Welcome back to Members’ Rides, where we take a look at the daily drivers, dream garages and project rides of Autopian members—and we don’t limit ourselves to ground transportation, either. Member Matt DeCraene’s list in particular caught our eye for having not one, but two projects: a classic Corvette and a Van’s Aircraft RV-8 kit airplane.
(You, too, can be featured in one of these columns! Each week, we peek into members’ garages, and you can join them by signing up here and parting with a little of your hard-earned dough to The Autopian going. Today it’s Matt’s turn!)
Did you know you can build your own plane at home? I didn’t realize just how accessible kit planes were to build until a friend started assembling a plane kit in his dining room. For the record, the best use of a ’90s dining room mirror wall I’ve ever seen is for writing down plane build status notes.
A recent photo of Matt’s plane build.
While DeCraene’s background as an engineer for an aerospace and defense component manufacturer likely helps here, even I’ll confirm that kit planes are way easier to build than you might think. The RV-8 sounds like a blast, too, as a light, small plane designed for aerobatics and a listed top speed of up to 220 mph, per Van’s website.
DeCraene is the kind of enthusiast who most of us can probably empathize with: a tinkerer who dreams of ample space for new projects—and one who appreciates a good minivan, no less. We’ll let him take it from here on and tell us about his family’s current projects and daily drivers.
The Corvette, waiting to be finished.
Autopian: So, what got you into cars (and/or planes)?
I can’t think of any specific projects that got me into cars. I have always been interested in all mechanical projects. Mostly, it comes from my dad’s love of aviation and stories of the interesting cars he had when he was younger. I get fairly anxious if I don’t have some project to work on. My mechanical and aviation interests drove me to get an aerospace engineering degree, and then a master’s degree.
Growing up, I worked on several projects with my dad. We rebuilt the engine in an MGB and built a similar kit airplane to mine. I have had plenty of automotive repair follies and successes. My college friend and I decided to fix the charging problem in his ’68 mustang in my parents’ driveway one weekend. This resulted in it being stored in my parents’ garage for a few months when we ran out of time. Jason’s parking lot Yugo repair reminded me of fixing the transmission linkage on my friend’s Silverado in the street outside his girlfriend’s dorm.
It’s not only project cars. Sometimes you just need a truck.
Autopian: What’s in your current fleet?
2017 Chrysler Pacifica: The family car. Anyone hating the functionality of minivans hasn’t had three kids in car seats at the same time.
2009 Nissan Frontier: Slowly rusting away.
1973 Corvette: Bought as someone else’s project almost 20 years ago. Slowly started a frame-off refresh, but life got in the way. I moved into my own house and didn’t have room for the Corvette, then moved again to North Carolina. It is still sitting in my parents’ garage, and my dad keeps claiming he is going to finish it.
Van’s Aircraft RV-8: Not a car, but fits into Mercedes’s beat. It is a two-seat, 200-mph airplane. I have been building it for the last three-and-a-half years with about four more to go. Between family and work, this is where most of my free time has gone.
Building a Plane
Plane in progress.
Autopian: Tell us a bit more about this plane build. Why did you go with the RV-8?
Van’s Aircraft is the biggest, best-supported kit manufacturer out there, and I helped my dad build an RV-7 [another Van’s Aircraft kit plane—Ed.] around 2001 through 2004. The RV-7 shares a ton of parts with the RV-8, so I have a decent background for building. I am also an aerospace engineer, although my career has taken me to focus on more mechanical components than airframes or even controls. After we finished his plane, I always wanted to build one for myself, but it was not a big priority since I had access to his when I lived in the Chicago suburbs.
Life took us to Asheville, N.C., and I told myself that when I finished grad school, I was going to pick up a project of my own. Shortly after moving, I found somebody else’s project nearby that had the tail surfaces and all of the specialty tools for less than the cost of the tools. I figured that even if the structure wasn’t usable, the tools made it a good deal. I quickly found a complete, unstarted wing kit from another project that I was able to pick up. At this point, I have all of the major airframe complete, parts of an engine, and no avionics. I am in a bit of a holding pattern while I save up for the remaining expensive pieces. Ultimately, the dream is to fly into Oshkosh in formation with my dad, but I am several years out at this point.
The FAA requires builders to keep a log, so you can see the current status of the build here.
