Kitplane Sept, 2015

Mojave HIGH: BECOMING A TEST PILOT
KITPLANES SEPTEMBER 2015 F1 Rocket Test Pilot Legend Cub Motivated Builder Checklists Paid to Build DIY Jacks Alternators Sun n Fun Musings Safety Wires LED Strips
ROCKETSHIP!
Ten Years with an F1
BELVOIR PUBLICATIONS
Legend Cub
A Family Affair
Checklists
Not Just for Flying
Wind Tunnel
Getting it Wrong
Sun n Fun Musings
SEPTEMBER 2015
In the Shop:
Safety Wire
LED Strip Club
Mike and Cal
www.kitplanes.com
September 2015 | Volume 32, Number 9
Flying Lifestyle
6 Ten Years With A Time Machine: Life with a finished
F1 Rocket. By Dave Forster.
Builder Spotlight
16 Becoming a Test Pilot: Lessons learned from a Lancair
Super Legacy and Dick Rutan. By Elliot Seguin.
22 Family Affair: Building a Legend Cub at the factory.

By Mike Taylor.
28 The Motivated Builder: Building an airplane ranks right
16
up there as one of the most existential things you can do in your

lifetime. By Brent Owens.
34 So You Want to Get Paid to Build? How to make

your homebuilding skills really pay off. By Eric Stewart.
38 Do-It-Yourself Aircraft Jacks: Having completed

two basic welding courses, I was a solution looking for a problem.
By Dave Smith.
68 ask the DAR: Required placards, placing an Experimental in an

S-Corp., licensing a KR-2 as an LSA. By Mel Asberry.
Shop Talk
42 Aircraft Wiring: Understanding alternators and voltage
regulators. By Marc Ausman.
57
Home Shop Machinist: Mike and Cal. By Bob Hadley.
60
Maintenance Matters: Safety wire and cotter pins.
By Dave Prizio.
78
Aero Lectrics: Revisiting the LED strip club. By Jim Weir.
Shop Tip
45
A One-Finger Hand: By William Rynone, Ph.D., P.E.
Designers Notebook
64
Stressing Structure: Load distributions, part 2.
By David Paule.
75
Wind Tunnel: Getting it wrong. By Barnaby Wainfan.
Exploring
2 Editors Log: Its about the people. By Paul Dye.

46 Risky Business: Checklistsgiving the madness method.
By Sid Mayeux.
49 Checkpoints: Sun n Fun musings. By Vic Syracuse.

52 The Dawn Patrol: You know youre gonna get some, sooner
or later. By Dick Starks.
Kit Bits
4 Letters
69 List of Advertisers
70
Builders Marketplace
80 Kit StufF: Drawing on experience. By cartoonist Robrucha.
22
For subscription information, contact KITPLANES
at 800/622-1065 or visit www.kitplanes.com/cs.
On the cover: Dave and Avril Forster clear the active runway at Fayette Regional,
Texas, in their Sport-wing F1 Rocket. Photo by G. R. Dennis Price.

KITPLANES September 2015
Editors log
Its about the people.
It was about my fourth or fifth trip

to AirVenture when I had one of those
sea change moments. I am, by nature,
nurture, and schooling, an engineer.
I am analytical and enjoy the company of machines. My previous trips to
Oshkosh had been about shopping for
airplane parts, looking at other peoples
machines, and working the show
doing presentations and showing the
flag for my employer. But this year was
different. Not only was I a free agent
for the entire week, but my schedule
was extremely flexible (I was officially
a media representative and only did a
couple of forums and a talk at the Vans
banquet). It is rare when I dont have
a plan for a day, much less a week, and
here I was, without an idea of which way
to turn when I stepped through the gate
each day. It was wonderful!
While it was great to be able to set
whatever pace I wanted, the most
incredible thing about the year was how
my focus changed. While I was certainly
doing some shopping for RV-3 parts and
systems (our project at the time), what I
found myself thinking about more than
anything was the people I had met.
And then it hit meI had reached that
transition point that so many EAAers
have attained, but dont explicitly mention. Oshkosh was now more about the
people than the airplanes! I had turned
off the left brain and switched on the
rightI was now seeing the event as
a social networking occasion, not as a
trade show and ginormous state fair.
Paul Dye
2
It had become about the peopleand

wow, I met thousands!
The first day or two, I split my time
between watching out for muddy bogs
(it was a wet year) and visiting booths
and tents where I knew I could find
familiar namesall the many vendors
that we see in the Experimental world. I
roamed the entire grounds to chat with
friends old and new. I enjoyed meeting
a lot of great people that support the
various niches of our obsessionfrom
airframes to avionics, engines, to upholsteryit was great to put faces to the
names I have talked with on the phone
and traded notes with on the Internet.
In short order, I had brought myself upto-date on what was going on with the
industry that supports the homebuilt
movement, and then I noticed something about how I was moving through
the grounds: My gaze had shifted from

