Dream takes flight: McKelvey says flying homemade plane ‘best feeling you could imagine’

Submitted / The Outlook

Rush McKelvey took this photo on a wing-mounted camera while flying his homemade Vans RV-8. The top speed of his plane is 220 mph.

When Rush McKelvey was building and flying radio-controlled model airplanes as a boy, he dreamed of building and flying a real one.

At 33, McKelvey earned his private pilot’s license and set out making his dream come true. In 2011, he finished building his real aircraft, a Vans RV-8 aerobatic plane.