It’s official! We placed the order for our RV-14 wing kit today and I’m hoping that it will ship sometime before the Christmas break. We officially have dibs on Vans RV-14 serial number 140026.

I expect that the wing kit will take around 500 man-hours so this should keep me busy for a while but the empenage kits should be ready to ship by the end of the year or so…in plenty of time.

Among the Van’s Aircraft models, we chose the RV-14 primarily because of the more roomy cabin and suitability for cross-country trips. We will build the nose wheel version (versus the tail dragger) and the slider canopy is not available on the 14 so tip up it is!

So, let the adventure begin!

On August 18 and 19, Dad drove down and went with Ashley and I to the EAA SportAir Workshop on building a Vans RV. The workshop was held in Waco by the local EAA chapter there. The intent of the workshop is to give future builders an introduction to the tools and techniques required to build an airplane. The do this by building a couple of practice projects. The first is just a few pieces of aluminum riveted together to work on technique. We each completed our own version of this and Ashley easily bettered both of the guys.

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After that we worked together to complete a small airfoil piece similar to the control surfaces on the Vans kits. All in all, we had a great time of working with the tools and gaining confidence.