focusing on my next destination. I was
now looking at peoplesomething I
rarely do. I was looking for familiar faces,
familiar caps, and T-shirts from fly-ins I
have visited. In short, I was looking for
new and old friends!
I saw a lot of new faces with old names
attached as I wandered the grounds and
helped out with some avionics forums.
In a weird way, the soggy conditions that
limited airplane arrivals made it easier to
cover the tiedown areas; fewer planes
meant I could more easily spend a little
more time with each one when I walked
Area 51 looking for machines and their
builders. Several saw me as I hunted the
elusive -3s that year. I did find two that I
could look at and took a lot of pictures
very valuable information when building one of these.
Paul Pobereznys last projecta Baby Acestands in front of the arch at Oshkosh.
Paul Dye retired as a Lead Flight Director for NASAs Human Space Flight program, with 40 years
of aerospace experience on everything from Cubs to the space shuttle. An avid homebuilder,
he began flying and working on airplanes as a teen, and has experience with a wide range of
construction techniques and materials. He flies an RV-8 that he built in 2005, and an RV-3 that
he built with his pilot wife. Currently, they are building a Xenos motorglider. A commercially
licensed pilot, he has logged over 4800 hours in many different types of aircraft. He consults
and collaborates in aerospace operations and flight-testing projects across the country.
www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes
After the first couple of days carrying

a backpack for the few items I needed
to buy, I left the bag in the car and carried nothing more than a camera and
the little collapsible camp chair hung
on my belt. I walked the grounds from
end to end and side to side several times
each day, rarely going far before starting
a conversation with someone associated with Experimentals, interested in
space, or standing next to their beautiful
airplane (homebuilt, factory madeit
made little difference).
I am not that big on watching airshows
after all these years, but in the afternoons, I even unfurled the chair a few
times, sat back, and enjoyed the more
unique acts I hadnt seen before. I let
time go, and Oshkosh simply rolled over
me, washing me in the currents of aviation past, present, and future. Nine days
at the show is a long time, and at the
same time, not long enough. How can
you find time to visit with the thousands
of people you want to see in such a short
period of time? I want more than a brief
hello; I want a chance to sit and chat,
drink a Coke, trade stories of trips and
travels. I want to both greet old friends
and embrace new onesbut it is so hard
to do both (or either) to true fulfillment
in such a short time.
But time does roll inexorably on and
family duties called. It was with considerable reluctance that I walked out
to leave about noon on Sunday, turning my back on what was even then a
shell of an event (Sunday afternoon at
Oshkosh can be sad, as most everyone
is already gone). I sort of welcomed
the long cross-country home. It gave
me a chance to reflect on the wonderful week of people, airplanes, and aviation, to formulate some thoughts, to
write a bit in my head. Being a writer
without an assignment can be a wonderful thing at Oshkoshinstead of
focusing on a deadline, I could simply
absorb the experience like a sponge,
and then see what happened. You
never know what words will eventually flow out of the experience. But I do
know that Oshkosh is an event about
people. People mad about airplanes,
yesbut people nonetheless. J
Photo: Courtesy of EAA
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EDITORIAL

Editor in Chief Paul Dye
editorial@kitplanes.com

Managing Editor Mark Schrimmer

Art Direction Dan Maher

Editorial Director Paul Bertorelli
Contributing Editors Larry Anglisano, Marc Ausman,
Roy Beisswenger, Chuck Berthe,
David Boeshaar, LeRoy Cook,
Robert Hadley, Dan Horton,
Louise Hose, Amy Laboda, Dave
Martin, Sid Mayeux, David Paule,
Dave Prizio, Dean Sigler, Dick
Starks, Eric Stewart, Vic Syracuse,
Barnaby Wainfan, Jim Weir,
Tom Wilson.

Web Editor Omar Filipovic

Cartoonist Robrucha
ADVERTISING
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Fiberglass/Epoxy Layups
In Maintenance Matters [July, 2015]

