Back From Hiatus! (Or is it a 'fly-atus?)

Sarah here! After a longer than average hiatus from the blog and build, I'm happy to announce we're back on both. Nothing Earth shattering to report on the build front just yet, but here is a write up of what we've been up to since our last post.

On the flying front 

Since we last posted, I flew my first solo on August 26, 2016 in a Piper Warrior at C17.

 On June 2, 2017 Mike completed his RV-10 transition training in Vernonia, Oregon with Mike Seager. His parting words? "Finish building it, go fly it, and have some fun!" - A quote that we intend on living by! 

 As of 6/9/2018, Mike has flown 95 Young Eagles! 

FL Adventure 2017

It wouldn't have been right to start off 2017 in any other way than with an epic Tour de Florida in a 182 we rented from RexAir in Naples while we were down South visiting Mike's parents in Sanibel. Our official route was:  KARTR - KEYW - MTH - MNATE  JOMIN - CAHOO - VKZ - HIVUR - WOPDU - KSUA - KVRB - KISM - KVDF. 
    

A few notable stops from that adventure included staying the night in Key West (which had been on our list for a few years, but FL wx had always prevented the trip), flying along the Miami skyline, stopping for lunch in Stuart and having lunch with our dear friend Mandani, over night in Vero Beach, spending all day at Universal Studios, and an overnight in Tampa where we had the best dang ole steak at Council Oaks, a recommendation from fellow RV-10 builder and friend, Mike T.

We finally made it to KEYW so we just had to snap a selfie on the ramp.

  

While in Vero Beach, Mike received a one hour lesson in a motor glider, a gift that he got for Christmas.

 The morning we went to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter! Some of us were more excited than others. 

Oshkosh 2017!  

We flew into OSH17 in the Archer we've named Julie. We got set up in the North 40 and on Tuesday Mike flew to down Midway to pick up his folks and flew them in via the Fisk arrival. They really enjoyed their time in Oshkosh and we were so happy that they were finally able to see what we can never seem to stop talking about.

It wouldn't be a complete trip without the selfie in front of the Brown Arch. 

Oshkosh 2018!

In 2018, we ventured to Oshkosh in a different kind of Cherokee than in years past. We bought a camper in April and decided to bring that to Oshkosh instead of flying. Camp Scholler is a lot different than the North 40, but both have their charm (and bringing your house with you is definitely charming). That being said, we can't wait to fly the RV-10 into OSH!

Our home away from home for the week.  

Hanging out at S.O.S. with a few fellow builders. 

On Wednesday, we helped out with the Pedal Plane World Record attempt. It was super neat to see the crew of a C-5 Galaxy stop what they were doing to snap a few pics.  

2019

As I sit here and reflect on 2019 and try to wrap up this post, I can't help but to think what a crazy year it's been. In April we bought about 24 acres of land and have begun building on it. The first structure to go up was an 18'x42' shed that houses tools and building materials for the shouse (shop house) we will be erecting in 2020. We'll keep you all apprised of the progress on that building project as well the airplane which will be easier than ever now because mikeandsarahrv10 is on Instagram! Follow us here!

2019 brought us losses, broken bones (I was a natural at skiing until I wasn't...), curve balls, more building projects, another Oshkosh, incredible experiences with family and friends, and there was something else... oh yeah, we got married!

It's amazing how one minute you're skiing and the next you've met your deductible.

Our first selfie at the property. 

First concrete order! Pouring the footings for the shed.

An RV10 builder selfie at OSH19, callsigns "Squirrel", "Possum", "Conehead", and "Cupcake"

Here's the mock-up of the shed and the finished product. #NailedIt

 I ordered my 'something blue' from RadarContact and can attest to the phenomenal customer support! The left shoe is the New Orleans sectional (where I'm from) and the right is the New York sectional (where Mike's from). 

  

AirVenture 2016

Well, we're back from another awesome time at AirVenture Oshkosh 2016! Here's a writeup of our trip... enjoy!

