The final hurdle in this process -- a process which took 15 years and certainly involved blood (several #30 and #40 holes in various fingers and other blood-letting feats), gallons of sweat, and a fair amount of money -- is the Airworthiness Certificate. Getting this certificate involves, among other things, an inspection by the FAA itself or by a person designated by them called a Designated Airworthiness Representative (DAR). If the people from the FAA do it, it's free but apparently impossible to schedule. If a DAR does it, it's expensive but can be done at your convenience. I had an excellent DAR, Brad Roon, who charged $1000. Horror stories abound from other builders I know who have gone through the process, so I consider myself lucky.
For the inspection, all cowls and inspection plates must be removed and certain bits of paperwork must be available. The required on-hand paperwork includes aircraft registration, weight and balance calculations, a complete list of service bulletins with dates showing completion, and a few other documents. Brad provided a list of everything he wanted to see. He did a very thorough physical inspection of the entire airplane, which made me a bit nervous, but was what I wanted. I was confident that all was good because I had a superb EAA technical counselor (Dan Berry) doing periodic inspections as everything went together. Dan was picky (to put it mildly) but, again, that's what I wanted. After all, this machine, which started out as a collection of parts, will soon carry me into the sky.
Prior to the DAR visit, the on-line AWC application must be completed on the FAA website. This is an unbelievable PITA, what you would expect, I suppose, from a government website. Many documents must be uploaded there, including the Maintenance Manual, the Flight Training Supplement and the Pilot Operating Handbook. Each of these is over 100 pages, and they want the actual documents, not a link to the documents. I'll bet you $1000 to a dime that no one at the FAA looked at these other than to see that they were there.
One of the things you submit is a request for a test area, a box specified by lat-long coordinates, within which you're restricted for the Phase I flight test. I photocopied part of a sectional chart for that and included it in my application, with my requested test area marked in red.
What the FAA granted me was much more generous: from Boulder north to Wyoming and from the Rocky mountains east beyond Fort Morgan. Brad asked me how much flight time I needed for phase one. For an E-LSA it can be as little as 5 hours rather than the usual 40 hours for EAB. I told him 10 hours. No doube it'll take longer. Phase I flight test as it appears in the PAP provided by Van's is task based rather than hour based. I'll describe it as it happens.
Another thing that is issued in addition to the Airworthiness Certificate is a document listing the Operating Limitations for the aircraft (OpLims). These are requested by the DAR and approved by the FAA. They give conditions under which the airplane must operate: pilot certificates required, what can and can't be done with the airplane, etc. Interestingly, even though aerobatics are prohibited in the RV-12 by Van's, the OpLims say only that any aerobatics to be done must be demonstrated during phase one flight test. Hmmm. Also, a lot of verbiage is devoted to talk about not having external things on the aircraft that can be jettisoned during flight. That lets out any bombing runs.
