Pilot spends seven years building his own plane
BBCA former commercial pilot has spent the last seven years building his own aeroplane.
Colin Matthews, from Guernsey, who retired 10 years ago, began work on the home-built Vans RV-7 aircraft in 2019. The aircraft finally took to the sky on its first test flight seven years later on 18 March 2026.
Matthews said building a plane in his garage had been a "learning curve". "Things that would take a qualified engineer five minutes to do, would take me five days," he explained.
He said the aircraft was a birthday gift to himself: "Having retired, I thought what am I going to do? Now I've got an entire aeroplane."
Matthews said a test pilot had travelled to the island from the UK to try out the aircraft.
The pilot said there had been "a few little niggles" during the tests, such as an oil leak, which was "not an issue" and had since been corrected.
"It's about a 6.3L engine, it's a big engine, but it only revs slowly," he added.
"It's not a heavy aeroplane."
He said he hoped the plane would be signed off in a few weeks and then he would be "free to go".
"I'll probably do about 20-30 hours running around locally in France and probably over the UK, just to make sure everything's perfect. Then I plan to take it down to Italy," he said.
The pilot said he would "absolutely" recommend the project to others, but warned "it's not cheap".
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