Getting There

We left home a day earlier than planned (Friday 7/22) so that we could be in front of a line of bad weather that looked like it might be a problem if we waited until Saturday. Because we left so late in the day however, we weren't going to be able to make it to Oshkosh before the airport closed at 8:00 PM, so we set our sights on Baraboo, WI (KDLL) to spend the night. Our original plan was to fly formation as a flight of 4 aircraft (us in the Archer, Dan in a Cardinal RG, Gretchen in a Citabria, and Jonathan in an experimental biplane called a Burrows MB-360... a "motley crew" if there ever was one!); but since we were in sort of a rush to get airborne, and everyone would be departing from different home base airports in a staggered fashion, we figured we'd just improvise our way up to DLL and then do a "real" formation the next morning. So, we loaded up "Julie" the Archer with our 315lb of camping gear and set off into the dusk, headed for Baraboo.

About halfway there, as we were crossing the Mississippi River and wondering if we were going to hear from anyone in the formation on discrete frequency, I got a text message from Jonathan (I know I know, texting and flying...) that said "had an engine failure, all is ok." I thought whoa, not good at all. We decided to continue on, and after landing at Baraboo we called him to get the whole story. Long story short, the MB-360's engine quit on him at about 500' AGL just after takeoff from IIB. Biplanes aren't exactly known for their streamlined aerodynamics, and thus without power they basically become controllable bricks falling through the air. He ended up making a flawless forced landing on the road beside the airport, coasted into the neighbor's driveway (Bob Hoover style, from the sounds of it), and, I can only imagine, proceeded to reach for a fresh pair of shorts from his camping gear before climbing out of the airplane.

So after the dust settled with all that excitement, Jonathan and Gretchen decided to stay on the ground for the week, and in lieu of going to OSH they took a road trip and went camping around some different parks in the area. Sounds like they had a great time, and it was probably a well-earned reprieve from flying after that whole ordeal. That left Sarah and I in the Archer, and our friends Dan and Alexis in their Cardinal RG, who ended up also making their way to Baraboo that night.

We all split a hotel room, ate some frozen pizza from the hotel bar, drank a few Spotted Cows, and called it a night. The next morning, we looked up at the sky to realize it was pretty well socked in. The METAR was reporting BKN003, which is well below the limits for safe VFR flight. More bad news to the west: A line of storms had formed and were making their way toward us. The bright side of this was that at least we were on the correct side of the storms-- had we waited to leave home until now, we would have been completely stuck. This was unfortunately the case for our friends Roy and Merry, who were waiting to depart from IIB in a 172 to come and join us.

Our first Spotted Cow of the trip!

We grabbed some breakfast from McDonald's and waited for the skies to clear. Although the METAR hadn't changed, we were noticing a few holes in the sky showing clear blue above, and they seemed to be increasing in both size and frequency... a good sign, but it was now a race to see if the skies would improve in time before the storm hit us from the west. So we gathered our gear, checked out of the hotel, and headed to the airport to be ready to pounce at the first sign of good weather. The four of us joined a group of about 20-30 people out on the ramp at DLL, all waiting for good weather to head to OSH. What made it particularly frustrating was that Oshkosh itself, a mere 50 miles away, was reporting beautiful clear skies and calm winds. That means that although we're grounded here, the arrivals to OSH are in full effect, and with every new arrival there, it pushes us one parking spot further away that we'll be stuck with.

Waiting to depart KDLL Saturday morning

I should point out that this entire situation is the kind of thing you can find many accident reports about... a pilot pressed by a number of external factors including both schedule and weather, and the fear of disappointing your passengers, in this case by potentially ending up in a less-than-ideal parking spot to camp in. Of course, the latter point wasn't really a factor, at least from Sarah herself. She is very much accustomed to the way things go in GA, and is about as easygoing as it gets when it comes to schedule changes and improvisation like in the current situation. That doesn't change my own desire to get us there on time, though, and it really does take quite a bit of mental gymnastics to come up with a correct and safe "game plan" that is untainted by external factors.

