My friend Paul recently received his DAR designation, and I had the honor of receiving his first unsupervised airworthiness inspection for an amateur-built aircraft.
I had all my paperwork ready, after triple checking it was all in order – even punctuation matters for this part:
I had the airplane all opened up so he could give it a thorough going-over, basically equivalent to an annual inspection minus a compression check:
After all that, nothing was found to be incorrect, missing, or out of place, so the airworthiness certificate was issued and the traditional photo was taken:
So now after all these years, the airplane project has become an airplane, in the eyes of the law anyway. But I still have a few things to take care of before I'll have the opportunity to see if it will really do airplane things.