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First RV12 Ride

jcl777

Active Member
It was six years ago today that I got my first demo ride in an RV12. This was at the 2014 Midwest LSA Expo in Mt. Vernon, IL. It was Mitch Lock who took me up. I was a student pilot at the time.

Several highlights have stuck with me about that ride. The glass display was perfectly clear in bright sunlight. The handling was superb without being twitchy. In a steep 360 turn Mitch told me to let go of the stick and the plane continued to fly the turn perfectly. He said “It’ll keep going like this till we run out of fuel.” On landing, I thought we were floating a long time and asked “When are those wheels gonna touch down?” He laughed and said “We were on the ground way back there! It’s not me, it’s the plane.”

I rode in five other planes at that show - Evektor Sportstar, Tecnam P2008, Savannah, Sirius, Aerotrek. I remember being in line for the RV ride and watching the previous rider get out and walk towards me with a huge grin. Yeah, that grin. He said “Ride in this plane and forget everything else!”

I got my license, finally, a year later. Then I was a partner in two different Skylanes for three years before buying a newly built RV12-iS a year ago. Now I get that same grin regularly.
 
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