on page 52, a photo shows a fiberglass/
epoxy layup being done over wax paper.
This is not good technique, as the wax
can get into the layup and weaken it. Its
much better to use freezer paper or plastic to lay the cloth on for wetting out.
Mixing cups should also be wax-free.
Also, you dont wet-out the glass or
pre-wet the repair area with resin
you do both with mixed epoxy, which
is made from resin and hardener. Nitpicking, I suppose, but if a person follows the instructions in the captions, he
is likely to have a mess.
Phil Kriley
Dave Prizio responds: I always appreciate reader comments, even those who
have taken exception to something I have
written, because it lets me know that my
columns are being read and provides feedback that I am being understood.
Phil says that wax paper is not the best
surface on which to prepare a wet fiberglass layup. In response, all I can say is
that I have used this method many times
with good results, and I have seen other
people who know much more about fiberglass than I do use it too. I first saw it done
in a SportAir workshop, so I do not hesitate to recommend it to others. There may
be something to Phils concern, but it has
not been borne out by my experience.
His second comment about pre-wetting with resin and hardener (catalyzed
resin) rather than using resin without
hardener is certainly correct, but my
assumption was that everyone already
understood this. If that is not the case,
then maybe that point needs to be made.
In the processes described in the article,
the first thing to do with the resin is to

add the catalyst or hardener. All resin
applications are done after that step.
Black Beauty
Thanks for this excellent article [Black

Beauty, April, 2015], but it left me
with many many questions. On page
40, center left, the caption says they are
using epoxy/flox as structural adhesive.
My knowledge is very limited, but Ive
never heard of using flox as an adhesive.
Another question I have is about the
layup of uni on the spar cap. I would like
to know more about how this schedule
is designed. Maybe a reference or two?
Roger Laubhan
Eric Stewart responds: Im glad you

enjoyed the article. Regarding the use of
flox, we typically add flox for gap filling/
thixotropicity reasons. I did not engineer
the spar cap schedule, but it is a basic tapering schedule as would be discussed in any
intro structures or composites textbook. I
highly recommend Composite Basics by
Andrew Marshall, which goes over this
topic in detail. Build on!
Beachball
I have no clue if this is right, but since

you asked [Letters, July, 2015]I was
told that frequency 123.45 was used by
banner towing planes up and down the
beaches to alert other airborne traffic in
the area. Since most banners were colorful, and youre near the beach, it became
known as Beachball.
Eric E (Rick) Abell
Thanks, Eric. That explanation certainly

makes as much sense as anything else
weve heard. Ed. J
Web site Information:

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Life with a finished F1 Rocket.
By Dave Forster
Cruising at 10,500 feet above a blanket of white clouds, the warm sunshine
streamed through the canopy and filled
the cockpit. The air was smooth as glass,
and more than three miles ticked by
with each minute. Over the humming
of the engine, music filled the headset.
Settling back to enjoy the view while the
autopilot flew us to our destination, my
more attractive half was dozing off in
the back seat. Life is good.
As we approach 10 years of flying
with our Experimental F1 Rocket, I
look back at all the hours spent in the
workshop creating our magic carpet.
The time in the shop is now a distant
memory, and the pleasure we have
today flying an airplane we built ourselves has returned a dividend of fun
and adventure worth every minute
invested in making it happen, with only
a few instances of unplanned maintenance. During that period, it has otherwise proven to be a reliable, predictable,
and fun companion, taking us across
large swaths of the country without any
mechanical delays.
A little over a decade ago, surrounded
with unconnected parts in the workshop, a friend commented, You arent
just building an airplane. Youre building a time machine. How right he was.
Of course, any airplane has the potential
to be a time machine when compared to
a car, but as speeds start to approach 200
Surveying a pile of new airplane partsmy gosh, what have I done?
knots, the compression of distance into

small amounts of time becomes very
noticeable and excursions that would
require days by car suddenly become
possible in a weekend.
Many of our experiences with the
Rocket are comparable to aircraft like
the RV-4 and RV-8; the airplanes share
a close lineage of design and layout, and
while the Rocket might have a bit of an
edge in performance, the practical difference in trip times is not very great.
We live in Houston, Texas. Despite
being topographically challenged, it
offers the geographic advantage of being
centrally located, making it possible to
get to either side of the country in less
than eight hours.
Looking less like an aluminum canoe, but theres still plenty of work to do.
Photos: Dave Forster and G. R. Dennis Price
Building an F1 Rocket
Theres a common joke among builders

of just about anything. It goes something like: double the time and triple
the cost. Ha-ha. Very funny. Youd
think by the time I started the project,
I would have figured out its not a joke.
Actually, its not quite as bad as that. In
the end, it took a little over 3,000 hours
to build the airplane, but that included a
lot of time on customizations and homegrown work on items that many builders
farm out. For example, I overhauled the
engine myself, constructed the baffles
from scratch, and built all the wiring
harnesses. On the cost front, the final
tally was about 50% more than my original budget, but that includes buying two
EFIS and autopilot systems after the first
one failed at year five.
The kit quality was very good. The
workmanship of the finished parts was
excellent. Many of the parts, which are
extra-cost items on other kits, like air
vents and tires, were included. Factory
support was excellent, and there was an
active builders group. There are also a
number of builder web sites, which provided a big help on those head-scratching occasions.
One of the areas that consumed a
lot of time was the original instrument
panel. During the build, I was spending
around 11/2 hours a day commuting to
work. All that time looking at instruments in the car got me thinking that
it ought to be possible to build something similar in the airplaneat least,
In the original panel (left), the EFIS and various indicators were located under Plexiglas for a clean look. The panel still looks clean, but
now has two GRT Horizon HX screens with two AHRS units, and a Dynon D10A for independent backup. Theres also a TruTrak autopilot.
something more than just a flat piece of

