Homebuilt judges are busy people at Oshkosh. They'll judge an estimated 800 planes in a week, starting at 8 in the morning going until around 3 in the afternoon. They judge in groups of 3, rotating the individuals so a judge isn't with the same 3 each day. They input the data on a PDA and then download it to a computer which does its thing and spits out the results.
The judges use a point system, awarding a 1-10 score on individual areas such as appearance, fuselage, instrumentation, paint, and power plant and then award an overall score to the airplane.
Armed with this judging standard, I tried my hand at it, selecting the first RV I could find -- there are 400 of them at Oshkosh -- and giving it a good going over. The result? It's better than what I'm building. Join me for the judging.
Update: I received this e-mail from Tyler Bryant:
Hi Bob,
Thank you for your featuring our RV7A and for the great comments. Mike and I have 2 years and 4 months of sweat, shivers, a little blood, and a bit of scotch invested in the project. She flew first time on April 6, 2008 with Capt. Dale Ellis at the controls. Now with right at 60 hours on the Hobbs we consider her “Mostly” finished. We built her to be smooth and fast. And at 175 KTAS at 8500 ft with fuel burn under 10 GPH, 4MT is a real time machine.
Keep banging the rivets. You will love the results.