We ended up chatting with a couple guys who had a Ryan PT-22 and a Waco biplane, and were waiting for the weather to clear. As we talked, we saw a rather large "hole" in the sky begin to float right over the airport. This might be our chance! Talking with these two experienced pilots who were flying airplanes that performed significantly worse than our own, Dan and I made the decision to follow their lead and depart behind them (if they can make it out, we should be able to no problem, right?). We ran out to the ramp and climbed into our airplanes as they were hand-propping their antiques next to us. With four engines now roaring to life, we taxied out to the runway and watched this flight of two depart ahead of us and climb successfully through the hole, turning on course to Oshkosh. With nothing left to do but follow suit, Dan and I took the runway and departed in trail, climbing up and out into blue skies. After about 10 miles of flying towards OSH, the skies opened beneath to become ideal "clear and a million" weather for the rest of our arrival. Not the most ideal of circumstances, but we did make it out safely and legally... that's the important part!

The arrival itself was pretty painless... there were a few other planes around, but the spacing pretty much worked itself out on its own and we just flew up the tracks, with a right turn at Fisk Ave, left base for RW36L, and landed on the yellow dot without any issue. After a long taxi up to the North 40, we got parked in a nearly ideal camping spot and shut down... we made it!!

Parked and started unloading

Tent set up - home sweet home for the week!

The Week

What a week! I couldn't possibly go into detail about the whole trip, but let's just say Oshkosh never disappoints! We did get a bit more rain than usual, particularly in the first couple of days (remember all those storms we were racing to get in front of?), but by the middle/end of the week the weather became much more tolerable. Here's a few highlights:

• Sunday we attended the RV-10 builder's dinner, put on by a number of current and former RV-10 builders in Camp Scholler. It's always great to see this group, meeting up with some old friends and making new ones, often finally being able to associate a face with a familiar online profile either from VAF or Facebook. It's a very diverse group from all over the country and even beyond!
• Monday we attended the RV builder's social, which is always a fun chance to "cut loose" a bit around your fellow RV family. It's sponsored by a number of vendors who cater to the experimental/RV aviation market, and there is always plenty of Spotted Cow (among other beers) flowing freely. It's become a tradition for us to attend this social and then stumble over to SOS when the kegs run dry, usually right around sunset, to grab some food and maybe a few more drinks. This is always a night we look forward to, but don't expect us to be ready for anything too early on Tuesday morning ;-) 
• Tuesday night we had the tough decision to choose between the Van's Dinner Social or the EAA Chapter Presidents' dinner, sponsored by Ford. Since this is the first year I've attended OSH as a chapter president, we thought we'd give it a shot. We had a good time and ran into a good RV-10 friend (they seem to pop up everywhere don't they!), but honestly there wasn't much food and there was nowhere to sit. I guess it didn't really live up to what I thought it was going to be... I think next year we'll stick with the Van's dinner.
• Wednesday night we attended the EAA Young Eagles dinner in the Eagle Hangar at the museum. This is always an excellent event with delicious and somewhat healthy/square food, which can be a rare commodity at AirVenture! We even had the chance to get a photo op with Sully and Skiles!
• Thursday we had our Chapter 33 dinner at Saz's plaza. We had a decent turnout, maybe 8-10 members in attendance from the Cedar Rapids area. It's always fun to plan these kind of destination events!
• Friday we were invited to fellow RV-10 builder Mike T.'s campsite for dinner and a few drinks. We had a delicious dinner and great conversation that went well into the night. It's so humbling and awesome to meet so many genuinely great people at OSH!
• Saturday morning we ran the "Runway 5K" while tired and sore from the week's events, not to mention still full of salmon and Jim Beam from the night before. Needless to say, we didn't set any world records, but we made it through and enjoyed the free water, bananas and bagels at the end of the race (I remember asking the lady handing out bagels where the doughnuts were... lol).
• Sunday morning, it was time to pack up and head home... time to get back to building and look forward to OSH 2017! With any luck, we'll be flying our very own RV-10 by then....

A few random pics:

RV Builders Social 2016! I got some crap from a few RV-10 friends who noticed my name tag said "Mike" the night before at the less-crazy RV-10 dinner, but tonight it was time for "Mikey J" to come out ;-)

We met Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and F.O. Jeff Skiles from the "Miracle on the Hudson" at the Wednesday Young Eagles dinner!

