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280FX

Well Known Member
Congratulations to the 7 award winning builders at OSH 2024 who had their airplanes painted and/or scheme design from Evoke Aviation/Evoke Aircraft Design. My buddy Darryl Hudec won Grand Champion at OSH 2023 and SNF 2024 with his amazing F1 Rocket. My neighbor Krea Ellis won Reserve Grand Champion at SNF 2024 with his beautiful RV-10. Both airplanes were painted at Evoke. It's not surprising that Jonathan and his team have 150 or so airplanes on their paint queue. The level of detail that Evoke provides both in the design and the execution of the paint scheme are unmatched.

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From the list of 2024 Air Venture outstanding kit, all are RVs. At least three of pictures of the RVs on this list I found on the internet were painted by Evoke. They all seem to be elaborately equipped. This is not an ad for the paint shop. It's a reality of life in the modern Airventure contest judging. At least for RVs, the chance of winning anything is small if you didn't get a premo paint service.


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DanH said:
That said, I miss the old days, when the judges scored pro paint lower than the guy who painted his own.
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And the same is valid for built panels, wings and fuselage, plus firewall forward. No wonder all those "kit-built" RVs are so perfect.

OTOH build quality usually goes hand in hand with an improvement in safety... and revenue for the companies involved, all positives. But for my advancing age :unsure:
 
Dan 57 said:
And the same is valid for built panels, wings and fuselage, plus firewall forward. No wonder all those "kit-built" RVs are so perfect.

OTOH build quality usually goes hand in hand with an improvement in safety... and revenue for the companies involved, all positives. But for my advancing age :unsure:
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I really don't mind if the FAA allows for "professionally" built airplane. Witness the growth of LSA in the USA. I think it improves quality and safety and this is a good thing for GA. The people who could afford to spend that much money on a professionally built airplane, they can afford professional annual inspection too, and this will improves safety. At least call them as professionally built instead of "kit built"
 
Be careful using the term "Kit-Built". These RVs that are being discussed are "Amateur-Built". There is a completely different category for "Kit-Built" aircraft.

ref: Primary Kit Built Aircraft (§ 21.191(h))
 
Mel said:
Be careful using the term "Kit-Built". These RVs that are being discussed are "Amateur-Built". There is a completely different category for "Kit-Built" aircraft.

ref: Primary Kit Built Aircraft (§ 21.191(h))
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True Mel.
Just didn't want to write home-built since most are garage-built or partly-factory-built, but yes, amateur-built is the correct wording ;)
 
Beautiful paint and airplanes but…maybe there should be awards for

1) “Builders” ie actually amateur built
2) “Project Managers” those with wads of cash that coordinate the trades to come in on schedule and perform the work.
 
DanH said:
Evoke's work is absolutely beautiful.

That said, I miss the old days, when the judges scored pro paint lower than the guy who painted his own.
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This is still true. There was a bronze Lindy this year that had NO paint and primed cowls. My paint is certainly not perfect (intermediate at best). I shot it myself and still won gold in 2023.

No question, Evoke does top-tier work. I think there is just a higher percentage of people out there today willing to pay for a professional level paint job.
 
I painted the first three builds, all high end PPG base/clear products. I’m happy with the results but I decided the pain is no longer worth it. On the current (and final build) I decided to paint with my check book. I priced out the cost of material at north of $7K, so the delta to have someone else do is within reason.

But, while I’d love to have Evoke do it their delta was more than my checkbook can bear. Looking at Fulltron in Missouri and have exchanged a couple of notes with them already.

Carl
 
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