First encounter with RV12

Had an interesting experience today.  Being New Years Day and the rest of the family gone to Utah for the week, I decided to take advantage of the night weather and go do some flying.  I had received a handheld radio from my wife for Christmas so I brought that along.  I had the radio on while driving to the airport. Upon approaching the airport I heard several aircraft coming in one of which said he was a "RV light sport" which I very soon concluded that he was a RV 12.  I was excited. I had yet to this date to see an RV 12 up close and personal, so this may be my chance.

When I arrived at the airport I retrieved the book for the plane that I would be flying and then watched for the RV12 to pull in.  As I was waiting I saw several other pilots who had just landed, hurriedly walk around the hangars to the end of the runway.  What was going on I wondered. So I followed them and to my surprise there was the RV12 sideways off the runway.  What ended up happening is that upon landing the right tire had gone flat.  We helped work the airplane to the hangar and Mike, at the airport, helped tackle the project of changing the tube. It was noticed after changing the tube that there was a worn area on the tube and we later found a piece of thin plastic that was supposedly between the tire and the tube.  Mike got the tire back on and the RV12 was able to take off to its home airport.

While it was there I was able to check the airplane out and talk to the owner some.  It makes me a little excited to start building one of these.