RV Grin - First Flight in an RV

I got to fly an RV this weekend! Here's a picture of the plane I flew. That's Norm and his lovely bride.



Norm (he's the Tech Counselor who inspected my plane about a month ago) gave me a ride in the RV-7A that he built. He's an A&P certified mechanic and did a really beautiful job.

We flew for 40 minutes and I did 1 takeoff, 3 touch-and-go's, steep turns and stalls. It had been quite a while since I had flown so I was definitely rusty! I've landed on aircraft carriers and snow covered runways but this was the first time I've landed on a grass strip.

Norm said it would be a motivational flight and it really was. There's clearly a reason why the RV's are such an incredibly popular line of homebuilts. I don't have much small single time but I do have a little flight time in Cessnas and the RV felt like twice the airplane to me. I am certain now that I made the right choice of aircraft to build!

One thing that surprised me was how foreign the EFIS (Electronic Flight Information System) in Norm's RV felt. An EFIS is the computer screen that has replaced most of the older round gauges. I'm comfortable around computers and I've studied the EFIS and thought flying behind one would come naturally but I was wrong. My eyes kept going back to the "steam gauges" that Norm had left as backups. It will definately require some hanger flying to get comfortable with them. Here's an example of a popular EFIS.