Brent Owens is a gear head in the purest sense of the word. Along with some help from his family, he created a plane in his two car garage over a 5-year period (2,436 man-hours).
Before taking on this project, he built several old school style choppers. All of those bikes are now gone to make room for the airplane, but he still has his ’56 Panhead.
The airplane is a Van’s RV-8 which comes in kit form and then your put it together – all 15,000 rivets and thousands of assorted screws, nuts, bolts, and clamps.
The airplane holds two people, can fly up to 200 mph, and has a range of 700 nautical miles. Not bad for something built at the house. The engine is a 210 H.P. 4 cylinder Lycoming with forward induction, and high-compression pistons (10:1). It runs on a healthy diet of 100LL high-octane aviation fuel at a rate of around 10 gallons per hour
The name Contrary Mary comes from a WWII P-51D Mustang and it happens to be Brent’s youngest daughter’s name.
+ Source: I Fly Blog