aluminum with lots of round and square
holes drilled in it. I wanted to have
the panel as simple and clean as possible, and wanted to have a kind of 3-D
effect, with the monitor and idiot lights
located under a smoked Plexiglas screen.
Although you cant see everything in
the picture above (thats the idea of the
smoked Plexiglas), there is a roll trim
indicator at the top, a pitch trim indicator on the right side, and idiot lights
across the bottom and up the left-hand
side for things like pitot heat indication,
canopy latch, etc.
In keeping with the clean lines
concept, the switches are located under
a door on the right side of the cockpit,
and the fuses are hidden under a door
beneath the switches.
A Paperweight EFIS
I had decided early in the process

that I wanted to build a glass panel
without any traditional aircraft instruments. This is more common now
but, 10 years ago, was considered a
bit heretical. As with any equipment
and design decisions, potential failure modes need to be considered. On
the Rocket, there are two electrical
buses and two alternators, either one
of which is capable of supporting at
least the minimum electrical load.
The EFIS has its own backup battery,
and the passengers monitor is secured
with a pin that can be pulled. So if
the pilots monitor fails, its possible
to reach around, grab the passengers
monitor and put it in the pilots lap.
The price of avionics cooling fans
is pretty high for a budget-conscious
The Blue Mountain EFIS provided great functionality for a reasonable

cost when it was introduced, but taught me a lesson about being on
the bleeding edge of new technology. After returning it for service
for the third time, I was having second thoughts. And then in 2010,
the decision was made for me when something important on the
motherboard fried and replacement parts could not be obtained.
It was officially a paperweight.
However, after being spoiled with flat screens and the functionality
they provide, plain old needles and dials just didnt appeal. After carefully
researching all of the options available at the time, we decided to go with
a GRT Horizon HX EFISor more accuratelytwo of them, with dual
AHRS units. Each of the screens can talk to the other and to each AHRS.
If one screen fails, the other can take over its functions. The system constantly cross-checks the two AHRS units, which each feed both screens.
As an added bonus, the guys at GRT were exceptionally helpful and developed a remote keypad capability for us. This allows the control panel to be
8
builder, so instead, a computer fan (conveniently available in 12v) was repurposed and placed into a suitable PVC
pipe adapter, which was capped with
nylon fittings inserted into drilled holes
in the cap. The fittings in turn connect
to small scat tubes running to various
avionics components.
For interior panels, an inexpensive
combination shear and brake from
Harbor Freight was a big timesaver,
and 3M VHB tape provided a convenient way to permanently attach panel
brackets to the fuselage skin without
requiring additional rivets through the
exterior of the aircraft. The VHB tape
was a bit of an experiment, but after 10
years of cool high-altitude temps and
hot Texas summers, the brackets have
remained firmly attached.
mounted down by the throttle quadrant, so a little rotation of the wrist is

all that is needed to press the buttons. This is especially nice in turbulence,
compared to aiming for a button at the end of an outstretched arm.
Aside from the two screens and AHRS, there is a separate backup
battery which kicks in automatically if the main power supply fails.
The autopilot was provided by TruTrak and a Dynon D10A was added
for extra, independent backup.
The new equipment is great. After several hundred hours on this
new system, there have been zero failures, and it makes IFR flying
a breeze. With just a few button presses after takeoff, the plane
will climb to altitude, follow the assigned flight path, intercept the
glideslope at the destination, and fly the ILS all the way down to the
flare. For single-pilot IFR operations, this capability, combined with
the moving map and synthetic vision, frees up so much mental capacity to communicate with ATC and focus on the big picture. Theres no
question about where I am or what is going on, and the possibility of
Switches and fuses are hidden behind a panel and armrest.
The $100 Hamburger
When they first learn that we fly, some

of our non-flying friends will ask,
Where do you go?
Oh, often we just fly somewhere for
lunch.
Do you have a favorite place? they
ask, thinking in terms of their local
watering hole.
Well, one of our favorites is a little
Cajun restaurant in Welsh, Louisiana.
Waityou mean you fly to Louisiana just for lunch?
Uh-huh.
Owning an airplane changes ones
perspective. Cajun Tales is only 40
minutes away. In less time than many
people spend on their daily commute,
we are in a different state, enjoying
truly local cuisine.
Weather and Equipment
Having a faster airplane means covering

