This grand title covers a multitude of sins. There is a formal Production Acceptance Procedure (PAP) defined by Vans for ground and flight testing of a completed RV-12. This is because an SLA aircraft in the US is deemed to have been "built" by the kit manufacturer - Vans. It is therefore a requirement that the actual builder certifies that the aircraft has been build exactly as per the plans, and has been demonstrated to comply.
This kit is being approved against the CS-VLA design standard in the UK, which is a different animal. I have covered flight testing elsewhere in this log.
I have lumped under Production Acceptance all of the work necessary after completion of the build until readiness for flight. And this was an eye-opener for me. I managed to build the aircraft with very little understanding of the big picture - I just followed the recipe. One criticism I have is the plans don't explain why we are doing something, just how do do it, so many times I was left wondering what was going on. I only really started to understand in this final phase, and as a result some of the final steps took much longer than I anticipated.
I had difficulties with leaking fuel lines, brake lines, air lines, all of which took an age to fix. I also had difficulties adjusting flight controls. To some extent these could have been reduced had I undertaken further (undocumented) activities during the build phase.
