Rollicking good time in the Wanttaja household lately, with another set of
homebuilt registrations statistics/homebuilt accident statistics analyses under
way.

Based on my 4 January 2008 FAA registration database, there are 30367
Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft registered in the US. This does not include
homebuilt aircraft that are not listed as having airworthiness certificates
(which does not mean they don't, of course).

The fleet size increased by 940 aircraft vs. my January 8 2007 database. This
is roughly equivalent to the preceding few years, but is down a bit from the
early 2000s. However, in the past several years, the FAA has been
de-registering a bunch of aircraft. This may be affecting the statistics to
some extent.

The following table shows the percentage of the total homebuilt fleet of
particular homebuilt types:

Aircraft %
RV-6 5.5% (e.g, 5.5% of all homebuilts are RV-6s or RV-6As)
Kitfox 3.2%
RV-4 3.1%
Pitts 3.0%
Bensen 2.5%
RV-8 2.3% (Both taildraggers and trigear types)
Lancair (All) 2.3%
Glasair 2.1%
RANS (All) 1.9%
Challenger 1.8%
Long-EZ 1.6%
Stolp 1.6%
Rotorway (All) 1.6%
Avid 1.6%
Starduster/Acroduster 1.5%
RV-7 1.5% (Both taildraggers and trigear types)
Zenair 1.4%
KR-2 1.1%
Pietenpol 1.1% (Includes Grega versions)
T-18 1.1%
Glastar 1.0% (Includes Sportsman models)
Baby/Junior Ace 0.9%
Fly Baby 0.9%
RV-9 0.9%
Christen Eagle 0.8%
Quickie 0.8%
Velocity 0.7%
Lancair IV 0.7%
Sea Rey 0.6%
RV-3 0.6%
Murphy 0.6%
BD-4 0.5%
Sonex 0.5% (Includes Waiex)
Cozy 0.5%
RV-10 0.3%
BD-5 0.3%
Europa 0.2%

About 14% of the whole homebuilt fleet are Vans designs.

Accident analyses are fascinating, as always. Results should be in Kitplanes in
October.

Ron Wanttaja