larger parts of the country, which leads
to greater potential for encountering
weather. This led to the decision to equip
the plane with onboard NEXRAD and
aviation weather, along with a capable
EFIS with synthetic vision and an autopilot. Compared to my prior experience
flying bug-smashers with steam gauges,
this combination reduces the risk and
workload associated with single-pilot
IFR operation, freeing the pilot to talk
with air traffic control and monitor the
big picture, while the airplane does most
of the flying itself.
Last year, we flew to Kentucky to
look at a friends airplane. We left in
the morning with clear blue skies, had
a good look at the airplane, and enjoyed
mental overload is significantly reduced. It makes IFR flying substantially safer. I wish my friends with certified airplanes could get the
same capability for the same kind of price.
After a couple of years flying with the new system, there was only
one piece missingthe ability to do a legal GPS approach. With a GRTsupplied WAAS GPS, as well as inputs from the Garmin 496, the system
was physically capable of flying an accurate precision approach, but it
would not have been IFR legal. For that, an IFR certified WAAS GPS is
required. While I hate to spend money for little or no practical benefit, I
also prefer to follow the rules. So after resisting for a long time, I finally
bit the bullet and added a GTN 650 to the panel. In my opinion, this unit
is way overpriced compared to what it should be and the database costs
are excessive; but now we can legally do precision GPS approaches,
which as everyone knows, are becoming more and more prevalent.
The KT-76A is probably one of the most common transponders, but
has a weak point in a component called a cavity tube, which is known
a leisurely lunch. On the return trip, we

climbed through a high cloud layer and
circumnavigated a massive thunderstorm that had built up over Louisiana,
but the thunderstorm for us was a nonevent. A long time before it could be seen
through the canopy, a big red blotch
appeared on NEXRAD. All it took to
avoid was a few clicks on the bug while
100 miles out. Thirty minutes after the
heading adjustment, the thunderstorm
passed harmlessly off our left wing while
we enjoyed smooth flight between layered wisps of cloud before landing back
at home base in time for dinner.
With no overall headwind or tailwind to speak of, our cruise settled
into 183 knots true, burning 10.5
gph lean of peak, which works out to
approximately 17.5 nautical miles per
to fail after a certain amount of time. With this in mind and more IFR
flying planned for the future, we upgraded to a solid-state transponder. Also, adding the GTN with its built-in radio meant two radios in
the stack, requiring an audio panel, so the old intercom was no longer
needed. All of this equipment led to a redesign of the center stack,
extending it up to meet the instrument panel.
Removing the old equipment and installing the new was a substantial undertaking, consuming around 100 hours including all-new
engine sensors. This is where having a comprehensive wiring diagram
with labeled wires comes in very handy.
Although the new equipment created a big hit to the pocketbook, we
now have a plane that is a very capable IFR platform, providing a greater
margin of safety and the ability to more reliably carry out cross-country
flights. Our plan all along was to have a time machine that would enable
us to travel and explore. This latest update helps meet that objective.
D.F.

Interior fairings and panels provide the builder with plenty of opportunity for non-structural customization.
gallon, or 20 statute miles per gallon;

only slightly less mileage than our car,
while travelling at over three times
the speed. With 53 gallons of fuel on
board, this provides a theoretical noreserve range of 1062 statute miles.
However, as a sufferer of TB (tiny
bladder), a fuel stop is planned every
few hours, in any case.
Spousal Support
Of course, building an airplane is not

possible without spousal support, unless
you dont have one or plan not to have
one. One of the ways to help gain that
support is the promise of future romantic
getaways. Valentines Day of 2009 provided just such an opportunity.

Around 2001, the Lajitas Golf
Resort and Spa near Big Bend National
Park was developed as a luxury resort
for high-end clientele, complete with its
own private, paved airstrip. The developers invested a significant amount
of money making things happen, but
unfortunately, things didnt happen.
It seems the relatively few people who
were willing to spend big vacation dollars didnt place this remote corner of
Texas very high on their destination
list. However, this proved to be fortuitous for the average vacationer, as the
Whats Up with Team Rocket?
Team Rocket Aircraft sold its first F1 Rocket kit in 1999, with what
became known as the Sport wing. In approximately 2006, a new wing
was developed, known as the Evo wing, which had a more elliptical
shape and offered a greater speed range, at the expense of a slight
reduction in center of gravity limits.
Over a nine-year period, nearly 200 kits (Sport and Evo wings) were
sold all over the world, of which approximately 120 have achieved flying
status. However, one of the most substantial cost components of the
quickbuild kit was the all-aluminum airframe, which was assembled
in Czechoslovakia. By 2008, fluctuating foreign exchange rates had
boosted the cost of the quickbuild airframes to the point where sales
were starting to slow, and by 2009, kit production was halted, although
the company to this day continues to offer a limited inventory of parts
to support the existing fleet. Some builders have purchased a Harmon
Rocket kit, along with currently available parts from Team Rocket, to
build a hybrid Harmon/F1 aircraft known as the F1H.
Despite halting sales of new kits, the owner of the company, Mark
Frederick, is a committed aviation enthusiast and has continued to
rework the design of the aircraft into its most recent iteration, which
includes a carbon fiber wing based on the Evo wing. It promises a
10
resort was purchased out of bankruptcy

