Karl Townsend wrote:

Sadly, my father is putting up for sale the project of his life. Its an RV-8
homebuilt airplane. About fifteen years ago, I visited my dad and seen a
pile of AL sheeting and extruded AL support stock for ribs etc. I spent two
days with him fabricating one side of the vertical fin on the tail. I
thought, "there ain't no way". Well, only 6000 logged hours of work later,
it flew. He went on to outfit it with every conceivable electronic
navigation device for full IFR rating.

Here's a couples links. Kinda shows what's involved.
http://www.rv8.ch/
http://www.vansaircraft.com/public/rv-8int.htm

-- snip --

I visited a friend of mine who's the engineering manager for an aircraft
sheet metal company at Aurora airport (now _there's_ metalworking! They
repair aircraft and make parts for the Sikorsky S-64, which Sikorsky no
longer supports. They've been making sheet metal and structural parts
for years; they're just about to get some of the flying surfaces ATC'd
-- so they're doing some Really Serious work there. And it's a _little
place_).

You have to drive right by Van's on the way in, so I stopped by to see
if I could cadge a tour, or at least a peek at the production floor. I
couldn't, but the receptionist did inflict me on one of their sales guys
and him on me. We were obviously from different planets -- he couldn't
imagine anyone wanting to build model airplanes when they could just as
well build full scale, while any time I want to fly full scale I
contemplate how often I crash models and the urge passes.

They do cool stuff there, though.

--
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com