Early work on the RV-8 build.Inner structure coming together (left), rear of plane being assembled (right)Progress up front on the plane.
Autopian: How tough is it to assemble a kit plane like this?
The RV kits are the best-supported kits on the market with a ton of resources available. Really, anyone who can use basic hand tools can learn to rivet and complete an RV kit. Basically, if you go to any airport, you can probably find at least one RV builder. I recall Mercedes has done some flight training out of Poplar Grove airport. Mike Foss is based there, and he has built an award winning RV-8.
Cutting the RV-8 canopy.
Autopian: What’s the hardest part about the RV-8 build?
I am at the toughest parts of the build right now: fitting the large bubble canopy, and spending big money on an engine, prop and avionics. Once you develop the initial skills, the airframe is pretty straightforward. It’s a bunch of putting it together, taking it apart, and then putting it together again.
Rebuilding a Corvette
Corvette engine going back in!
Autopian: It can always be a little challenging to take on someone else’s project, too. How did you end up with this particular Corvette?
I like the C3 body style the best, as it has a good combination of curves and defined creases. That was also helped by my dad’s nostalgia from having a ‘69 Corvette when he was younger. He and I had always talked about getting a project car, but we never moved on it. A ‘69 came up for sale that I drove by every day for about a week. We went and looked at it, but decided it had too much rust to take on. We were talking about it with one of our neighbors when he mentioned a guy he worked with with a ‘73 Corvette that he started restoring in the ’80s, but shelved when he decided to just buy a new ‘Vette. We bought it from him for almost free, so that was a big factor in taking on someone else’s project. Besides, we had also built a plane from a kit. How hard could the ‘Vette be?
Corvette frame.
Corvette suspension.
Autopian: What was the Corvette like when you got it, and what have you done with it since?
The parts came in a snowmobile trailer. The body was still on the frame, but the suspension was stripped, and the engine had been pulled and torn down. I was still living with my parents at the time, so I had space and time to work on it. We pulled the body, stripped the frame, repaired some rust on the body mounts and windshield frame, and replaced the radiator support. We decided that we didn’t care about originality, so if there was a reasonably priced upgrade we could make, we would do it. I ended up getting it to a point that the rough body work was about 75% finished, the suspension was back on, and it was ready for an engine and transmission. Around that time, I bought a house and moved out, so it was just not as accessible a project anymore.
Corvette engine and transmission, ready to go back into the car.
It sat in my parents’ garage with virtually no progress until my dad retired a few months ago. His newfound free time has reinvigorated the project. The engine and transmission pictures are from his work, and we are going to look at paint swatches when he visits for Thanksgiving. Once he dropped the engine in, I started making a mental checklist for what I needed to do to hear it run for the first time since owning it.
Daily Drivers Make It All Happen
Rusty but trusty, for the most part.
Autopian: Let’s hear about those daily drivers as well. I know you mentioned that it’s rusting away, but do you use the Frontier for anything special?
We bought the Frontier because we bought a house and wanted a truck. The house was a major project, and we towed a trailer through muddy farm fields on a semi regular basis. It is a PRO-4X model, which I wanted for the locking rear differential since I had enough experience with friends getting stuck in fields.
It was a bit bittersweet, though, since it was the first vehicle that I drove regularly where the top didn’t go down or come off. My previous vehicles were a ‘92 Chrysler LeBaron, a Jeep TJ, and a New Edge Mustang GT convertible, so the Frontier was the sensible car of the bunch.
The sight no Nissan Frontier owner wants to see: the telltale “strawberry milkshake” in the coolant lines.
I have had it for about 13 years and 160,000 miles. While it has generally been reliable, it has gone through more brake calipers than it should have and experienced the dreaded strawberry milkshake transmission cooler failure common to these. I caught it almost soon enough—as luck would have it, a radiator hose failed at about the same time. We found it when I went to work on the RV [plane, not camper—Ed.] and my daughter said, “Daddy, why is there a big puddle under the truck?” The transmission slips occasionally, but not enough to do anything about right now. It also spent too much time around Chicago and is starting to get some rust issues.
The family Pacifica.
Autopian: We love a good minivan around here, too. Why did you get the Pacifica?
