I’m an unusual builder – I’m almost 3,000 hours into an RV-10 slow build, and I’ve never even sat in an RV of any kind, let alone flown one! I spent most of July on holidays in North America, including three days at Osh Kosh, and after the main trip was over I traveled to Vernonia, Oregon, where I flew the Factory RV-10 with Mike Seager.
Mike is a great instructor, and has been doing Van’s RV transition training for a long time. Despite some marginal weather at times, we managed to fit in five flights across the three days of August 7, 8 and 9, for a total of 9.2 hours RV-10 time in my log book. We visited 5 different airports during this time, plus the grass strip at Vernonia where Mike has his hanger.
It took me a few hours to catch up with the RV-10, I was hopelessly behind the thing on the first flight. It accelerates and climbs so quickly compared to the Cessna’s I’m used to flying, and the circuit procedures have a different slant as well. During an evening trip to Astoria airport, I finally “got it”, and in perfect conditions with the airport basically to ourselves, I did about ten “stop and go’s” in the fading light.
I’m a bit early doing this training, but couldn’t resist the opportunity to fly a few hours in the USA with such an experienced instructor. The Factory RV-10 costs U$75 per hour, wet (I think it has now gone up to U$80), which is ridiculously cheap especially by Australian standards. Mike explained to me that it is Van’s policy to actively encourage people to fly the aircraft, firstly in order to promote the sale of kits, and secondly to encourage builders to undertake adequate transition training.
I’ll probably do the same thing again in the Northern summer of 2020, when I hope to be close to first flight.