Probably the highlight of the entire trip, Sarah and I both had the chance to meet the legend himself, Mr. R.A. Bob Hoover!

Had the chance to meet up with another RV-10 builder friend Mike T, who graciously invited Sarah and I to dinner at his campsite. Fresh grilled salmon imported from New Zealand... yum!!! Thanks again Mike!!!!

We ran the Runway 5K! Nope, we weren't in it to win it, but we had fun :-)

Lounging in our new Wind Pouch inflatable couches... they are quite comfortable once you figure out how to properly inflate them!

Sunday morning departure, headed for our halfway stop at Lone Rock, WI for our usual breakfast at the Piccadilly Lilly. Just a few other airplanes showing on the TIS!

With that, it's time to get back to building!!!!!

We're still here...

This post is dedicated to our friends who've reached out asking for an update... we're alive and well, just had a CRAZY spring so far... hopefully things will be settling down soon and we can get back to building!

Well, we're over halfway to Oshkosh now since the last update (yes we keep track of time using Oshkosh as a reference), and although unfortunately I don't have a ton of progress to report, I thought I'd make a quick update. I think we left off complaining about the basement flooding...again. Fortunately, it wasn't too big of a mess or hassle, and within a week or two things were pretty much back to normal in that department. Both Sarah and I have had a number of things going on though, keeping us mostly away from the garage. Every now and then we'd sneak out there and sand a bit on the cabin cover, but really hardly any measurable progress has been made.

So let's see... where to start? Oh yeah, we got a new puppy!!! Guess what we named him?

Our new puppy - Cleco!!

I don't have to explain to this audience why we named him Cleco... but unfortunately everyone else we run into needs a quick explanation, always with the same unenthusiastic reaction of "oh... cool." It's alright, we think it's a good name for him. We got him from the local animal shelter, and he has adapted to our household very well, and gets along great with our other dog Mesa. Training and housebreaking is going "ok" so far, as I'm sure anyone who's raised a puppy can agree it's no small task and takes no small commitment!

Shortly after bringing home our new pup at some point in early April, I ended up getting in touch with fellow RV-10 builder Ed Kranz up in the Minneapolis area, and he very graciously offered for Sarah and I to come up and see his plane (now completed and flying) in person before it went in for paint. That was an offer we couldn't pass up! One of the primary things I was interested in seeing was his G3X avionics setup, which was very similar to what we've purchased, except for the fact that he had opted for the "whole hog" and has three beautiful 10" screens in his panel as opposed to my two. He is an advocate of the three-display approach, so that you can have a full-screen PFD and then use the center screen as the MFD. In a two-display setup like ours, the second panel is too far off to the right to contain much useful data for the person in the left seat (and vice versa).

Ed's three-display RV-10 panel in action

It was so cool to be able to get up there and see the very airplane I had been watching come together online over the past few years, and not only that but get a chance to go flying in it! Thanks so much again to Ed for your generosity and hospitality... we are truly grateful to be part of such a cool community of builders. Can't wait to "pay it forward" for some future builders in our plane when it's done... but now I'm getting ahead of myself :-)

Anyway, after a short flight back home in "Julie" the Archer, I had to step into the shop for a minute with some mockups and start playing around:

N165MJ with three 10" displays

N165MJ with a 7" center display

It's tempting... very tempting. We'll see how things go. Another thing to point out is I've gotten rid of the GRT Mini-X in favor of the new Garmin G5 EFIS, as well as swapped out audio panels from the GMA350c to the GMA245. I've actually been able to sell off those new-in-box items I had already purchased, and place an order with Stein for the new stuff. It should work out pretty close to a wash, maybe even a few dollars in my favor, and I'll have all the "latest and greatest" Garmin stuff. The audio panel may be regarded as a bit of a step down from the flagship 350c, but the new 245 actually has all of the features I wanted out of the 350c, and it interfaces better with the rest of the G3X system. And it's cheaper, so it's really a win-win! I think basically the only thing I lose is the voice command feature... which I wasn't really too excited about in the first place anyway.

