On April 9, Van’s Aircraft received a first-flight report from Thomas Damm, of Billund, Denmark. Damm’s RV-8 became the 9,000th RV kit to be completed and flown by a customer.
Damm bought the barely-started kit from a close friend and completed it over a span of nine years. Using his life-long experience as a pilot for SAS, he made the first flight on April 8.
His aircraft has a Superior XP IO-360 with a Whirlwind 200RV C/S prop. The panel is a mix of round gauges and a small Dynon D1 unit. Navigation chores are handled by a Garmin 296 and a SkyDemon MD GPS. Custom touches include a set of Grove airfoil shaped gear legs and the Showplanes FastBack/Canopy kit.
“On the first flight I saw 170 KTAS at 5,000 feet at only 24’/2,400 rpm. You guys produce great airplane kits!” Damm wrote.
To help visualize what 9,000 RVs might look like, the artists in Van’s engineering department produced a couple of “thought pictures:”
- Assuming an average wingspan of 27 feet with no gaps, 9,000 RVs parked wingtip to wingtip would form a line of aircraft 46 miles long;
- A rectangular grid of airplanes would be roughly 2,788 feet by 2,362 feet and (with a couple inches of space between wingtips) would cover about 151 acres.
- Assuming an average of 180 hp, the total fleet of 9,000 would generate 1,620,000 hp.