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Building
an RV - Flight
Training
Before you hop in your newly completed pride
and joy, ask yourself this question: am I able to fly my new RV? While the RV is by no
means a difficult airplane to fly, quite the contrary, it is considerably different than
most production aircraft. A high performance aircraft such as the RV is just that, high
performance.
Because
Van's considers safety a top priority, we have teamed
up with local RV builder, pilot, and flight instructor
Mike Seager to provide transition flight instruction
in RV aircraft. 
Mike, who has more than 3000 hours of RV flight time,
uses our RV-6 aircraft N66VA for instruction. He and
the aircraft are based in Vernonia, Oregon, a 10 minute
flight from Van's. Mike also frequently will fly the
aircraft to major fly-ins, making stops at designated
places along the route for a day or more to provide
training.
Flying and ground handling qualities are
similar enough between the taildragger RVs that training in the RV-6 works for builders of
the RV-3, RV-4, and RV-8 also.
We have been asked how we manage to fly
instruction in an Experimental airplane when the regulations governing the Experimental
category prohibit flying such aircraft "for compensation or hire." Well, the
RV-6 N66VA is licensed in the Experimental Market Survey/Crew Training category, rather
than Experimental Amateur Built. This means that it is subject to more stringent
maintenance and re-licensing requirements but does permit it to be flown for hire for
specific tasks, in this case transition training. The FAA, recognizing the safety benefits
of this training, has provided this category, but ONLY to factory demonstrator aircraft.
For this reason transition training in the RV-6 is available only to pilots who are
building or who own RV aircraft. We must further require that all pilots seeking this
transition training be current in other general aviation aircraft. We cannot use the RV-6
for new pilots, or general proficiency training.
Mike suggests that, before you spend the time and money to
come to him for transition training, you should be current in tailwheel airplanes. Really
current. Current enough that your local FBO will turn you loose in their airplanes without
question. Current enough that you are familiar with all kinds of stalls. Current enough
that you could make a forced landing if you had to…or make a sudden
go-around….or make a full slip to a landing.
In order to encourage RV pilots to gain
proficiency in the RV aircraft, we are providing training at a low rate of $70.00
per hour. This includes everything: the aircraft, fuel and the
instruction.
The Pilot
Transition program has been a notable success. Mike
says he has given over 1300 hours of instruction to
almost 500 people in N66RV and N66VA.
How long does a check-out take? As long as it takes to
convince both you and Mike that you aren’t going to hurt yourself or your airplane.
If you show up for RV transition training fully tuned up, a typical checkout will take
from 3 to 5 hours. For some, it has taken fifteen.
Mike describes a smooth checkout: "I’ll make the
first take off and when we’re airborne and established in the climb, the student will
take over and climb to an altitude and heading that I give them and level out. We’ll
start with the student doing gentle turns at 25 or 30 degrees of bank, holding altitude at
about 140 to 150 mph. We’ll try some steeper turns and if that goes well, I’ll
have them start slowing the airplane up and soon we’ll be doing turns at 85-90 mph.
Then we’ll try that with some flaps, and when we’re both feeling comfortable,
we’ll try some power-off stalls. Often on a checkride or a BFR, an instructor will
let a student simply nibble at a stall, and he recovers reasonably well, that’ll be
the end of it. I ask for a little more…I don’t want to know that a student can
stay away from a stall, I want to know he or she can recognize one when it happens and
recover from it. Stalls, especially in an unfamiliar airplane, are scary, but the only
weapon against that is familiarity. Once a student can do seven or eight stalls, one right
after the other, the fear subsides and they stop over-controlling the airplane. Then we
will move on to stalls in different attitudes and power settings.
By this time the student is usually setting down nicely and
getting comfortable. We will move on to pattern work and take-offs and landings.
Directional control is the biggest difficulty here, and we will spend some time and effort
making sure the airplane goes exactly where we want it to. Take-offs get just as much
attention as landings. I’ve found that many pilots are not ready for the acceleration
that even my fixed pitch, small engine airplane is capable of and we will go zig-zagging
down the runway as they play catch-up.
After that, it’s back into the air where we will work
on speed transitions and pattern work. Often, students have never flown an airplane as
slippery as an RV and at first, it’s difficult to get the thing to slow down when
they want it to. It annoys me to see people blasting into the pattern at 170 mph, but
it’s easy to do. We will work on landings in different configurations, slips, and
emergency landings.
Naturally, all this doesn’t take place on one flight.
It may take two or three sessions, with stops in between for discussion and
de-compression.
One of the most important things for a student to realize
is that we’re on the same team. The last thing I’m there to do is
"wash-out" someone. What we both want is for students to enjoy many hours of
safe, fun, confident flying in the airplane they’ve worked so hard to build."
| Flight
School on the Road |
Three or four times a year, Mike puts the RV transition
show on the road. He usually makes two or three stops on the way to Sun ‘n Fun in
April and Oshkosh in late July. He generally makes a trip through the western states in
between, and a fall trip that usually includes stops in Tennessee and New York.
The exact stopping points on Mike’s trips are determined by where people ask him
to go. It is obviously not practical to fly hundreds of miles to check out one person,
then hundreds more to another. The best approach is to gather several students from a
larger area, and appoint a contact person to arrange a stopover at an appropriate airport.
The best arrangement is to have nine or ten students ready to fly over a three day period.
Mike generally limits his flying to seven hours a day, going out with 3 people in the
morning and three more in the afternoon.
| Do
A Little Soul Searching |
A life around airplanes should make it very clear: The laws
of physics will not be repealed by wishful thinking. When your new airplane is
ready to fly, it’s time to sit in some quiet spot, put your ego on the shelf and be
brutally honest with yourself. Are you really ready for this?
For many of us, this is not an easy question to answer. We really want to fly
that airplane, and it takes very little justification to make the risk acceptable. The
airplane, however, doesn’t care at all about justifications or excuses or unrealistic
expectations.
Many homebuilders spend two or more years in the shop building, not flying, so when
they take their new bird to the airport, the old flying skills are pretty oxidized. There
is no dishonor here. It’s just a fact of life. If you have any reservations at all
about your flying skills, experience, or currency, why jump into a high performance
airplane that you’ve never flown before and risk all that work and possibly your
life? There is an alternative.
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