for pennies on the dollar and opened up
again with more modest prices.
You may have heard that Texas is a
pretty big state. Big Bend is 692 road
miles from Houston, or 10 hours by
car. However, it is just over 2 hours
by air, making a very convenient weekend getaway. As part of a promotion to
entice visitors, a Valentines Day special
was offered, which included rooms, a
five-course meal, roses, champagne and
chocolates, and a complimentary spa
treatment for the ladies and a complimentary shoot like a cowboy event
for the guys.
reduced parts count, simpler construction, and weight savings of almost

140 pounds, while maintaining the aerodynamic attractiveness of the
original. In addition, a retractable gear was designed with the promise
of even greater speed. However, to justify the creation of molds and
spool up production of this new kit, either an investor or an initial number of deposits are required, and so far, neither has materialized.
Despite considerable interest, there is another reason why kit
production of the all-aluminum Rocket has never re-commenced, and
that is related to our legal environment. During the course of the F1
Rocket history, there was an unfortunate fatal accident, caused by a
builder who left out a critical part of the aircraft. Despite the facts of
the situation, surviving family members sued the company and its
principals. Although the lawsuit has since been dropped, the financial
and emotional toll over years of defense has taken the wind out of the
sails of the company.
In my opinion, there is a great opportunity here for the right person
to work with Team Rocket Aircraft and bring the F1 Rocket kit back
to market, providing an excellent aircraft kit to enthusiastic builders
looking for a little extra kick in the pants.
D.F.
Happy wife, happy life! Avril Forster in the

back seat of the F1 Rocket.
Needless to say, the champagne and

chocolates were a big hit with one of us,
and shooting a double-barreled shotgun
out the door of an outhouse (a la Billy
the Kid) was a big hit with the other.
Being shuttled between our private airplane and a luxury suite didnt hurt in
the brownie points department, either.
It was fun to sit in the hotel bar and be
asked how we got there.
Oh, we came in our own plane.
Travelling to Mecca
One of the mandatory destinations for

anyone who has built their own airplane
is AirVenture, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Prior to completing the Rocket, getting
to Oshkosh with our bug-smasher was a
two-day affair. This is not to say that low
and slow doesnt have its own rewards
(see Low and Slow to the Dry Tortugas, Kitplanes Sept. 2013), but
theres something to be said for having
the option to do it in five hours.
Although one of us has declared the
statute of limitation to be four days in a
tent, camping beside a self-built airplane
and basking in the camaraderie of thousands of fellow builders and flyers is an
experience both members of a couple
can enjoy. Its a magical contrast to pack
up the campsite in Oshkosh after lunch
and be home in time for dinner.
The French Quarter
In 2009, a half-day seminar was offered

at New Orleans Lakefront Airport
that looked like it would be fun, so we
launched shortly after daybreak and

11
A magical paint transformation: The scheme was designed and painted by Raymond Baez and his crew from Big Red Customs.
landed in the land of Le Bon Temps

Roul an hour and a half later.
After the morning seminar, we took
a cab into town for lunch and enjoyed
a sunny afternoon strolling around an
outdoor art festival that covered the
sidewalks over several city blocks. This
is an excellent destination for a walking
tour or soaking up some culture just a
wee bit different from back home.
This was our first visit, and after experiencing the sights and smells of Bourbon street during the daylight, I can
certainly see the attraction of returning
at night for someone who is younger and
perhaps single.
Stop Flying Naked
After a hundred hours, we decided it

was time to take a break from flying
and get the plane painted. This is one of
those questions that every builder faces.
One perspective is that paint is something that should be done only after the
flying and tweaking is done. There is a
lot of value in this perspective. It can be
quite traumatic to cut into a beautifully
painted panel. Also, waiting for paint
means you get to fly sooner, and when
the end of the project is near, the desire

