Occasionally, it is best not to think too much.
Grinding It Out
Much like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, I never knew
where the road would lead when I became "casually"
aware of Van's Aircraft in 1995. It was all very interesting;
but we (my wife, Sara, and I) needed a comfortable fourplace aircraft, and the existing Van's offerings seemed too
snappy for cross-country travel. But then rumors began
to be heard, projected speciļ¬cations were published, and
pathetically poor pictures surfaced of a four-seater under
development. When Dick Van Grunsven wrote his pilot
report on the new RV-10, we believed, mostly on Van's
values, that this was the airplane for us. In July 2003 we
received an order form and mailed it the next day, becoming Kit No. 29. The big box was delivered in October, and
my life changed forever. And most amazingly, we have
never regretted what was basically an emotional decision.
The airframe building moved along mindlessly, prepping,
drilling, and riveting the aluminum pieces together. After
watching the prices of four-cylinder Lycoming engines
react to the volume of Van's earlier products, I jumped
on a pristine, 20-hour SFOH Lycoming IO-540 and lovingly
tucked it away for a later day. Around June 2005, I realized that the airframe and engine completion was easy to
visualize, but how would I transform the blank aluminum
plate into a functional panel?
Remember, in 2005 the avionics choices were not what
they are today. I looked at Garmin, Chelton, Dynon, OP
Technologies, and Blue Mountain, rejecting each of
these vendors for a variety of reasons. I had been designing and implementing computer solutions since 1969
EAA Experimenter
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