Aero Vintage Books

RV-8 N9324Z received its airworthiness inspection on August 26.

RV-8 N9324Z took to the air for the first time on Sunday, August 30.

Well done, you really need to build something else now

I'm going to build flight time in an RV-8....does that count?

Congratulations Scott!

Congratulations Scott. It certainly is beautiful. Hope you enjoy it for many, many years.

Scott, how about an update? It's been awhile since I checked this thread out, and I thought I'd see all kinds of trips and flights. SOOOO, how is your little P-40 doing?

Great to hear Scott and build that flight time!

Well, yes, RV-8 N9324Z has now been flying for nearly eight months and has accumulated about 65 hours of time. Most of that flying has been pretty local in the Lincoln-Sacramento area, but I've also taken it to the Bay Area once and I flew it down to Salinas last weekend, where this fine photo was taken by Lee Scales:



That flight was to attend an event held at Airmotive Specialties, by the way, a tour arranged by the Society for Aviation History (http://www.sfahistory.org/) so I got to tour that fine facility and see a bunch of Mustangs and other warbirds in the midst of restoration or maintenance work.

But I stray, though it is that kind of flying I hope to do more of, especially since the weather is now quite nice in Northern California. I have found the RV-8 to be a very enjoyable airplane to fly and it has met all of my expectations and then some. It will cruise at 160 KTAS (about 184 mph) without trying very hard and burn between 8-9 gph doing that. It will fly faster, up to about 182 KTAS, with a good increase in fuel burn along with the increase in speed. I've had no surprises. My time spent doing transition training with Mike Seager in his RV-7 was valuable, and after flying the RV-8 for these many months I am pretty comfortable flying it. I have not done any real IMC flying with it yet, but have done some practice IFR approaches in VMC conditions; my main conclusion after doing that is I am glad it has an autopilot as it is very sensitive and demands constant attention, or an autopilot, to fly it precisely.

I have made a few mods to the plane since it started flying, and have a few more to do, but those are more to 'tweak' the experience and provide a chance to spend some more money rather than anything necessary. I have taken a number of people flying, notably all of my three sons, and look forward to sharing the experience a bit more in the months to come.

At this point I still plan to fly it to Oshkosh in late July for AirVenture.

Other than that, I plan on taking in some of the many fly-in opportunities presented in the spring and summer around here, including the Calaveras County fly-in at San Andreas this coming weekend. I plan on having some fun Saturdays in the coming months bouncing about local airports, etc.

Thanks for asking....

Happy to hear it's going well.

Glad to hear you are enjoying your new toy Scott. Hope you have many fine hours together.

Yes, yes, I've thought about that but not sure it will work. Depends on a few open items right now.

Scott, any overall pictures showing the paint scheme? I love the pre-war markings and would like to see an overall shot.

Well Scott, it's been awhile since I checked in on this thread. Anything NEW with an update of how she's flying? Hope it's still as exciting !!