So after the trip up north to see Ed and his plane, our schedules became almost completely filled up with "stuff" to do, and so we never really got any time to get back into the shop. I participated in a spot landing contest and LOST. Ugh. I landed about 2 feet short of the line, which is disqualifying. The winner landed about 20 feet beyond the line. Video of my attempt here:

Even two months later, still sore about this :-)

After that whole ordeal, I spent about the next 3 weeks holed up in my office, coding up and designing a new website for our EAA chapter. Back in February, I had been elected President of our local Chapter 33 (sounds pretty cool when I say it that way huh?), and the first order of business I wanted to achieve was improve our method of communication and simplify our website, making it easier to browse and maintain than before. It's just a basic Wordpress-powered site, but don't let the simple theme fool you... it still took weeks of work and thousands of lines of PHP code to make it all work the way I wanted. Fun stuff!! See the site here: http://www.eaa33.org.

At some point in here, I built a new cutting table and storage rack for rolls of fiberglass, peel ply, and upholstery that rolls around on the floor and collapses for storage. It also has a rack along the top that holds a number of wire spools for when we get around to wiring everything up. I'll throw a picture of it in here soon.

Next up was a Young Eagles Rally, held at our "home" airport in Marion and sponsored by our Chapter. It ended up not as busy as we had hoped, but I did have the opportunity to make a flight that I think easily counts as the most rewarding thing I've had the privilege to do yet in an airplane... take my friend Jenny's son Dylan up for a ride. Dylan has autism, and at first I wasn't sure how things were going to go on the flight. Those concerns melted away as we performed our takeoff roll... here's one of my favorite videos that I've ever taken (there are a couple others from the flight on my youtube channel if you're interested):

Young Eagles flight with Dylan - Takeoff!

That was a flight I will not soon forget... so happy that it worked out the way it did! We're looking forward very much to the next Young Eagles Rally!

So let's see... other than that, I took my friend Brannen on a surprise "Bachelor's Day" flight the week before he got married. We went to Lone Rock, WI (KLNR) for breakfast at the Piccadilly Lilly Airport Diner, followed by a day in Oshkosh (KOSH) to visit the EAA museum, and then finished the day with dinner in Prairie du Chien, WI (KPDC) at Jones Black Angus, a nice steakhouse right across the street from the airport. Fun times!

Brannen (left), Roy (center), and Me (right) up to no good flying "Julie" the Archer all over WI!

Memorial day weekend came and went faster than I could have ever imagined (thanks in no small part to Brannen's wedding... congrats to you and Becca!), propelling us straight into June now, again with very little progress to report on the plane. Lately, I've been sneaking out to the garage a bit more and continuing on the cabin cover. The A-pillars are nearly complete, and they are finally contoured the way I had envisioned, with very few high or low spots remaining. Again, will get some pics on this soon.

Lastly, we're getting more and more excited for OSH16 as it approaches... we even got a new tent!

Our new OSH tent, set up and ready for waterproofing in our hangar

That's about it for now. Unfortunately, the hits just keep on coming as far as distractions go. This weekend, we have a benefit to attend for a good friend in need of a heart transplant, followed by a deep-cleaning of our house in preparation for the upcoming Father's Day weekend, when my parents are coming to visit from NY to spend the week. HOPEFULLY, when that is all over with, by the end of next week, we can get back to spending some serious time in the garage.

See you all then!

Not Again!!!!

Welp... the basement flooded again. Not nearly as bad this time, and unlike last time, this event was 100% my fault. In an effort to "foolproof" the sump pump system for the coming spring season, I had recently installed a triple-redundant array of pumps (two 120v and one 12v backup), each with all new PVC lines and couplings. Unfortunately for me, I didn't properly tighten one of the hose clamps on a rubber coupling, and after the first 24 hours of operation (during which time I had been checking on it religiously) it came apart. For the next 36-48 hours or so until we discovered the problem, every time the pump kicked on, it was spilling water directly into the basement... Ugh.

So that really sucked. Luckily, cleanup wasn't quite as bad, and we should be able to salvage the carpet. But, it will be a few weeks of off-and-on rework down in the basement, which will of course take time away from the project. Oh well, that's life I suppose.

