Chris's RV10

I found someone at work (Chris) who's already building his RV10, so today we went to his place to see his project.

He's still in the first stages, building the tail - luckily for us, he had made a mistake and discarded one metal part, so using that scrap part he showed us many of the techniques we'll need for the job, such as dimpling, deburring, riveting, sanding, priming, and all the tools involved. He also recommended that we take the course at Aircrafters to learn all that properly. I finally got to take a look at the empennage plans (since there are no preview plans available from Vans) and know what to expect from them.

Given what we saw, I now understand where those 3-4 thousand estimated build hours come from :) though it does appear to be a lot to fun. We're looking foward to it.

EAA Member

I'm the newest EAA and IAC member!

I decided to join the EAA to learn more about home building and meet other homebuilders. Since I also have a lot of interest in aerobatics, I joined the IAC along with it.

I should also add that the EAA Videos website (not just for members) is an awesome source of information to learn some basics (e.g. how to use clecos).


I decided to start this blog to document our progress on our RV-10 project. So what's the current state? Well, we haven't built or ordered anything at this point - we're in a planning stage, where I'm reading as much as I can about the plane, about building (since it's my first homebuilt) and about all the possible available components and mods for the RV-10, so when we do get started, it'll go more smoothly. Also, given that I'll soon be moving to the US, it makes a lot more sense to only start building once I'm established there.

That leads me to the one thing that's decided - the fact that it's going to be an RV-10 from Vans. This is for two main reasons: first, it's a plane that many people have built and customized, so there's a lot of information and mod kits/parts available for it; also, the specs make it look like an awesome cross-country plane, which is what I'd like from it (I was previously considering buying a Cirrus or Diamond). Other options I considered were the RV-8 (for its acro capability), the Lancairs (look awesome, but more expensive and more complex to build) and the Thunder Mustang (racing plane, way too much for a first project, I don't feel confident to fly something I'm going to built at 160kt, let alone 250-300kt).

My main source of information so far has been, besides Google, the Vans Air Force forums, and many things referenced or linked from there.

I'll be making more posts about each specific thing I researched, probably with tons of links.