Now Available on Amazon! Details available at this link, or just click the picture below. The Van's RV-12 is an extremely popular airplane for a number of reasons. It is economical but also offers great performance with a high climb rate, a cruising speed on par with airplanes like the venerable Cessna 172, and is equipped with modern high-tech avionics. It's handling qualities are light and enjoyable for short flights around the local area, but it is also a very capable cross country machine, especially when equipped with a two-axis autopilot. So what's the catch? Well, that's a matter ..read more

It didn't take long at all for the RV-8A tail kit to arrive from Van's. I think they like to gt tail kits in the hands of fledgling builders to get the hook sunk as deep as possible. I would also posit that Van's sells a hella lot more tail kits than any of the following kits.  Over the years, I have had countless people tell me that this blog, or one of my YouTube videos, or my scintillating personality was the biggest reason that they started a build. Van's actually asks first-time builders who influenced them to buy a kit. That person gets a $100 referral fee from Van's.  Despi ..read more

Thursday, February 7, 2013 - that was the date when my RV-12, N284DG, took flight for the first time. While that didn't entirely signal the demise of this blog, it definitely changed the nature of it. Schmetterling Aviation slowly yet inexorably retreated to the back of my mind - I found YouTube to be a better way to share the experience of flying; this blog was better suited to documenting the build process than the usage of the finished project. There has been no appreciable shortage of maintenance work to be done on the RV-12, but that is not the same as building. The work is of a differen ..read more

Prior to filling out a membership application, prospective members are encouraged/required (don't know which, but it matters not) to attend two meetings. I attended my first last night. The meetings start at 19:00 hours, which is a little test in and of itself. Fortunately, I instantly recognized that as being equivalent to 7:00 Eastern Muggle Time. The meetings are held in a room located in Hangar 4 at Don Scott (KOSU) airport. If you don't know precisely where hangar 4 is, or where to go once inside the voluminous interior space, you are not alone. Well, you are now, but less than 24 hours a ..read more

My first real conversation with Maj. Joe was chock full of information, but it was delivered via iPhone while I was driving. To me more precise (in order to ward off the nannies), the iPhone was pumping through the fancy software in my truck; it was like listening to someone sitting right there with me. And I do mean "listening" - it was a lot of info and I gathered as much of it as I could while still paying adequate attention to traffic, etc. It wasn't until a couple of days later that I started having questions to ask. The delay in queries came from the discovery of the squadron's website ..read more

I've kept quiet about this for awhile now - probably more than a year but less than three - but I have been starting to question whether flying was "worth it" for me anymore. It's deeply personal and has huge ramifications.  Factoid: I flew a total of 17 hours last year, which is practically nothing, and certainly not enough to justify the fixed costs and the maintenance work. I've even gone so far as considering selling the airplane and either getting a different airplane or just quitting entirely. On the quitting side, there has been one huge unassailable fact to deal with: I would never be ..read more

 Wikipedia Commons Through a series of events and personal relationships that aren’t unique or interesting enough to detail here, it transpired that I found myself at Whiteman AFB one fine morning, waiting with almost childlike anticipation for my turn to get some seat time in a B-2 ‘Spirit’ Stealth Bomber simulators. This would be one of the very simulators used in the training of actual Air Force Spirit pilots in the exotic and esoteric operations endemic to the amazingly complex process of stealthily, accurately, and hopefully survivably task of delivering bombs, both conventional and nucle ..read more