The Pacifica story is pretty easy. We were expecting our third kid and couldn’t fit an infant carrier along with two car seats in the back seat of the Frontier. It’s hard to beat sliding doors and an easily accessible third row to get a 3-year-old, 2-year-old and newborn into car seats. We generally kept one of the second row seats stowed and the two older kids in the third row. It is a great road trip car as well, as we make the trip to Chicago at least once a year.
Autopian: Lastly, what would you put in your dream garage?
My dream garage isn’t really specific vehicles, but having the ability to pursue whatever projects I felt like. These have changed over the years, but my current thought is to swap a Wrangler 4xe drivetrain into a Gladiator since Jeep won’t sell me one. A running Corvette would be nice as well as a garage that was also a hangar.
Thanks! If you’re a member and want to be highlighted, please check your email for a link to a survey you can fill out. If you don’t want to be featured, that’s also fine. Go here and join today!
Top photo insert of plane in flight via Van’s Aircraft. All other photos via Matt DeCraene.
22 thoughts on “Building a Plane Is Easier Than You Think: Members’ Rides”
I was going to build an RV since everyone builds an RV, but then I sat in an RV-6 (side by side two seat plane) and discovered my broad shoulders aren’t compatible with RVs.
Instead, I built a Glasiar Sportsman. I cheated a bit though, and did their Two Week To Taxi program. Instead of two to twenty years in your garage, you spend two weeks building at the factory with factory tools and factory jigs. It still complies with the 51% rule.
If building a plane (yourself) and you’re not Mike Patey, programs like this where you can work or at least ask questions of the engineers that designed the plane in question are a hell of a good option.
Yep I’ve been to Air venture several times and while I know many early planes used wood frames and fabric skin, it was still seemed weird when in one of the EAA ‘homebuilt’ tents I saw people working together to create a brand new plane wing out of wood and fabric
Van’s has had financial issues lately, and paused shipping kits for the past several months while it conducted an internal audit. They’re supposed to wrap things up soon and determine whether it will be a viable enterprise moving forward.
The market for aviation is effectively dead – all the boomers are aging out and millennials and younger don’t have money to light on fire. Just affording a house is a wild stretch nowadays.
Yep – I am currently stretching like mad to pay my mortgage. The previous owner of the house subscribed to some vintage aviation magazines and I kept getting them for about eight months. This magazine is 75% bad news: cancelled air shows, new restrictions, crashes due to medical issues, and booming expenses. The editor’s rants were just as depressing.
In general, Americans cannot afford hobbies of any sort; or if we can, our hobby mostly consists of buying stuff with the intent of using it at some unspecified future occasion when we will somehow have spare time (that’s me). By the time I retire and can finally build all of the kits I have in my closets, I won’t be able to see up close and my hands will be too shaky to do any detail work.
I remember my dad showing me a kit-build Lotus 7 at a car show when I was little, and my mind was blown that the owner could build a real working car just the same way I’d put together Lego sets. It’s even more impressive when the resulting project is airworthy!
I’m sure the “RV” letters stand for something in the model designator, but wouldn’t it be cooler if it was the “AV-8” (say it out loud)? I guess that one‘s already taken.
Wow…tell me more about the build log. Does the FAA actually accept a blog these days, or do you also have some USG-spec book in which you have create less interesting/more technical duplicate entries?
You can basically use anything you want for a build log. Pre-internet, people would use a binder with pictures. Basically, you just need to show the FAA that you were the one that built 51% of the kit.
Yep, prior to flying, you are required to get an inspection from the FAA, they will inspect the aircraft, and specify the operating limitations for the aircraft, which will include things like a fixed number of flight hours before carrying passengers. They will also assign a Repariman’s Certificate to the builder, which allows the builder to perform annual condition inspections, instead of using a licensed Aircraft and Powerplant mechanic.
That’s fascinating, and cool that you’re allowed to inspect your own plane. Interesting how unlike with cars (given we all have them), there’s a level of trust between the authorities and the owner based on demonstrated ability.
Given the higher risk I certainly would think a 2nd set of experienced (independent) eyes in the form of an experienced AP (with steong experience working with the specific make/model of EAA plane you built), would be a heck of a good idea in addition to the required FAA inspection at least for the 1st inspection
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I was going to build an RV since everyone builds an RV, but then I sat in an RV-6 (side by side two seat plane) and discovered my broad shoulders aren’t compatible with RVs.
