Experimental Aircraft Fly-in Event Raises Money for Student Scholarships

RV Nation, based in Sherrills Ford, NC, is an organization comprised of experimental aircraft owners, builders, and enthusiasts from all over the world. It was created by Scott Brown, a South Charlotte Middle School math teacher and Science Olympiad coach, to revive the grass roots of flying as well as to generate aviation interest in today’s youth so as to preserve the sport of experimental flight for generations to come.

In his endeavor to increase young people’s interest in flight, Brown has developed programs designed to attract and engage students with the fields of Aviation and Aerospace. One of these programs is the RV Nation Aviation Scholarship Fund that provides scholarships to outstanding high school students wanting to further their post-secondary education in the fields of Aviation or Aerospace.

RV Nation hosted their first fly-in the weekend of November 6th at the Deerfield Resort, a beautiful flying community located in the Cumberland Mountains of LaFollette,Tennessee, on Norris Lake.

Attendees enjoyed the many Van’s Aircraft RV experimental aircraft (from which RV Nation takes its name) that flew in for the event from throughout the southeast, including places in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

Everyone enjoyed an outstanding smoked BBQ lunch while listening to “Shake Ragg”, a local up-
and-coming southern-rock and country band. The day was filled with great entertainment, aviation fun, food, and fellowship, all the while raising money and interest for the RV Nation Scholarship Program. When the day had ended, over $500 had been raised for student scholarships.

“It was our first fly-in”, said Brown, “and for the first one, I think we were very successful. The money raised from this event will all go towards our Aviation Scholarship Program. Needless to say, I am very excited about that”.

Brown and his wife, Dr. Tracy Brown, a child psychologist and university professor, are also in the process of developing summer camps designed for kids entering into the 6th, 7th, and the 8th grades. These camps are designed to focus on designing, building, creating, and testing, similar to events competed in for the North Carolina Science Olympiad. “We are excited to hold our camps this coming summer,” said Brown. “The camps are aligned with STEM directives and activities (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), and will be high energy and a lot of fun for all the campers.
The kids are going to have a blast!”

For more information, please contact Scott Brown at rvnation.scott@gmail.com.

Shake Ragg

Van's RV Nation - Join Us On Facebook

Love your Van's RV's? We do too! Join the fastest growing Van's RV enthusiast group on facebook. See the latest pictures from Fly-ins, chat with other RV pilots, builders, and enthusiasts, and join in the excitement of building or owning a Van's RV Aircraft. Here is the link to RV Nation. Hope to see you there!

--Buzz

RV Nation Fly-in

RV8, Luca Style!

Here is a new video from my friend Luca Perazzolli in Italy. Really awesome flying! By the way, Luca won the First Place in the Experimental Aircraft catagory in Italy for his work on his RV8! Congrats to Luca! This video is really good, and set to some great scenery and music. Just click on his picture. Hope you enjoy!

-- Buzz
RV Nation

RV Nation T-Shirt Sightings!!

The RV Nation t-shirts are selling all over the world, and fellow RVers are proudly displaying them in front of their beautiful RVs. Send me a pic of you with your RV Nation t-shirt on in front of your RV, or anywhere else for that matter, and I will post it here on Buzz Barnstormers, as well as on Van's RV Nation on facebook! Here are some of the pictures that have been sent it, arriving from places as far as Italy, to as close as North Carolina! Hope to see your pic up here soon!

