Southwest Regional To Celebrate Legendary Designer

Dick Van Grunsven, the innovate designer of the legendary RV series of aircraft kits, will be the guest of honor at this year's Southwest Regional Fly-In. Van Grunsven, founder of Van's Aircraft, will will receive the fly-in's President's Award at the 40th anniversary of the Fly-In, which will be held at the New Braunfels Airport (BAZ) on May 14-15, 2004. Past recipients of the event's President's Award include the late Tony Bingelis, Paul Poberezny, Charles Duke and the late Duane Cole. Van Grunsven learned to fly in 1956 at the age of 16. He has logged 7,000-plus hours, 4,000 of it in homebuilts. He developed his first design, a modified Stits Playboy dubbed the RV-1, in the 1960s. His first original des