RealDupuis New RV-6A

Real Dupuis (EAA 74 Member and father of EAA 445 Member Mac Dupuis) flew his hand crafted work of art for the first time on 10/23/2002 in Orlando, Fl.  Below is an E-mail he sent to Marc.

As I mentionned on the phone, my RV-6A had its final FAA inspection last tuesday Oct. 22, and I flew it for the first time the next morning. The flight went well, except for a heavy left wing and a little high oil pressure which can be adjusted. A new aileron bracket and adjustment should take care of the heavy  wing.

             It was quite a thrill to see these parts flying in formation,  as a completed airplane , after 7 years of work. I have approx. 3500 hours of work on this airplane.

             I decided to build my own plane back in 1994, when I attended Sun & Fun in Lakeland, and saw a Zenair being built in 7 days. I was there when it flew for the first time.  I thought  if they can  do it in 7 days, I should be able to build one myself, before I retired.   Well they did it in 7 days and it took me 7 years. I had to first build a bending brake, benches, drafting table, shelves and a two car garage to do this project, and buy a lot of tools I never seen before, so I had to learn how to use them.

             I drilled the first hole in the Horizontal stabilizer spar on sept. 22, 1995 , and have been working on my project  whenever I could,  when I was back from my extensive travelling. It was quite an experience, I learned a lot and enjoyed doing it. There was many moments of frustration, when I used  words that I did'nd even know existed.

             When it was time to buy an engine, I saw what I was looking for on the internet, called this man in Lubbock  Texas, on a sunday afternoon, left the next morning on a long drive to Texas, arrived the following wednesday at 1;00 pm, flew his RV-6A with its Lycoming 0-320 D2J, We landed, did a compression check, made the deal, helped him to remove it from his airplane ( He was changing to a bigger engine), Stayed there overnight, On thursday morning, I attached the engine on the back on my camper van,  and within less than 24 hours from arriving in Lubbock, I was on my way back to Orlando. It was a pleasant trip, I was very impressed with the wonderfull texan hospitality.

             I installed the 160 HP  engine, design my own instrument panel which has a Bendix-king KX-125 nav-com, and KT-76A transponder with altitude encoder, flightcom intercom, navaid auto-pilot, ELT, portable garmin 195 GPS, a portable nav-com for back up, and a full panel with directional gyro, and attitude indicator., I also installed strobe  lights, nav lights and landing light for night flying.

             Every parts of this airplane has been primed with epoxy primer,  I used insulation material to reduce the noise level.  installed a parking brake, heater and  priming system.   I intend to fly this airplane  to Canada sometimes.

             The first flight lasted 40 minutes, but I would have stayed in the air much longer. I,m getting the plane ready for its second flight and expect to complete the 25 hours of flight testing within a month. Our first long cross country trip will be to las Vegas.

             Experimental aircraft building is for EDUCATION and RECREATION. I have done the education part, now comes the Recreation part.............