Join RV-Nation, The Fastest Growing Van's RV Organization

RV-Nation is an organization of Van's Aircraft RV and Harmon Rocket enthusiasts. Our mission is to grow experimental aviation by educating our youth about experimental aircraft, and to provide the means to further aviation and aerospace education for outstanding students. Funds raised by RV-Nation through merchandise sales, fly-ins, memberships, and donations are used to support the RV-Nation Aviation Scholarship Program, which creates student college scholarships and develops programs that provide hands-on aircraft building skills for high school students. Please join us in our endeavors to help pave the way for our aviation future. Don't forget to mark your calendars for the RV-Nation Fly-in on October 6th at Deerfield Resort (TN44). We are really excited to announce the entertainment for the fly-in: Shake Ragg, a country, southern rock band that is quickly growing in popularity all over the southeast. We are very fortunate to have them play for us at our fly-in. This is going to be really fun and something you don't want to miss! Plan to arrive as early as 8:30 and enjoy the day of fun, friends, food, entertainment and, of course, great RV's! Airport frequency is 122.9. Make your initial landing your best on arrival, as it will be your automatic entry for the spot landing contest. The band will start around 1:00 and play until 4:00 or so. We will have a golf cart rally that that will begin around 12:00, and of course, some great food BBQ, baked beans, coleslaw, and peach cobbler will be served throughout the afternoon. There will be a Best of Show contest for best RV, so make sure your RV is looking its very best. We have great prizes for all contest winners. For those that want to camp with their planes, we will have an area set up for camping along with a little get together in the evening after things slow down a bit. Entrance to the fly-in will be 10/person and the golf cart rally entry fee is 20 per person. All funds raised by the fly-in support the RV-Nation Aviation Scholarship Program for outstanding high school students wanting to further their education in aviation or aerospace. We look forward to seeing you all there. In order to help us with our numbers for food, please send a quick PM to tell us you are coming. Come join the fastest growing Van's RV Organization in the country. Visit us on Facebook at:

Join RV-Nation Here See you there!

Best, Funnest Cockpit I Have Seen

I have a Facebook page called RV Nation that allows all of us experimental nuts to talk about RV's and Harmon Rockets, and share pictures and ideas on how to build them better, safer, and most importantly, cooler. One day when I was surfing the net and chatting with one of my RV friends, Ian Hoyt, online, the thread of conversation settled on one RV8 that we had both seen recently, either in person or on the net. The RV8 had so many features and cool ideas, it has driven me to show all that follow this blog those ideas as well. So get ready to drop your jaw, and if you so choose to duplicate the efforts of the builder, get ready to drop a few bills as well. But the fame and fortune that will soon follow will be more than enough for your efforts.....well maybe not the fortune part.

The RV8 at hand had been built and developed over a long period of time, and in that development, had taken on an identity of its own. The name that was given to it, or that it had earned, was "Smokey". The proud owner and creator of this amazing craft is Don McNamara. I emailed Don and asked him all about his RV8 and all its cool features, and he was more than happy to talk about it a bit and share how he came about developing such a unique plane.

"Smokey" sports a military paint scheme, that of the Jolly Rogers F14 to be exact. But the rest of the features of this plane is all Air Force. (The Navy always seem to have better paint schemes for some reason, but that's about where it all ends usually....haha.) Gooo Air Force. But, I digress.

So, let's get back to the RV8, shall we? The interior of this plane is where all the fun is. For that I am going to give the honors to Don, in his own words, as he described his plane to me via email.

"While the paint scheme of "Smokey" is that of an F-14 Tomcat squadron, it's impossible to find cockpit parts from Tomcats because we sold them to the Iranians, and we don't want them to have spares.  However, we sold F-16s to our allies, so parts are more plentiful.  I picked up parts over the years at Oshkosh and on eBay, and more recently from an online F-16 simulator site.  The ICP, for example -- which stands for Integrated Control Panel -- is front and center in the F-16 panel and directs what the pilot sees on the HUD, as well as other things.  Mine slides over my Garmin 496 for static display.

The simulated HUD is directly above that.  The black rectangular things on either side of the HUD are indexers, again from an F-16.  The left one gives angle of attack (AOA) info and the right one is for in-flight refueling and nosewheel steering indication, neither of which I need.  The mirrors are standard military stock, and the stick grip and throttle control are F-16.  From the stick I can start the engine, trim the plane, communicate on the radio and disconnect the autopilot. 

The ejection seat handles I just made out of wood and painted for static display at Oshkosh.  I had started making an ACES II ejection seat out of aluminum, but gave up.  I may someday resurrect the project."

WOW! That is quite a plane, and quite an imagination to create, or should I say re-create, the cockpit of an F-16 into that of an RV8. Don is now sporting the "ultimate weekend warrior" plane per se, and I'd say that it looks down right awesome. I wonder if he has some other secret armaments in there that he hasn't told us about? Hmmm, maybe. I liked the ideas so much, in fact, that I want to implement some of these ideas in my own plane, a Harmon Rocket, when it is completed. I hope that I have the creativity and craftsmanship as does Don when I do.

Well, this particular blog entry was meant to be a lasting tribute to Don and his beautiful RV8 "Smokey". I hope that I have done the creator and plane justice, as his craftsmanship simply has been a work of art and his RV8 is just gorgeous. Great Job Don!

-- Buzz
RV Nation