Instead, I built a Glasiar Sportsman. I cheated a bit though, and did their Two Week To Taxi program. Instead of two to twenty years in your garage, you spend two weeks building at the factory with factory tools and factory jigs. It still complies with the 51% rule.
If building a plane (yourself) and you’re not Mike Patey, programs like this where you can work or at least ask questions of the engineers that designed the plane in question are a hell of a good option.
They are, even the short weekend options that get you started on a small section if a kit help if you have had no exposure.
Airventure has a bunch of hands on workshops where you can get exposure to different construction techniques like riveting and fiberglass.
Yep I’ve been to Air venture several times and while I know many early planes used wood frames and fabric skin, it was still seemed weird when in one of the EAA ‘homebuilt’ tents I saw people working together to create a brand new plane wing out of wood and fabric
When I screw up on a car it strands me. A mistake on an aircraft build is on a whole ‘nother level (literally). That takes big aluminum knockers.
Van’s has had financial issues lately, and paused shipping kits for the past several months while it conducted an internal audit. They’re supposed to wrap things up soon and determine whether it will be a viable enterprise moving forward.
Vans will survive, but they might take a trip through Chapter 11 to clear debts like many other kit makers have done over the years.
The market for aviation is effectively dead – all the boomers are aging out and millennials and younger don’t have money to light on fire. Just affording a house is a wild stretch nowadays.
Yep – I am currently stretching like mad to pay my mortgage. The previous owner of the house subscribed to some vintage aviation magazines and I kept getting them for about eight months. This magazine is 75% bad news: cancelled air shows, new restrictions, crashes due to medical issues, and booming expenses. The editor’s rants were just as depressing.
In general, Americans cannot afford hobbies of any sort; or if we can, our hobby mostly consists of buying stuff with the intent of using it at some unspecified future occasion when we will somehow have spare time (that’s me). By the time I retire and can finally build all of the kits I have in my closets, I won’t be able to see up close and my hands will be too shaky to do any detail work.
Man, that’s cool. Thanks for sharing!
I remember my dad showing me a kit-build Lotus 7 at a car show when I was little, and my mind was blown that the owner could build a real working car just the same way I’d put together Lego sets. It’s even more impressive when the resulting project is airworthy!
I’m sure the “RV” letters stand for something in the model designator, but wouldn’t it be cooler if it was the “AV-8” (say it out loud)? I guess that one‘s already taken.
RV stand for the company founder’s name, Richard VanGrunsven
Like the “DB” in Aston Martin stands for “(Sir) David Brown” 🙂
I used to sell gauges and senders to Van’s. Their HQ in Aurora, OR is really cool, though I understand it might be closed for visitors at the moment.
Wow…tell me more about the build log. Does the FAA actually accept a blog these days, or do you also have some USG-spec book in which you have create less interesting/more technical duplicate entries?
You can basically use anything you want for a build log. Pre-internet, people would use a binder with pictures. Basically, you just need to show the FAA that you were the one that built 51% of the kit.
I’m kinda (pleasantly) surprised the government is so reasonable. Does the FAA basically look at them once, when you go to register the plane?
Yep, prior to flying, you are required to get an inspection from the FAA, they will inspect the aircraft, and specify the operating limitations for the aircraft, which will include things like a fixed number of flight hours before carrying passengers. They will also assign a Repariman’s Certificate to the builder, which allows the builder to perform annual condition inspections, instead of using a licensed Aircraft and Powerplant mechanic.
That’s fascinating, and cool that you’re allowed to inspect your own plane. Interesting how unlike with cars (given we all have them), there’s a level of trust between the authorities and the owner based on demonstrated ability.
Given the higher risk I certainly would think a 2nd set of experienced (independent) eyes in the form of an experienced AP (with steong experience working with the specific make/model of EAA plane you built), would be a heck of a good idea in addition to the required FAA inspection at least for the 1st inspection
Doug’s & Bids and Stef’s Puffalump army all in the same day?!?! It’s a ducking party!
I was thinking the same thing, Stef and Alanis are here. Hooray!
Fun interview, and I agree on the C3’s looks. And it’s always great to see Stef’s byline!