Things that we have gotten accomplished since the last update: nothing really measurable, hence the lack of posts over the past month. We've been filling and sanding on the overhead console, switch pod, and center console pieces. It's coming together, but motivation has been slipping a bit too due to all the other things going on. We'll get through it, eventually.

One other thing we got done was take the engine over to Poplar Grove Airmotive near the Rockford, IL area for assembly and testing. I spent more time than I thought would be necessary to inventory all of the parts in the days leading up to the road trip over there. By the time I was done inventorying everything, I had an SUV completely filled with boxes, and an Excel spreadsheet that itemized every single part and its current condition (new, overhauled, as-removed, etc).

I ran into a couple minor snags with the folks at Poplar Grove, but I'm pretty sure we'll be able to work everything out. I had no trouble making the 3.5-hr drive over there, and unloading all the parts and check-in was a breeze. I headed for home thinking all was well. The next day, however, I got an alarming phone call. They don't deal much with the experimental aviation side of things, and they were expecting many of the parts like the new fuel system (overhauled by Airflow Performance) to have yellow tags with them. Since the overhaul was experimental, those tags don't exist, and for a moment there I thought that might be a show-stopping problem. After some negotiation and explanation though, they were able to accept everything as-is, and I think I narrowly avoided having to drive back over there to collect all of my parts and take them somewhere else. I still don't have a finalized quote though, since they have a backlog of several weeks before they can really look at everything and shoot me a finalized number... so I'm still sort of in a holding pattern, hoping that things will turn out as originally expected.

While we wait on the engine, we'll hopefully get a chance to finish up on all this fiberglass business. If the timing of things goes well, we'll get our engine back and ready to hang about the time we finish getting the cabin cover and doors all fitted and glassed... we'll see if that happens!

Gulf Coast Trip

So we just got back from an 11-day trip down to Florida to visit my parents, followed by a stop in the New Orleans area to visit some of Sarah's family on the way back home. We flew our old standby, "Julie" the Archer, and had an awesome time! Keeping the trip summary geared towards RV-10 and experimentals, here are a few highlights:

We stopped over in Vero Beach, FL for the day to visit our RV-10 builder friend Kenny (sometimes known as "Falcon Guy"... a Falcon 900 pilot by day and RV-10 builder by night). It was awesome to meet him in person and see his project (and the Falcon!). Thanks for all your hospitality Kenny, not only to Sarah and I but to my parents also who were "in-tow" for the trip!

We also were able to visit our EAA Chapter 33 friends Ron and Connie, who were escaping the Iowa winter in a more pleasant area. We were able to track them down in Gulf Shores, AL and had a quick lunch with them while passing through the area. Good times!

We had hoped to have even more time to make a few more stops to see friends, both old and new, but unfortunately there's just never enough time. It was still an incredible trip and excellent reminder about why we love to fly so much!

Route flown (link here)

Random photo from the flight - here we are near Tampa FL, cleared to pass through the Class B airspace.

Team Mikey J and Sarah Maggie sporting our Vans-related gear :-)

It was good to visit my folks in FL... here we are at Sun Harvest Citrus buying some oranges and grapefruit to bring back to IA!

Spent some time with Sarah's brother and sister-in-law in New Orleans... missed Mardi Gras by less than a week! It was still a great time on Bourbon St.

Bottom line: We can't wait to take more trips like this in the faster and more capable RV-10! We absolutely love Julie the Archer, and we will certainly miss her when we start flying the -10, but we're ready for the change. In fact, this may very well have been our last "big" cross-country trip in Julie. We first took her to the west coast in 2013, then to the east coast in 2014, and now the gulf coast in early 2016. Fingers crossed we'll get to repeat these same trips (and many others) in the -10, and soon(ish)!

In order for that to happen, we've gotta keep our noses to the grinding wheel... or at least, if not our noses, some airplane part that is in need of grinding...

Long Weekend

Unfortunately this weekend marked a rather sad moment in our lives. We had to say goodbye to one of our two beloved four-legged friends, Dag, a.k.a. "Daggles" "Dagelope" "House Horse" "Bignose" and a number of other nicknames. Over the last few months he was battling a fight with cancer, and on Friday it was time to put an end to his suffering. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him, and has left a void in our household that won't soon be filled.

