Average per year flight hours on your RV?

I think it would be interesting to see how much RV's get flown compared to other aircraft models so I would like to take an informal poll on the average # of hours RV owners fly (in there RV) per year. This is not very scientific, but the best I could think of at the moment.

I think it might be interesting!

Please only participate in the poll if you currently own a flying RV. It does not matter whether you built it or bought it already completed.

I would like to level the data by averaging the hours over the life of the airplane instead of everyone posting how many hours they flew in the past year.

To get your average please do the following...

Divide the total # of flight hours on the airplane by the total # (approx.) of months it has been flying... Then multiply that monthly average by 12 to get the average flight hours per year over the life of the airplane.

Example- 3 1/2 year old RV-6 with 241 hrs of flight time

241 divided by 42 months = 5.738 hours per month

5.738 hours per month x 12 months = 68.86 average hours per year


Thanks for participating

To paraphrase Capt. Quint...."I think you're gonna need a higher range!!"

Greater than 175 is filling up fast...you may lose granularity on the survey!

I did it my way

I only indicated an average of MY flight time since purchase. 250 hrs/year

I put in my vote, but....

Sense this is my first year and I was doing a lot of testing and adjusting of things on the plane I expect my average to go up next year.

Only 70 hours the first year.


Kent

Two years since my first flight...

The airplane log book showed 173 hours the first year and 59 hours the second year. Amazing what happens when you have a new airplane, no job, and money in the bank.

As for the second year: a new job, low savings, other things to do, like travel for the new job via other means. Only TWO flights in my RV during year TWO were related to my new job.

Speaking of the new job, I head to Phoenix, Arizona today via Delta Airlines. I avoid the weather in the middle of the country, I don't have to worry about hangaring the RV out there to avoid the possible heat damage, and my destination is a hotel near the Phoenix airport. With a return on Friday, it is not worth the extra hours flying the RV vs a seat on a Boeing 757 each way.

Jerry K. Thorne
RV-9A - - N2PZ
Hobbs = 234.7 hours

Higher Range

Agree with Paul, you need a higher range. I am averaging 250 hours a year with all my travels for airshows, formation clinics, and formation evaluations, never mind personal travel.

hours per year

I have flown my RV-8 270 hours in the first 10 months. Once the excitement wears off, the average per year will be less.

Dan Miller

cdmiller said:

I have flown my RV-8 270 hours in the first 10 months. Once the excitement wears off, the average per year will be less.

Click to expand...

That's what I said 3 years and 1300 hours ago...good luck.

Mean or mode?

ronlee said:

I only indicated an average of MY flight time since purchase. 250 hrs/year

Click to expand...

I'm the fifth owner of my 17+ year old RV-6. I believe all five owners have flown more than 175 (probably more than 200) hours/year during their initial ownership. But, two of them pretty much quite flying it for the last couple years of their ownership and the average drops down to 111 hours over the 17+ years. I expect that is a pretty typical record for older planes and I entered the data accordingly. (If it was just based on me....or the builder or the most recent previous owner, 175 would be much too low to be representative.)

need more on high end

223 hours annual average

Being that I live on our airport, I get a lot of 20 and 30 minute flights. I have way more landings and takeoffs than hours.

Roberta

Thanks for the response!

Thank you to all who participated.
I did know from the start that the data would be somewhat squished at the top but I was less interested in the data from owners that had the huge fuel account .

Actually, the poll was started because of discussion on another thread about the average flight time per year of RV's versus a common certificated aircraft like the C-172. One poster felt that sales add data for the Cessna showed they averaged about 150 hrs per year over their lifetime and that sales data for RV's showed that they averaged about 50 hours per year.

I felt that the RV number was way too low and that it was probably more like 100-150 hours per year. My reason for thinking this is that I believe most RV's that get sold are because the owner has never gotten comfortable flying it, they are more of a builder than a flier (wants to, or is building another one), financial difficulty, etc.

As for the poll...
I felt from the beginning that the data would probably be slanted (and it probably is) because it is being conducted on Vansairforce. The people here are hard core RV people. Maybe not a good cross section of the RV owner group as a whole.
The more I have thought about it though, the more I believe that it may be closer than I originally thought it might be.
We now have more than 6000 members participating in these forums and many more who do not register but just lurk as visitors. The major majority of the registered members participate in read mode only. Gaining helpful tips for operating and maintaining the RV that they own, as well as the builders who are still under construction. In fact, most of the daily post are probably done by 250-300 of the registered members.

So I think the results may be more valid than I first thought they might be, and I think the current results show that the average flight time per year probably falls somewhere around 125 hours.

Thanks again for your participation in this crude poll.
I would be interested in anyone else's thoughts about the results.