to fly can be significant.
On the other hand, if the airplane
is a well developed kit with plenty of
examples flying, the chances of needing
to make changes to painted parts are
significantly less, and there is one big
problem with painting an airplane that
is already flying: It has to stop flying to
be painted. There are plenty of cases of
builders who keep flying their airplane
for years without any paint on it because
they love to fly and cant bear the downtime it would require.
We spent hours thinking of different paint schemes and even hired a local
artist to help us flesh out some ideas.
Finally, we thought we had something
close and thats when we met Raymond Baez at Big Red Customs, who
specializes in custom paint jobs for
cars, trucks, and motorcycles. We went
through several more designs with Raymond until one day, we went to his shop
and he showed us a sample plate with his
latest idea for our plane. Immediately,
we knew we had it. Using the style from
his template, the rest of the design process went quickly; and a few weeks later,
Raymond, his crew, and equipment

arrived at our hangar. Using bulldog
clips, they hung dropsheets from the
rafters and set up a ventilation fan at one
end to exhaust the fumes out the door.
I was quite surprised to come home
one day and find all of the parts were
black. As it turns out, black is the best
color to use for primer when you are
spraying a silver base coat. I guess thats
why they call them professionalsI
never would have thought of using black.
We used a base coat/clear coat system
with PPG brand paints. HVLP guns
were used to keep the overspray down. I
think in the end, the job took longer than
any of us estimatedthe crew was on
site for most of about six weeks, but they
held to their original estimate for the
cost of the work, and I am very pleased
with the final result. In fact, Raymond
went out of his way to add extra touches.
For example, we decided that we would
not put the registration across the back
of the tail, which left a large, open canvas
on which Raymond airbrushed the F1
logo that my wife Avril designed. He did
all this at no extra cost.
Painting the airplane really transformed it. Before paint, it was just
another unfinished airplane at a fly-in.
After paint, people would come from
all over the field and make nice comments, which of course makes a builder
feel pretty good about all the flying time
given up to make it happen.
Unplanned Maintenance
Of course, life with an airplane is not

always sunshine and roses. We were one
of the early adopters of an EFIS system
and selected one with lots of whiz-bang
Bare aluminum: After 100 hours of flying,
it was time to take a break and have it
painted.
12
features that we thought would be reliable, given it was on its second generation. Unfortunately, this proved not to
be the case, as within a couple of years,
the motherboard fried and the processor departed this earth, leaving us with
equipment for which replacement parts
had already gone out of production and
were no longer available. To make matters worse, the company which made
it had followed a similar path and also
sizzled out of existence. This was the
first unplanned maintenance item for
our airplane, and it was a doozy, requiring a replacement EFIS and autopilot,
and all of the associated rewiring and
mounting. Fortunately, the replacements (a dual-screen GRT HX system
and TruTrak autopilot) have proven to
be much more reliable.
The second instance of unplanned
maintenance was a slight stumble at
takeoff power, which was resolved with
the installation of a longer pushrod.
The third instance was what
appeared to be a faulty radio. After a
couple of hundred hours of troublefree operation, it failed to turn on. It
was returned to the manufacturer,
where it bench checked fine, but it
continued to fail when installed in
the airplane. This was puzzling, as
the voltage on the radio tray pins
was exactly what it needed to be. The
puzzle was resolved when doing the
same check using lockwire and alligator clips on the backside of the pins
while the radio was installed; as soon
as the radio was turned on, the voltage
dropped below a useable level. In this
case, the problem was caused by a poor
crimp, allowing the full voltage to pass
with no load, but not enough as soon
as a load was applied.
Fortunately, none of these events
left us stranded at another airport. In
the case of the EFIS, backup instruments got us home. The stumble was
an annoyance and a high priority to
address, but didnt prevent flight, and a
second radio meant failure of the first
wasnt a big issue.
Of course, now that I have touted the
lack of unplanned maintenance, Ive
probably jinxed myself. Fingers crossed
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13
F1 ROCKET
SPECIFICATIONS
Powerplant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lycoming IO-540

HP Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250300
Wingspan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.8 ft
Wing Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 sq ft
Fuel capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 gal
Maximum gross weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2000 lb
Typical empty weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1300 lb
Typical useful load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700 lb
Full-fuel payload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 lb
Seating capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
PERFORMANCE
Cruise speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 mph