Although we did get a few odds and ends done on the plane this weekend also, nothing really worthy of mention at the time being has happened, and I'll fill in a few of the blanks as we continue. For now, I'll end this post with a pic Sarah put together for the one and only Mr. Daggles. He didn't always wear a costume, but when he did, he owned it. We'll miss ya buddy.

R.I.P. "Dag" 2007 - 2015

Financing

I'm going to touch on a slightly "taboo" subject today... money.

So this is going to be another mostly off-topic post, at least as far as "building" the plane itself goes. However, you can't build a plane if you don't have the necessary parts and tools, and you can't buy parts and tools without money. Let's face it-- flying isn't exactly the world's cheapest hobby, especially if you want to own your own airplane. Even more so if you want that airplane to be nicer and newer than most rentals, and have some of the common "luxuries" you'd expect in a vehicle of any kind that costs north of six figures. Yes, building it yourself makes it more affordable than a comparable factory-built plane like the often-compared Cirrus SR22, but most of us builders don't really go this route based on financial reasons alone. Any way you slice it, you're in for a pretty hefty chunk of change by the time you get your fancy new RV-10 into the air.

That being said, you don't necessarily have to be "rich" to build your own airplane, either. We're not, anyway. Our house isn't anything fancy, and we drive beater vehicles straight out of an easy listening radio station (70's, 80's and 90's). I suppose I do have a pretty good job working as a software engineer, and yes it pays fairly well, but money doesn't exactly grow on trees around here either. I assume many other builders are in a similar situation... doing well for themselves but not exactly in a position to just shell out the money necessary to build a plane in hard cash. If you are one of those people, you're lucky, and feel free to skip the rest of this post. :-)

For the rest of us, we need to figure out a way to fund the project. Of course, strolling into your local bank and asking to speak with a loan officer, telling them you want to build an airplane in your garage, and that you need six figures of unsecured funding will make someone's day, but probably not yours. There are a small handful of financial institutions around the country that do specialize in aviation loans, and an even smaller subset of them (I've found precisely two, one through EAA and another through AOPA) that offer some sort of "aircraft construction loan" specifically for experimental aircraft. The good news here is that these companies absolutely love RV's because they have exceptional market value and excellent safety records, and are easy to assess. This translates to getting the best-case possible loan terms, which is great. However, these loans still have some pretty significant strings attached, with some examples being you need to purchase full hull in-flight insurance coverage the moment you sign the loan (big premiums, even though the plane isn't anywhere near flying condition yet), you must maintain xxx (high) amount in your checking account, and/or they need to send disbursement checks directly to the vendors to buy ALL the parts for your plane within 30 days (impossible, there are many purchases to make over many months from many vendors). Additionally, while the interest rates weren't "bad," they weren't really "great" either. So, I never ended up applying for any of these aircraft construction loans.

What I did end up doing was sometime last year I put together an incredibly complicated Excel spreadsheet (that only I understood) and planned out a revolving credit line sourced from a handful of decent-rate and high-limit credit cards, and a home equity line of credit (HELOC). I whipped up some rough numbers for time and cost, estimating the fuselage would be ordered here, the finish kit here, the engine overhaul here, etc etc. By the time the numbers came back, I had a plan that would "just barely work" by riding out the HELOC and credit cards in this gigantic torrent of revolving debt that I had concocted.

This plan has worked, in fact with a great deal of success, up to this point. Actually, it would probably continue to be successful up until completion of the project. However, it isn't ideal in my mind, and some of the credit cards involved have higher interest rates than I'd prefer. So, while continuing with this plan, I've been slowly and silently searching for a Plan B that might make things go easier for us.

