The existence of the first Van’s high-wing plane was no secret. Rumors had been floating around for years that the Oregon kit giant was considering a high-wing model, in part, people assumed, to capitalize on the great interest in backcountry flying. Then, a couple of weeks ago, spy video emerged of a high-wing plane flying around Van’s home airport, Aurora State in Oregon, and, well, pretty much everybody assumed, correctly, as it turned out, that the plane in question was the much-rumored new high-winger from Van’s. With the cat effectively out of the bag, Van’s came clean in advance of the Oshkosh AirVenture fly-in and revealed the existence of the RV-15, though not much more than that.
The video that Van’s released in letting said cat out of said bag was revealing. The plane looked big enough to accommodate four seat,s and it sported big tires. The sound of the engine was sweet and powerful, too.
But it wasn’t until the plane showed up here at KOSH that we got our first good look at it. Here are some of the observations we made about this plane, which, it is clear, is so much more than just the first high-wing model from the world’s most successful kit plane maker
