c162:
Vans has an East Coast rep (and 'multiple offender', as they call someone who's built more than one Vans model) in Mitch Locke. A really nice fellow and straight shooter who tries to demo the RV12 each year at Sebring, weather permitting. Viewing 'his' RV12 - the one he built and I believe owns outright - should be the same as viewing one of Van's sub-contracted S-LSA RV12's. The reason for this is that Mitch's E-LSA RV12 ends up being the 'proof of concept' RV12 every time that upgrades are designed and build instructions for the
existing RV12 fleet are issued by Vans. Those instructions and the parts kits for the upgrade are sent to Mitch, who then proofs the instructions and 'bits in the kits' by 'rebuilding' his RV12 to the new standard. The integration last year of the new Dynon Skyview to the RV12 panel - along with a number of other changes - was a huge test of this process and took much longer than expected. But in the end, Vans had reliable retrofit instructions they could issue, they validated the retro upgrade parts kits, and Mitch had an RV12 that sported the new panel (plus some other tweaks) that the latest RV12 kit (and so, presumably, the subcontracted S-LSA RV12's) have.
In the past, Mitch would make reservations for test flights at the beginning of each day of the show, and this makes sense since he's had some weather challenges in the past that make attendance during the entire show a bit of a challenge. You can check with him to see if he plans to attend this year and how he will handle demo flights:
[email protected]