Stephen Taylor’s RV-12iS | Auckland, New Zealand RV-12iS #121063

Congratulations to Stephen on the first flight of his RV-12iS! He writes:

I have been beavering away for 3.5 years to complete my RV-12, ZK -TSP (Taylor Steve & Pam ). After some frustrating days/months, programming the Garmin GX3, we managed to sort the issues, with the last one being the fuel pressure. By the way, I have 2 spare fuel pressure senders, should anyone need one. A big thanks goes out to Gary Briggs, for the visits and guidance on the build, and the all-important paper work. The RV was a delight to put together, with nearly all instructions and details provided. In a few areas, the sequencing could be improved to avoid completing a section, only to remove it again, so that the next section could be built. (2 steps forward, 1 step back). After a 2 hour CAA inspection (including the creation of a couple of additional placards, made these on the spot), CAA issued the Flight Permit and we were good to go. It took a day to put all covers on and then the test flight day of February 8th had arrived. With a healthy dose of trepidation we took to the skies, only to perform lots and lots of tight circles before landing (smooth as) and having a well-deserved cup of tea and an odd GPS track. After adjusting the Stall warning, (it was going off a little early), it was back into the test program with another flight. With the GX3 we have a Sim card that records all of the AC parameters each second, so upon download, you have a full flight recording that you can review in a spreadsheet that plots the AC performance, very high tech indeed. I would recommend to anyone interested in building an Aircraft (all Aluminum) to take a good look at the RV range. One thing that I would do next time, would be to have two MFD, as to train in the AC with only one, leaves someone without any instrumentation. We have completed 5 Hours of the 10 hours required, with absolutely no issues to report, apart for the somewhat expected pilot handling issues.