 year old rumors.

Funny, I would NEVER consider buying a spam can (certified plane), or be caught dead flying one. What a waste of money and metal.

To each his own, I guess.
 
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Geico266 said:
You have got to be kidding me. The one they "learned on" has passed an FAA or DAR inspection and has been issued an AW Cert. Somehow these planes are less an airplane because you don't have the skills (or care to learn) to build one? Have you ever seen one being built? Talked to a builder? Attended OSH?

This thread was started to celebrate a USA aircraft kit manufacturer's unmatched accomplishments in worldwide aviation, not to continue old wives tales about "what you heard someone say". Seems to me you should give US workers (and aircraft builders) a pat on the back for HELPING support general aviation instead of trying to continue 80 year old rumors.
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Well, my original response was a little tongue in cheek, but not too much so. I go to OSH annually, and I've seen some wonderful workmanship. I did not make blanket statements about experimentl aircraft. Go back and read what I wrote. My point is that you can't honestly claim they're all wonderful. Of some all you can say is "yeah, it passed the inspection." Doesn't mean it passed by a lot. Just because it's experimental doesn't mean that it's automatically on one end of the spectrum or the other.

A given manufacturer is going to have a certain consistency to their build quality, though one would expect that quality to increase over time as they gain experience. That should be true whether that builder is Joe Blow or Cessna.

I'm reminded of the old saying: "What do they call the person who graduated bottom of the class in medical school? Doctor." Doesn't mean I necessarily want my life to rely on that doctor.
Geico266 said:
Funny, I would NEVER consider buying a spam can (certified plane), or be caught dead flying one. What a waste of money and metal.

To each his own, I guess.
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I'm not making blanket statements like that about experimental planes. Why are you so adamantly against certificated planes? How about the Cessna, née Columbia, née Lancair Certificated?
 
Congrats to RV builders/owners. As for quality, we have a guy near me that only paints RVs, it's his signature work. So, I've seen a lot of RVs, inside too. Every one I've ever seen is nearly flawless.
 
gprellwitz said:
Well, my original response was a little tongue in cheek, but not too much so. I go to OSH annually, and I've seen some wonderful workmanship. I did not make blanket statements about experimentl aircraft. Go back and read what I wrote. My point is that you can't honestly claim they're all wonderful.
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And you're right in saying that not all experimentals are good. I've seen horriffic examples. There was an RV-6A at SnF a year or two ago that looked like it was a static airframe put out on the flightline as a joke. The frightening thing was that it had flown down from New Jersey.

Among other things, the fit and finish was so bad it made you wonder if all the important stuff was actually riveted/bolted together or if duct tape was substituted. Beyond that, it was fitted with a prop that has a terrible failure rate when used with big bore lycomings. I was scared to have my airplane parked close to it.

Fortunately, that nightmare example of an RV was identifiable from 100 feet away. Others, you might need to be a little closer, but a good prebuy would weed out most anything a builder could screw up.
 
kyleb said:
I *think* I'd feel better about the general condition of a 5-10 year old RV than a 30, 40, or 50 year old production airplane. There are sooo many things that can go wrong over that time period. Non-reported damage, poorly repaired damage, corrosion, etc. etc. etc..
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I dunno, Kyle...the things that are probably more likely to be missed on a homebuilt are things that affect longevity.

A buddy bought an older T-18. He ended up disassembling it for some reason, and found that the original builder had routed the throttle cable around a corner of the fuel tank. Over twenty years, the cable had vibrated and had almost cut a slot through the tank.

I think this is the kind of thing that would be more likely to be found on the average homebuilt. With a production type airplane, with thousands built and flying for ~35 years, it's probably more likely this would have been detected and the subject of an AD.

There's lots of things that can be invisible on a pre-buy inspection that'll bite you relatively quickly. A friend lost an engine in an RV when a thin streamer of pro-seal detached and tried to flow through the carb (successful deadstick landing). Other than raking through the tank, I'm not sure how one would have found this in advance.

When I did my accident analysis, I found the accident rates tapered off fairly steeply as the total hours increased. However, there is a secondary spike in the 40-70 hour range.
spike.jpg

Part of this is due to folks leaving the local vicinity (e.g., fuel exhaustion and VFR into IFR cases), but the hardware stuff increases, too. Just because it held together for 40 hours doesn't mean it's good for 200.

With THAT said, I think most folks would be better off with a five-year-old RV than a 40-year-old Cessna....

Ron Wanttaja
 
Geico266 said:
You have got to be kidding me. The one they "learned on" has passed an FAA or DAR inspection and has been issued an AW Cert. Somehow these planes are less an airplane because you don't have the skills (or care to learn) to build one? Have you ever seen one being built? Talked to a builder? Attended OSH?
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I'd take buying a homebuilt the same way I'd take buying a Heathkit. (For the youngsters around here, they offered a pretty complete line of electronic equipment, from test gear to ham radio to televisions. I built all or part of three GR2001 TVs while I was a teenager.) Give it a good, thorough inspection, know how they should be built so you can tell whether the solder joints are nice and pretty or cold and globby, twist all of the knobs to make sure they're smooth, fire it up and take it through its paces, make sure you get all of the books, and then if it passes, buy with confidence. The same would go for a homebuilt airplane, though I'd get help for the inspection because I don't know what to look for there. I'd also be very leery of composite aircraft because you cannot know whether they were built competently without basically cutting them apart.

Funny, I would NEVER consider buying a spam can (certified plane), or be caught dead flying one. What a waste of money and metal.
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Hey. Not everyone can build, or has the confidence to buy a homebuilt. There are also, sad to say, truly crappily built homebuilts out there.
 
Geico266 said:
FAA nonsense just costs more money, it does not insure a better plane at all.
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Note that I said the *exp* can be better than the *cessna*. I didn't say the FAA makes it better.

