Leg room in the rear seat is surprisingly good. In keeping with Vans’ keep-it-light philosophy,
no side upholstery is fitted to the prototype.
controls until you fly something that doesn’t
have one, which is the case with the RV- 10.
The initial feeling is that the airplane is
“sensitive,” which is absolutely not the case.
It’s “reactive.” With no dead spot, if you
move your hand, the airplane will move. For
most pilots, it’s like being taken out of a ’ 53
Buick Roadmaster and put in a brand new
Turbo Carerra: You over-control until you
acclimate to it, and then you realize that this
is the way cars, and airplanes, are supposed
to handle.
The forces right at neutral and the way
the airplane accelerates into a bank are perfectly matched: reasonably light and precise.
The only certified airplanes that feel even
remotely this good are some Beechcraft
products and a few Yankees. A
Bonanza/T- 34 pilot will feel right at home
and will like that the - 10 feels even better
than his or her usual mount.
I tried rocking the wings, the so-called
Dutch roll coordination exercise, with and
without rudder and found it had a very small
amount of adverse yaw thanks to differential
ailerons. So, only the slightest rudder
pressure was necessary to keep the ball in
the middle.
I also tried a few stability tests, e.g.,
pulsing the rudder back and forth and
letting go (it was nearly dead beat and
centered up on the first oscillation whether
the rudder was fixed or not) and pulling it 10
knots off trim speed and letting go to see
how long it would take to damp out. After
two oscillations, it was down to a 2-knot up
and down variation, which disappeared in
another three oscillations.
While I was messing with the controls
and trying to hold altitude (it wants to climb
really easily), I knew something was “
different” about the entire experience, but it took
a minute or so to figure out what: it’s the
visibility. The vis is amazing because you sit
high in the fuselage coupled with a gigantic
cabin. It’s wide. Really wide! The front seat
is 48 inches at the shoulders. To put that in
perspective, a Cessna 172 is under 40 inches
and a late-model 182 is just over 42 inches.
Trimmed up in level flight (the left
control stick has a top-hat switch for aileron
and elevator trim), the airplane will sit there
holding altitude and heading until you’re out
of fuel. At 22 inches and 2300 rpm (about 75
percent), we were indicating 160-165 knots
or 185-plus mph. At our temperature and
altitude, that was in the low 190 mph true
airspeed (TAS) range. What is interesting,
however, is that the same power setting gave
the same indicated speed regardless of
altitude. It was the same at 8,000 feet as it
was at 1,000 feet, but the TAS was obviously
higher. If I would have had a brain in my
head, I would have taken it up to 10,000 feet
and run some GPS rectangles, but I was
having too much fun and had only so much
time. Ken said that when they’re going to
shows (this airplane, the prototype, had
