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Selection.htm
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MY THOUGHT PROCESS FOR SELECTION OF THE RV-10 There were different considerations used when I decided which plane I wanted to buy or build. I'd like to tell you that I started this process with the considerations identified, and with the intention of reaching a studied, reasoned conclusion. In reality, the result came from spending literally two years reading about airplanes because that's all I could do. I didn't have the finances nor the family's blessing to begin. In the end it worked out, and the criteria ended up being: 1) Ownership I have had my private ticket for about a year, and I've already grown very tired of trying to grab an available rental. My schedule is such that I usually don't know when I will be able to fly. I've oftentimes been told the happiest day of a man's life is when he buys his plane or boat, and the next happiest day is when he sells it. I hope that's not the case, because I want to be able to get into MY plane and fly it when and where I want to. That has not been my experience with rentals. There never seems to be a plane available when I want to go, and if it is available, I would have to bring it back before I was ready to come back. If it was available, it also had a squawk. That has led me to not fly as often as I want to. I can always do loops in the pattern, but that's not what I understand flying to be. Therefore, I wanted to own a plane. My next issue is to decide whether I wanted to buy or build. This was an easy choice for me. To buy a new airplane that had the capabilities I was looking for, I would have to spend between $400,000.00 to $600,000.00. That put my goals squarely out of reach. It seems a no-brainer to build something that at least holds its value and has the same capabilities as an airplane that costs four to six times more. Capabilities My wife does not like small airplanes, but hope springs eternal. My goals for the airplane are to be able to travel distances within a reasonable amount of time. Acrobatics would be nice, but are not within my goals right now. Being a new pilot just starting instrument training, I didn't see acrobatics being a goal for the foreseeable future. For this airplane, travel is the goal.
I want an airplane that will get us places (read: "speed"). That would allow the wife to go places she wants to be. I recognize and acknowledge that she may never come around. I will simply meet her there. Using the Golden Eagle Duats, I would plan out different flights to different places with the parameters of a Cessna SP. The times were just too long to make flight practical. Running the same flight plans with the parameters of the RV-10 entered, and the trips were easy.
I wanted a true four-place airplane. I am a big guy (the euphemism would be "husky"). After reviewing a lot of the airplanes, both certificated and kits, there seemed to be a bit of slight of hand going on. On some of the planes, you could put four bodies into an airplane w/ full fuel if two of the bodies were small dogs. I wanted to be able to take two real people with LOTS of baggage (remember, I'm married) on a long trip, or four real people with little baggage on a quick trip. To make sure that happened, I had to look hard at the useful load ratings.
Candidly, retractable-gear airplanes scare me. The magazine AOPA Flight Trainer quotes statistics that there is at least one gears-up landing per day. It's no wonder that Their insurance rates are appreciably higher than are fixed gear. A review of the numbers also shows that there is very little top-speed difference between fixed and retractables. A lot of that probably has to do with the added weight of retractable gear.
It doesn't seem to matter whether you are a manufacturer of a certificated airplane or a kit. bankruptcy was in your future. Aside from that issue, it seemed important to see who actually had airplanes in the air, who was insurable, and who had a large support network on the web. Maybe I crafted my capability requirements to fit the conclusion I wanted; I don't know or care. The RV-10 meets all these requirements in spades. It legitimately carries four real people. There's lots of debate about the true top-end speed of the airplane, but it seems when you get all the kinks worked out, it runs right around 200 MPH. That puts trip times in the range to make medium and long trips practical. It is fixed gear, and Van's has been around for a relatively long time. There are legitimate transition courses to make the change from Cessnas to RV's. All of that makes the airplane insurable. I'm very comfortable with my choice based on all this.
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