By Dan Pimentel,
Airplanista Blog Editor

It was just another overcast day in Southern Oregon a couple of weeks back when my EAA chapter got together to try and fly some Young Eagles flights at Eugene's Mahlon Sweet Field (KEUG). The weather guessers said it'd be 5,000OVC by the time we got the kids strapped in, but the deck never lifted, so we scrubbed our good deeds for the day.

About the time we were set to break up our non-party, aviation airbrush artist to the Stars, John Stahr, showed up asking for a little help moving a couple of RV-8 wings into a storage hangar. So a group of us hopped on his trailer for the short ride in the gate, next to a pair of wings so fresh out of the shop, you could still smell the BASF Diamont paint.

After unstrapping the wings, we grabbed different parts of the wings and lifted, to unveil an incredible design under the right wing. There, staring back at us was an impeccable rendition of the Corvette 50th Anniversary emblem, with a seriously unclothed “nose art babe” clad only in something from Victoria's Secret draped across it from wingtip to fuselage. She was covered in a giant checkered flag woven throughout the design, and had her left arm not been strategically positioned to cover all the good parts, this design might have earned an “X” rating.

Yes, my flying friends, we were being introduced to Chris Hill's phenomenal RVette-8, a stunning work of flying art so gorgeous, it has quickly become known as a ramp magnet each time it stops for fuel. In fact, when his father, George, flew the finished airplane back to the Gulf Coast, it drew a crowd everywhere he stopped. At a fuel stop in Vernal, Utah, the pilot texted Stahr and said "so far two stops.....I feel like an Art Gallery guide!" 

Hill, a B-52 pilot currently on deployment, and his father started building the RV-8 in 1998 and finally flew it in 2010. How it became known as the RVette-8 is a great story:

“Like a lot of RVs before paint,” said Hill, “it was gray primer and bare aluminum before I started thinking about a paint job that was classy and elegant. Being in the Air Force, I kept using blue as the main color for the paint scheme until I realized it should match the 2003 50th anniversary Corvette given to me as a gift by my father while I was in the Air Force Academy. That's where John Stahr comes in.”

Hill had read a post on VAF mentioning the aviation airbrush art of Stahr. It didn't take long to realize this was the artist to create the RVette-8:

“His work on the airplane in the VAF post I saw was awesome. It was obvious to me that he is an artist. It wasn't just a paint job, it was literally a work of art. I wanted to honor my dad's work on this plane, so after working with John on the paint scheme, we arrived at what you see in the pictures. It has all of my requirements in it: 50th Anniversary Corvette Red, 50th Anniversary Champagne Checkers, polished aluminum, fantastic nose art, and most of all an elegant yet racy look. As a really smooth bit of art, John painted this smokin' hot girl on the bottom of the plane, barely clothed, aside from the checkered flag that billows around her. We used my wife as a model for the girl, and I'm happy to say she was really all for it. The funny thing is, she tells her friends about it and they get all excited too.”

This airplane is absolutely guaranteed to be a winner at Oshkosh, and will be very easy to find over in the Experimental patch. It'll be the luscious red bird with about 50 people standing around drooling...with many of them lying on their backs in the grass under that right wing, saying HELLO to the most realistic “smokin' hot girl” you will see on a flying machine.

 Be forewarned as you approach the sexy and stunning RVette-8 and crawl underneath. If you have a weak ticker, or have taken yet another handful of vitamin “V”, you had better avert your eyes. And if your kid is still in grade school...daddy, you might have some explaining to do.

Watch the Airplanista blog as I continue to bring you more inside looks at the most prolific aviation airbrush painter in the land. You can always find out more about John Star here.