VANS
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BY LANE WALLACE
DICK VANGRUNSVEN, or “Van” as he’s known to most in the aviation
industry, is not a flashy guy. He wears practical, rubber-soled shoes, and
his “office” at the headquarters of Van’s Aircraft, in Aurora, Oregon, is just
a small cubicle in the engineering department, no different than other
offices except for a bit more clutter on the shelves. His first brochure—
for a set of aluminum, cantilevered wings, new landing gear, and new
engine/cowling that would turn a Stits Playboy into an RV- 1—is a six-page,
typed document on plain paper, with a few black-and-white photos,
that simply explains, in clear, engineering terms, why he thinks the
modification is an improvement over the original design.
“I reasoned,” the sales pitch goes,
after a detailed description of the evolu-
tion of the modification, “that you might
want an airplane like the one that I have
found so rewarding. So…I have prepared
what I consider to be an accurate and
complete set of construction drawings for
the wings. The structure…is the evolu-
tionary result of experience gained in
building four sets of wings.”
The honesty and the earnest engi-
neer’s language in the “brochure” may
help account for the fact that very few
plans for the RV- 1 actually sold. But
over time, that engineering precision,
desire for performance improvements,
and honest, straightforward approach
that characterizes Van—and the com-
pany he built—has paid off a thousand
times over. Or, to be more accurate,
18,000 times over. Because 40 years
after Van appeared at EAA Oshkosh
1972 with his prototype RV- 3 (his first
scratchbuilt design), Van’s Aircraft has
become the most successful kit plane
manufacturer in history.
