Today is the 10 year anniversary of our first flight! Reflecting back on it we've done a lot of neat stuff including:
- 1,050 hours flight time
- Every AirVenture @ Oshkosh since 2010
- Sun-N-Fun 3x
- Triple Tree 4x
- Mexico 3x
- Bahamas 2x
- Canada
- Georgia to Arizona to visit family ~8x
- IFR rating
- Young Eagle flights for about 30 kids
- Around 600+ hours with our now 8 year old, Lucy
- Over 200 different airports visited
When we first got Bubbles flying we deferred a few items since we were broke 20 year olds who put every nickel and dime into the project. Since completing the first flight and subsequently the 40 hour test phase, the following items come to mind as things we completed/added:
- Paint
- Interior (Brandi, finish the back seat area panels already!!)
- Added Aerosport spring bias rudder trim
- Added Dynon autopilot and knob remote control panels
- Replaced Garmin 430w with Avidyne IFD440
- Created tilt mount for right side Dynon screen
- Added USB charge ports at throttle quadrant area
- Tug guard in nose wheel
- Upgraded to FlyLED landing lights from Duckworks 35w HID
- Upgraded to EFII dual electronic ignition
Something remarkable that stands out is how many RV-10s there are now and how much enthusiasm there is around them. According to VansAirForce.net, there were 100 flying RV-10s by June 2009. We flew in June 2012 so perhaps there were around 175 and now according to VansAirCraft.com there are over 1,000 RV-10s! The amount of 3rd party vendor products/upgrades today is amazing and the quality of the RV-10s coming out today is just incredible and beyond the early day 10s.
Just after first flight:
Just after paint:
Enjoying Triple Tree 9 years later:
We are now entering even more exciting flight profiles :)
