![]() ![]() About the size of a four-bay service station, it was located on one end of a 2800-foot grass runway that served a residential airpark. During the early ’80s, Van’s Aircraft, Inc. Refining the DesignĪrt moved west to the tiny town of North Plains, Oregon, where he and Van began to develop a Van’s Aircraft RV-6. N66RV flew in 1985 and weighed only 960 pounds, with a wood prop and 150-hp O-320. The Van’s Aircraft RV-6 prototype before paint. So he did two things-he put aside his personal preferences, and he hired Art. He realized that, despite his personal unwillingness to compromise performance for room, baggage capacity, and passenger “equality,” there was a large contingent of potential customers who would willingly make that trade. Part of this was the usual excuses every aircraft designer hears-if it only had a different landing gear/different canopy/different engine/high/low wing/atomic de-remangulator, I’d buy it!-but inside all that, Van recognized a real demand. It was hard to argue the point…the RV-4 far outsold the RV-3 and became the airplane that really established Van’s Aircraft.Įven though the RV-3 and RV-4 were selling well by the early ’80s, the clamor for a side-by-side airplane became too loud to ignore. He continued along his original path and developed the RV-4. This convinced him he’d made the right choice in picking tandem seating for his two-seat design. He liked it, but found that it was significantly slower than the RV-3. ![]() When Van’s brother Jerry bought Art’s Lycoming-powered RV-6, N6RV, Van had the chance to fly the airplane quite a bit. He called them RV-6s, and they flew very well indeed, exhibiting the exemplary handling qualities that had made the RV-3 such a hit…and both were in the air well before Van, buried under the workload of producing kits for the RV-3 and details of developing a rapidly expanding business, could complete the RV-4. ![]() Art adapted the available T-18 canopy and produced his own fiberglass cowl. One flew with a Lycoming O-320, the other with the unusual Continental IO-346. He agreed to supply Art with some preliminary wing plans for what was to become the RV-4, and Art produced a pair of side-by-side airplanes based around Van’s wing and a fuselage of his own design. At the time Van was developing the tandem concept and had no plans for a side-by-side model. He contacted Van, knowing that a 2-place was in the works. (Some idea of Art’s skills might be gained by realizing that he built the airplane from an extremely rudimentary kit in 13 months! “I should have had it done in a year,” Art says, “but I took a month off the project to roof my mother’s house.”)Īfter his RV-3 was finished and flying, Art needed another project, and his thoughts turned to an airplane similar to the Mustang II he’d helped his brother build. The OriginalsĪrt Chard, of Branson, Michigan, was one of Van’s early customers and built the first customer-built RV-3. Using preliminary plans for the RV-4 wing and a fuselage of his own design, Art Chard built two side-by-side aircraft and called them RV-6s. ![]()
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