Message
Unsure of the RV3 weight - but that's my thinking of the
Vision with single rotor.
Hi George,
The weight is easy.
Gross is alleged to be 1100 lbs, but that was before Van got realistic
:-) My empty weight with the 13B is about 850 lbs, so I can easily
make the 1320 limit. Stall speed is supposed to be 51 mph, and the
limit is 51.8 mph (45 kts). Believe it or not (choose carefully
<g>) my stall speed is exactly 51 mph :-)
The catch is speed. We
have a 138 mph speed limit, and the RV-3 will likely top that with
anything that will get it off the ground. There's a bit of fuzziness
in the rules though, and I think it's the speed at max continuous
allowed power. I can imagine a statement in my logbook now-
"Max continuous rpm allowed is 4500. Higher rpm operation must be
limited to 3 hours or less." :-)
Van's lists the RV-3 as
using engines from 100-160 HP, so a single would certainly fly it, and
a turbo single would fly it well.
BTW, these are just the
sorts of rationalizations that I'm using to order a Dynon D10A EFIS
Monday, pending another test of my buddy's unit this weekend.
Cheers,
Rusty