Put another way, certified isn't necessarily better - It's just more consistent.

Ron, excellent and informative post. :yes:
 
kyleb said:
Dean said:
I would love to own an RV, but I just can't justify paying so much money for a kit built airplane that someone has built in his spare time. quote]


What does who/where it was built have to do with it?
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A lot, if I didn't know and trust the builder, I wouldn't buy it. Not saying that there aren't some good quality home builts out there, but there are a lot of crappy ones too. A good pre-buy won't find everything, some things are hidden, and those are the ones that will kill you.
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wanttaja said:
I dunno, Kyle...the things that are probably more likely to be missed on a homebuilt are things that affect longevity.

A buddy bought an older T-18. He ended up disassembling it for some reason, and found that the original builder had routed the throttle cable around a corner of the fuel tank. Over twenty years, the cable had vibrated and had almost cut a slot through the tank.

I think this is the kind of thing that would be more likely to be found on the average homebuilt. With a production type airplane, with thousands built and flying for ~35 years, it's probably more likely this would have been detected and the subject of an AD.

There's lots of things that can be invisible on a pre-buy inspection that'll bite you relatively quickly. A friend lost an engine in an RV when a thin streamer of pro-seal detached and tried to flow through the carb (successful deadstick landing). Other than raking through the tank, I'm not sure how one would have found this in advance.

<much snippage>

Ron Wanttaja
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Ron, the two incidents you list are exactly the kind of things a good pre-buy *should* catch in my opinion. I would think a good inspector would trace every critical control (throttle, mixture, elevators, ailerons, rudders, brakes, etc.) along its entire path and would have found the throttle cable that was wearing on the fuel tank.

Also, I would think a good inspection would include the observations on "what's missing". Did the RV you mentioned have anything in the fuel system to filter debris? Even a gascolator should have caught the proseal string you mentioned. Assuming there was no filter or gascolator, I would hope whoever inspected the airplane would have said "you need to add some sort of a fuel filter"..
 
Geico,
You seem to think that people are saying that Experimental = GOOD and Certificated = BAD. I have NOT seen that to be the case.

What I've seen is that Experimental = VARIABLE and Certificated = CONSISTENT. We've allowed that there are both very good and very bad experimental planes, and that one needs to take care before taking one. Certificated planes TEND TO BE more consistent and TEND TO BE safe. Note that I didn't say safer because I'm not comparing them to anything.
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The world as I imagine it.

 
Geico,

I don't think I wrote the quote you used in your last post. How 'bout fixing that attribution.
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Whoa! Not sure not that happend, my bad. Sorry man!
 
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kyleb said:
Ron, the two incidents you list are exactly the kind of things a good pre-buy *should* catch in my opinion. I would think a good inspector would trace every critical control (throttle, mixture, elevators, ailerons, rudders, brakes, etc.) along its entire path and would have found the throttle cable that was wearing on the fuel tank.
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I'm not sure it would have been accessible during a pre-buy or annual. The new owner had been taking the plane apart to a considerable extent for a bit of re-build/cleanup when he found the problem. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd had to drill out some rivets to get access.


kyleb said:
Also, I would think a good inspection would include the observations on "what's missing". Did the RV you mentioned have anything in the fuel system to filter debris? Even a gascolator should have caught the proseal string you mentioned. Assuming there was no filter or gascolator, I would hope whoever inspected the airplane would have said "you need to add some sort of a fuel filter"..
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My understanding is that the sealer peeled off in a long, thin strip and passed through the fuel lines until it hit the first obstruction. Then it "piled up" until it closed off the line. I'm not familiar with the fuel system on an RV, but I would expect them to have something like a finger strainer near the tank itself. Don't know if the sealer got past it somehow, or if the builder had left it off. If the latter...well, do people drain fuel tanks and extract the finger strainers on a typical pre-buy inspection? If not, a pre-buy wouldn't have caught the lack.

Then, of course, there's the third potential problem: Deliberate hiding of problems in order to be able to sell the plane.

That is apparently what happened to me. A few years after buying my Fly Baby, I noticed some unusual markings appearing on a gear leg. A previous builder had had a landing accident, carved off the outer laminations of the wood (presumably damaged), laid in strips of scrap wood, wrapped some fiberglass cloth around it, then bondo'd the thing up to make the repair invisible.

I tell the sad story at:

http://www.bowersflybaby.com/stories/grounding.htm

A pre-buy wouldn't have shown this, either. Certainly, something similar could happen to a production-type aircraft. But in most cases, it's going to take a conspiracy...literally. Owners of Cessnas typically don't have the kinds of skills it takes to fake up a repair; they need the collusion of a willing A&P.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Ron, if you found damage that was not entered into the log book is there recourse? Would the FAA get involved? Clearly, that was substaintial damage.

Just asking.
 
Geico266 said:
Ron, if you found damage that was not entered into the log book is there recourse? Would the FAA get involved? Clearly, that was substaintial damage.
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I am the fourth owner of the airplane and, it's the original builder who did the non-logged repair. So I doubt I could recover anything from him. As far as the FAA is concerned, they could probably suspend the guy's A&P license if he had one, but I suspect all he had was the Repairman Certificate on the airplane itself.

The problem was a hassle, but it wasn't expensive. A friend had two spare gear legs and gave them to me, and all I had to do was pay for shipping. Just new bolts, washers, and nuts from that point....

Ron Wanttaja
 
The problem was a hassle, but it wasn't expensive. A friend had two spare gear legs and gave them to me, and all I had to do was pay for shipping. Just new bolts, washers, and nuts from that point....

Ron Wanttaja[/quote]


The joys of Fly Baby ownership. CHEAP FLYING!
 
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