I arrived in Sebastian at about 1:30am on Monday morning. A late flight on Sunday was all I could get. And after the drive from Orlando…

My accommodations for the next tree weeks are the Davis House Inn. It’s kind of a B&B without the breakfast. Small but cozy.

Packing for the trip. The weather will be all over the place. There were even reports of snow nearby. So I’m bringing clothes for warm and not-so-warm. My brother is done with his job in Florida but he’s extending his stay a couple days so we can see each other.

Monday morning at 9am I was at the Velocity office. After introductions I went out to the shop and saw the plane (or what would become the plane) for the first time.

View from the front (Left side).

View from the front (Right side)

Looking in the back from the right door. The doors have been removed and you can see one inside on the floor. In the back you can see some of the main landing gear retract mechanism.

Looking inside to the front from the right door. Once again, you can see parts of the doors and the wheel from the front landing gear. All the windows are covered to protect them from being scratched during construction.

I was introduced to Rick. He would be one of my guides in getting started on this whole project.

My brother is in Sebastian! He’s even staying at the Davis House Inn. Unfortunately, he’ll be done with his business down there a couple weeks before I get there. For a while, it looked like we’d be down around the same time.

I started by doing an inventory of the parts. There are a couple hundred little bags with screws, nuts, bolts, and various other parts that I need to confirm are all there. This took over an hour.

Instead of flying myself down, I decided to use some of my frequent flyer miles and let American Airlines get me to Sebastian.

I had the factory add a duct (or conduit) in the canard so I can install landing/recognition lights in the canard.

Originally, when I was planning my month-long stay in Sebastian, I got a nice rate (for Florida in the winter) from the folks at the Davis House Inn. But that was when I thought that I was going to be starting in December. Unfortunately, January and February are more popular so the rate is higher. Oh well, that’ll teach me to procrastinate. So now the plan is to start work on the 14th of January. I’ll stay for three weeks until 2nd of February then come home to teach a class the first week of February. At this time, I don’t know if I’ll go back after teaching and work on the plane in Florida or just ship it home. I’ll have to see how far I get and how comfortable I am with the work required.

Velocity will begin building the wings soon. Instead of tradition antennas for the communications and navigation radios, Velocities use an antenna that is embedded into the wing itself. A wire is then run from the antennas in the wing to the inboard part of the wing where it connects to fuselage. The standard wire for this is RG58 which is similar to what is used for older Ethernet networks. I discovered that RG400 has much better characteristics in this application. I does cost quite a bit more but since it can’t be replaced once the wing is built, I decided it was a good modification. After discussing this with the folks a Velocity they agreed to install RG400 cable so I ordered enough and had it shipped down.

I mailed the purchase agreement and deposit to Velocity.

Once the shop was finished, we (both of us this time) made the trek down to Sebastian to visit the factory, see the latest model and take a test flight.

After a tour of the factory and where all the parts a manufactured, we visited the Builder Assistance Center. This is where people can build and work on their Velocities. We will be taking advantage of this facility to do what’s know as the Head Start program. I’ll spend about a month starting the build process. Then we’ll transport the airplane home and finish it.

After the tour, it was time to take a test flight in the factory demo plane. This is the same airplane I’ll be building. This particular model has the Dash-V option which has a bench seat in the back instead of two bucket seats (haven’t decided on that yet) and a turbocharged engine (haven’t decided on that either).

Takeoff in the factory demo plane.

Me at the controls.

View of Sebastian, FL from 3,000 feet.

Post flight of me.

Me and Ann.

(Left to right) Me, Velocity instructor pilot John Abraham and Ken Baker.

Aircraft that are built in a non-production environment are certified by the FAA as experimental. This applies to all aircraft. Whether it’s the first couple of Cessna 172′s or the Boeing 747. Initially, all aircraft are designated “experimental”. It’s not until the aircraft, the manufacturing process and every other aspect of the aircraft has been evaluated that the “experimental” certification is removed. Until then, the aircraft must have the word “EXPERIMENTAL” plainly visible. There are also a number of other labels and notices that must be present.

Here’s a picture of what Cessna is currently calling the NGP (Next Generation Piston).

Notice the lettering under the window? Once Cessna has satisfied the FAA that the that the airplane can fly (predictably) and the manufacturing process is such that every aircraft that comes out of the factory will behave identically, then they will be allowed to remove the “experimental” label and related notices. Then the airplane becomes what we refer to as a “production” airplane. Homebuilt aircraft are never able to achieve production certification because they are all built by different individuals. Each one is a little bit different. Some types of homebuilt aircraft have gone on to obtain production certification. The Cirrus and Lancair, for example. The companies that originally built the components for homebuilders decided to go through the process and obtain production certification. You can now buy these airplanes the same as you would a Cessna, Piper, Mooney or Beech. When Lancair decided to come out with a production model, they changed the name to Columbia. In the fall of 2007, Cessna purchased Columbia Aircraft.

I mention all of this because Ann just had to take a picture of one of the required placards which are required for aircraft operating under the experimental certification.

Afterwards, we spent a couple days just hanging around the Flordia coast.

View from the motel room.

During turtle season, all lights visible from the ocean have to be off at night so as not to confuse the turtles when they look for the spot they hatched from to lay their eggs. In the morning when you walk on the beach, you’ll see numerous tracks where the turtles have come up to lay their eggs.

And finally, nothing says central Florida like this.