Very few composite aircraft are constructed at home – most are built at a “builder assist center,” where paid professionals help you build your aircraft. The problem with composites is that they are much more complex and difficult to work with. That’s changing, however: almost all new commercial designs – and many new experimental/amateur-built ones as well – are constructed at least in part from composites: fiberglass and carbon fiber, for instance. All of Van’s airplanes are constructed out of metal, the way most airplanes have been built for decades.
However, you give up the satisfaction of having built it yourself and also you’re choosing to accept someone else’s solutions to the thousands of small choices you make when building.Īs you might imagine, building an airplane requires some tools the average person isn’t likely to have in their home workshop. You can probably save money, in fact, by buying the same airplane that someone else already finished. If you’re wondering whether it’s less expensive to build than to just go out and buy an airplane – it’s not, in general. building an airplane is a lot of fun and a lot of work and sometimes frustrating.I can spread the total cost of the airplane out over time, making it easier to fit into my budget.I can equip the RV-14 with the latest avionics for a fraction of the cost of installing similar equipment in a certified aircraft.I can customize this plane as it’s built – and even afterwards – much more easily (and much more extensively) than can be done with a certified airplane.no certified airplane fits my needs as well as the RV-14 does.There are myriad reasons people do this, but for me, there are several reasons: Some (most? all?) of you might be wondering why anyone would build a kit plane. Van’s offers a great way to cut that time by 30-40% through what they call a “QuickBuild kit” – the wings and fuselage are mostly complete when they arrive at your door! (The QuickBuild wings and fuselage are shown in the kit photo in the first post above.) I expect that it will take several months to complete it, especially since I have to acquire a lot of tools and set up a shop in my garage in which to build the plane!īecause the wings and fuselage involve a LOT of repetitive assembly, they generally take a very long time to complete. I’ve ordered the empennage kit, and it should be here in a few weeks.
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