The center table at the Sky Kitchen restaurant at San Carlos Airport represents eons of aviation history and experience. So when one of my favorite pilots, Butch Pfeifer, hails me with 'Where's that hubby of yours keeping himself? We have a new project we want to talk to him about.' I made sure that Dave called Butch later that evening.

Dave is a test pilot with over 27,000 hours in over 300 types of aircraft including 35 prototypes. When Dave gets excited about a project, I know it must be something really special. And this is, the world's highest performance biplane ever – the Turbine Toucan. After his first meeting with David and Butch, Dave told me ‘this plane will be spectacular to fly. There's nothing like this on the air show circuit today'. Dave will perform the airworthiness/safety inspection and issue the airworthiness certificate and then do the first flight at Hollister.. He loves flying high performance planes, so I can only imagine how much fun he'll have with the Turbine Toucan.

David Kervinen has assembled a team of experts to create a brand new air show experience including friend and mentor, Wayne Handley, one of the world's premier performers and pioneers of 3D aerobatics. Dave did the first flights on Wayne's Turbo Raven in 1998 and their relationship dates back to Dave's earliest air show days, Watsonville, 1978.

"I'm looking forward to hearing great things about the Toucan! I remember telling people that I choose Dave to test the Turbo Raven because it would raise the I.Q. of the program and reduce the ego. It was Dave's wealth of experience testing a large variety of aircraft that first caught my attention and interest, but it was his methodical and patient approach to test flying that I came to appreciate the most."

Dave started Myriad Research in 1985 with the specific goal of performing flight tests on the next generation of airplanes. He works with extensively with Lancair, Thunder Mustang and the new Epic airplanes as well as a host of kit planes and warbirds. Dave competes at the National Championship Air Races held in Reno, NV and holds the record for most races in the history of Reno. For fun and relaxation, Dave races a Formula V car in SCCA events at Laguna Seca and Infinity Raceway.

We'll report back to you once the initial flight test program in underway.