"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...
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

Dang Tim, with your interest in aviation and a good technical background, I
was about to ask you if you were interested in buying my Safari Kit
Helicopter. Reading your post above, my probability estimator says my
expected gain here is pretty low....

Stu