Kevin called me Saturday, October 27th and asked if I would be interested in shooting some video of the first flight of his RV-7 they were planning on making on Sunday morning.  He continued to say that I would be doing the aerial video and he had me lined up for a ride in an RV.  My first thought was NO, I AM JUST TOO BUSY BUILDING AN AIRPLANE>>>>  Are you kidding me???  I immediately jumped at the chance not only to see my friends first RV flight, but to get a ride in an RV.  Could it get any better than that???  Yeah, maybe, it could be my plane's first flight...

Anyway I found that I couldn't sleep after that offer, so it made for a long night.  Anyway, as time works, Sunday morning came and I was supposed to be at the Plattsmouth airport at 9:30, so I climbed into the Cherokee and flew up to KPMV (about a 20 minute flight).  It was a beautiful morning as the temps were cool, the sun was out, no wind, and the visibility was fantastic.

Kevin had Mike Howard of EAA Chapter 80 who has 1300+ hours in an RV-6 do the first flight.  Mike has been a long time friend of Kevin, is a tech counselor for chapter 80, and used to be the chapter president.  You may have seen MIke's airplane around at various fly-ins around the country.

Mike Howard's RV-6.

Kevin Faris's RV-7 on its first flight.

Yep, it is possible to have a pretty big "RV-Grin" even if you didn't pilot the first flight...

Pictures:  This is a .Mac web gallery of the still pictures I took that day.  Click on the link and it will open up a new window.

Picture Gallery of Kevin's First Flight

The Video:  This file is an mp4 format encoded in H.264.  I believe that you will need Quicktime to run it.  The best way to view would be to "right click" on it and hit "save to disk".  I left the video big to keep the quality up.  I did not embed the video within this web page as it would start downloading as soon as you navigated to here.  A file that big, I want the download to be on purpose....  Dial-up internet users will not have any joy in attempting to download this file.

First Flight N426KF (222 MB)

Anyway, I got pumped after this event.  It was very exciting to see Kevin's plane take flight.  Kevin and I met right after I started on my RV-7 back in 2003.  We have been friends ever since and get together whenever we can find the time to swap the typical hangar stories and traumatic builders experiences.  Kevin introduced himself after finding my web site and realized we were practically neighbors.  That is neighbors that live about 40 miles apart.  (That is pretty close when you live in the middle of nowhere).  The RV community is just incredible!!! 

I also got my first ride in a 200 HP RV-7.  Let me tell you that was also a thrill.  I could not believe the performance of that airplane.  It really pushes you back in the seat on takeoff.  Pretty neat stuff....