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When you build an airplane, there are many times that you just need an extra hand. This is especially true with a metal airplane that needs to be riveted together. My son, Mitchel, was my right-hand man in that regard. Since it took almost 5 years to build it, Mitchel was just at the right age; he was 11 when I started and 16 when I finished.

So early this year when I finished flying off my required 40 hours on my new RV-8, Mitchel was my first passenger.

 

Mom is more than a little nervous about airplanes, especially one I built in the garage, but Mitchel is 16 and she agreed he should get to fly in it after doing all that work. For me, I was really excited. Mitchel will get to go up in something he helped create – it doesn’t get any cooler than that!

I picked a smooth late afternoon for our flight. We departed my home field of Buckeye Executive and headed to my favorite sightseeing route over Columbus. The Columbus Class C is setup so you can do a nice flight right over downtown at 1000′ agl and not have to talk with anyone (read: get vectors).

It was smooth as glass and we had a great time. We did a flew ‘maneuvers’ and I let him fly – I think he was amazed at how easy it is to control.

The landing back at the home aerodrome was uneventful and Mitchel had a big smile on his face.

 

Hopefully this flight and many future flights, will plant the seed for him to learn to fly someday – time will tell.

-Brent

 

 

 

 

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