The blue RV12 below, that was displayed by Van's Aircraft, drew a lot of attention at EAA's Airadventure in Oshkosh Wisconsin in July 2011. The plane has unique features that encouraged me to look closer.
The RV12 was first introduced during the summer of 2008 and was designed under the LSA rules. It has great visability, because the passengers sit forward of the wing spare and it uses an unobstructed bubble canapy. That means you can easily look down over the front of the leading edge for a great view. It uses an economical 100-hp Rotax 912 ULS engine and carries 20 gallons of gas. The engine will burn either auto gas (which it likes) or aviation fuel, when auto gas is not available. It has a ground adjustable propeller and will cruse around 115 mpr. One of the features that attraced me was the fact the wings are removeable, so I will be able to trailer the plane and store it in my garage at home during the winter. The horizontal tail section (stabilator) was kept to 8 feet to allow for trailering.
The plane has room for two passengers and will carry about 50 lbs of luggage. That should be enough for short visits to the grandkids.
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The instrument pannel will be a little different then what is shown below because they are now shipping the Dynon Avionics SkyView glass pannel system. I was trained using steam gauges so there will be a learning curve to overcome with the glass display.
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The following build time information might be of interest to those that are building or are thinking of building an RV12 in the future:
Construction Task Start Finished Hours
Empennage / Tailcone Kit 11/9/11 1/3/12 159
Wing Kit 1/5/12 2/18/12 194
Fuselage Kit 2/20/12 4/28/12 241
Finishing Kit 5/15/12 TBD TBD
Avionics Kit TBD TBD TBD
Powerplant Kit TBD TBD TBD
Test Flights TBD TBD TBD
Happy building!
