Steve Shumate’s RV-12iS | Kirkland, WA RV-12iS #121118

Congratulations to Steve on his new RV-12iS, he writes:

After 6.5 years and ~2000 hours of build time, my RV-12iS took to the skies for the first time on May 1, 2025 (May Day!) from Paine Field in Everett, WA. The airplane flew flawlessly and handled beautifully, with zero issues or surprises. I couldn’t be happier!

Building this airplane was the culmination of a life-long dream, and was an amazing and fun learning experience. Huge thank you to Van’s not only for their excellent customer support, but also for the world-class engineering that went into this kit. The quality of the design, the parts, and the build instructions was just amazing. Although my build time may be a bit longer than usual for an RV-12iS, I tend to be a perfectionist plus I chose to paint the airplane myself, which had a huge learning curve and time investment of its own.

My N-number was chosen to pay homage to the airplane I spent the majority of my career at Boeing on, the 787. And as fate would have it, N787SV made its first flight from the same runway the first 787 made it’s first flight on 14 years ago!