In comes SoFi. Haven't heard of SoFi? Me neither, at least I hadn't until a few days ago. I got a random solicitation from them in the mail last week... you know, the ones you typically can just tell from the outside of the envelope that it's going to be in the trash in about 10 seconds. For whatever reason, I opened the letter first though. It sounded too good to be true, you can apply for a personal (unsecured) loan online in just a few minutes, and within a few days have your new loan direct-deposited in to your account. Oh yeah, and the rates were incredibly lower than any other similar loan I could find, including even the many-strings-attached aircraft construction loans. The amount you can borrow was astonishingly high too. No application fees, closing costs, origination fees, early repayment fees, fees of any kind! Ok, what's the catch? I started reading up on SoFi online and researching all that I could about them, and read all the fine print, and still wasn't scared away. Worst reviews I saw online about them were that they could be pretty selective, and they would sometimes drag on the approval process for a long time and request all kinds of documentation, and then ultimately turn you down. My credit is very good but not unrealistically high or top-echelon by any means, but I thought what the heck, I'll apply and see what happens, what's the worst that could happen?

Here was my application experience, literally: I went to the website and followed the steps to apply for a personal loan. They needed precisely *two* documents: a current pay stub and a scanned copy of my passport. Within 10 minutes, the application was complete and it was in for the approval process. Within 48 hours, I was approved and had the funds sitting in my bank account. For taking 10 minutes out of my day, I've just sliced my interest rates in half and fully funded the rest of my build, with plenty of headroom to spare now. What's significant about this is that the amount and terms of this loan are completely untouchable by any other bank I have seen, plus because it's a personal loan they don't even need collateral in the airplane. The rates are *almost* good enough where I just might consider not even refinancing when the plane is flying!

If you're in a similar situation as the one I described above, I'd highly recommend checking out SoFi. You can even click a referral link here, and you'll get $100 (I'll get a few bucks too). If doing the referral thing isn't your thing, I understand, honestly I always tend to roll my eyes at these kinds of deals. So here's a link to just go to their website at sofi.com, Either way you might find a surprisingly good deal. I know I did.

That's all for now.. next time we catch up I just might start finally attaching the cabin top to the fuselage!!!

Last Week Of Goofing Around... For a While, Anyway

Before we get back to business, we had one more week of kind of goofing around. The leaves are changing, the weather has been beautiful, and we've had a number of friends ask to go for flights around the area. So, we went flying! I've logged about 15 hours over the past two weeks, which isn't too shabby considering we didn't really go all that far or do anything too crazy... just a handful of <2hr sightseeing flights. The typical route was departing northeast from C17 towards the Dubuque area, passing just north of Dubuque and then following the Mississippi River northbound to Prairie Du Chien. I think the river delta near the PDC airport is one of the prettiest landmarks you can find in a 40-minute radius.

Fall colors near KPDC along the Mississippi River (took a 172 on this flight for a better view)

In addition to maybe three or four runs as described above, we took a couple local flights over the Cedar Rapids area, as well as two back-to-back Sunday trips to KLNR for some delicious breakfast at the Piccadilly Lilly airport diner. I absolutely love destination meals at small airports! Saw an RV-10 there once too, which always lifts the spirits :-).

Our final trip home from KLNR would take us back to KIIB to put the plane "Julie" (our favorite Archer) back to sleep. We had borrowed her from her owner for about the last two weeks and kept her in Marion, and we had an absolute blast with her. Really makes you excited to eventually have your own plane to do these kinds of things year-round! Not to mention the improved performance, payload, etc etc of the RV10 vs. the Archer.... but I don't have to tell you about that.

Mike & Sarah in "Julie" the Archer

Anyway, one more pic before we get back to business. On our final trip home to KIIB we decided to stop in Prairie Du Chien and go for a bit of a "supply run." We often stop in PDC to go to Jones Black Angus Supper Club, which is a nice steakhouse restaurant across the street from the airport (remember how we like destination meals?)... anyway on occasion we will walk about 1/4 mile north up the highway to Quality Beverage and grab a case or two of Spotted Cow, and maybe some other Wisconsin treasures that we feel like splurging for. Well, this time we skipped the Black Angus and went straight to Quality Beverage... I'm pleased to report we're now stocked!

Two 12-packs of Spotted Cow, one New Glarus sampler 12-pack, bottles of Serendipity and Raspberry Tart (Sarah's picks, of course)... and two blocks (one 2-year aged, one 10-year aged) of fancy "Super Sharp" Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese!

This should keep us happy for a while... now, on to building!!!!!