rgmwa

Machine gun team from Warrnambool apparently.

This guy has a lot of interesting videos on flying in PNG. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt0m3zjCj_oC6d-kUkk6zmw

The OS Max35 was our most common engine in those days. I’ve got an unused OS40FSR still in its box that I bought about ten years ago.

I scratch built one of these as a scale control line model with a third line throttle control many years ago. Sadly, it never flew but I still have the now very much worse for wear relic that I can't bring myself to part with. All the numbers and decals were hand painted. It's hardly a competition winner but not bad for a 16 year old. Never thought that one day I'd have a pilot's licence and build a real aircraft.

Ray Allen make a good but expensive range of stick grips. I just have the basic PTT foam grip but you can get much more fancy ones. Available from Skyshop or Aircraft Spruce and probably other places. I ordered mine direct from Ray Allen in the US.

Look at the detail in this...

Impressive work, Max!

Maybe they haven’t discovered floats.

Let’s see him do it at half the speed.

No. Includes both. The 912ULS engine kit is about $42k. Mine was US$28k.

I don't count assembling it as a cost as it was very interesting and good fun. My edited post also included a reasonable paint cost estimate, but I don't think I could justify the cost today. Even at the time it was a lot of money although really no more than a top of the range 4WD or luxury car. Still it was a big commitment and if my wife hadn't been OK with it I wouldn't have done it. It worried me more that it did her.

My RV 12 cost AUD $96k at its first flight in 2015. A similarly equipped RV12 kit with a fuel injected Rotax 912iS from Vans today is US $128,800. That's before shipping, painting etc. My engine is a 912 ULS so that would reduce the price to about US$124,000. At the current exchange rate you would be looking at AUD $210 - $230k to build one today including a basic paint scheme.

Good to see this project still progressing well after all the problems they've had, and that they're taking the time to do a thorough job on design and testing. Should be a very capable aircraft, but it won't be cheap.

That's a lot of money to spend on a model.

What would be the point of flying a jetski or quad bike to open water at great expense when they typically launch off the beach or a boat ramp for nothing? As Onetrack said, it's very hard to see any commercial justification for a new amphibian, at least in Australia. As a tourist transport in the Caribbean or the Great Barrier Reef it might have more value, but there are floatplanes that already service that market, so it would face stiff competition.