Richard VanGrunsven

The number of VanGrunsven-designed homebuilt aircraft produced each year in North America exceeds the production of all commercial general aviation companies combined.

[citation needed] His father had taken flying lessons prior to getting married and his stories inspired Richard and his older brother Jerry to acquire an old Piper J-3 Cub, and later a Taylorcraft.

VanGrunsven originally planned to become a fighter pilot, but a minor color vision problem that would have been acceptable in civilian aviation, but not to the Air Force, led instead to him serving three years as a communications officer.

A few years later he started a clean-sheet design, the all-aluminum RV-3 single-place aircraft, which VanGrunsven introduced at the 1972 EAA AirVenture Airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he won the "Best Aerodynamic Detailing" award for the RV-3.

[18] That same year he, along with Dale Klapmeier, Burt Rutan, Bob Hoover and others, launched a campaign and website made for honoring EAA's former long-time president Tom Poberezny.

[19][20] Flying magazine ranked VanGrunsven 22 on its list of the "51 Heroes of Aviation" and has labelled him the "undisputed leader in kit aircraft manufacturing".