Maximum rate of climb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3500 fpm
Stall speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 mph
Takeoff distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 ft
Landing distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700 ft
Specifications are manufacturers estimates and are based on the
configuration of the demonstrator aircraft.
Ride, Comfort and Predictability
Some people look at the Rocket and

think it looks pretty cramped in the
cockpit. No question, its not built for
two Bubbas, but I am 6 feet 4 and 180
pounds, and my better half is 5 feet 6
and [censored] pounds. While the cockpit is not spacious, its comfortable for
the two of us, and we regularly fly legs
of up to three hours or more with all our
camping gear stowed behind the seat.
On the ground, warm temperatures
can be tamed by taxiing with the canopy open; and in the air, the greenhouse
helps keep things warm in the sunshine,
moderated by reasonably effective cabin
heat and ventilation.
14
The rocket on the belly helps it go faster.
One of our better decisions in the

comfort department was to upgrade
from Brand X seats to Oregon Aero.
It used to be that we would exit the airplane feeling stiff and sore, but now we
just feel a bit stiff; the soreness has gone.
Some passengers have claimed to be
claustrophobic and a bit worried prior
to climbing in, but any concerns quickly
evaporate under the bubble canopy,
which yields a very open feeling. Despite
the snug cockpit, the view outside is
expansive. Almost everyone who flies
for the first time comments on the good
visibility, and thats from the back seat.
As a general rule, airplanes with
higher wing loadings will provide a
smoother ride in turbulence. Compared
to the Cub-like wing loading of other airplanes we flew before, the Rocket feels
like an upgrade to luxury shock absorbers. Of course, a healthy climb rate provides the ability to quickly get above the
clouds, where the air is almost always
smoother than down below. In addition,
the quick roll rate (360 degrees in something under two seconds) and huge control response means that there is plenty
of authority to tame gusty crosswinds.
In 10 years of flying, we have never felt
uncomfortable in turbulence or reached
anywhere close to full control deflection
with gusty winds on short final.
Landings are much easier than other
taildraggers I have flown and are comparable to RV-type aircraft, with similar
stall speeds and very predictable ground
handling. Again, in 10 years of flying,
we have never wandered more than a few
feet from the centerline.
Downsides and Upsides
So, what are the downsides of owning

and flying our time machine? Other
than the obvious ones regarding cost
of ownership and operation that
apply to any Experimental aircraft,
I really cant think of any. Scheduled
maintenance costs are pretty reasonable (mostly tires and oil), and as the
builder of the airplane, the annual
inspection labor cost is zero (not counting my time). We are fortunate to live
on an airpark, so hangar costs are not a
factor, and insurance (liability only) is
under $500 per year.
Of course, there are only two seats,
so its not well suited for the whole
family, unless both spouses fly his and
her airplanes.
Some people have vacation homes
and complain that it can be a bit of a
chore, having to regularly visit and do
maintenance. Similarly, owning an airplane and keeping the oil bathing the
mechanical components means having to fly regularly, but somehow, this
doesnt seem like so much of a problem.
However, being able to walk out the
door to a waiting airplane and immediately experience adventure is an experience that is difficult to put a price on.
And regardless of high wing or low
wing, fast or slow, being able to participate in aviation within a community of
aviators is an amazing experience.
Ten years on, our time machine is a
part of our life that is hard to imagine
being without. J
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Dave Forster
Dave has built 3 airplanes,

1 helicopter and 1.5 cars.
He lives on an airpark in
Texas with his wife and
Australian Kelpie, where he
is trying to figure out what
to build next and what he
wants to
be when he
grows up.
15
Becoming a
Test Pilot
Lessons learned from a
Lancair Super Legacy and Dick Rutan.
By Elliot Seguin
At Reno 2013, Andy Chiavetta asked

me if I would be available in the coming months to help him with a bunch
of work he was hoping to finish. During the winter and spring of 2014, Andy
would be delivering two Lancair Super
Legacysboth clones of Darryl Greenamyers champion aircraft. These firebreathing monsters would need to be
tested, and while Andy has the pick of
the litter when it comes to test pilots, he
wasnt sure he would have enough pilots
to get him through the coming year. I
had dreamed about this moment since I
was a boy lying on the living room rug
listening to Reno On Record, and cradling my brothers plastic P-51.
The Legacy
The Lancair Legacy was designed in the

late 90s as the next iteration in the line
of Lancair touring aircraft. From the
16
Lancair 200 to the Lancair 360, Lance

Neibauer built a name and customer
base on high-performance, two-seat,
kitbuilt aircraft that would take you and
a friend to your destination fast, and
look good when you got there.
At a distance, the Legacy looks similar to the preceding generations, but
is in fact a whole new airplane. With
a new Greg Cole wing, a bigger tail, a
roomier cockpit, more baggage space,
and of course, more power, this airplane
was a step change in expectations for
the industry. The airplane was barely on
the market when Darryl Greenamyer
hatched a plan to turn a Legacy into a
dominating force in the new Sport Class
at Reno. He recruited a then budding
fabrication talent, Andy Chiavetta, to
shoehorn twin turbos and intercoolers
into the airplane. Darryls Race 33 went
on to dominate Reno for four years. The
N357AW, The Green Dragon, in flight over

Mojave. (Photo: Eugene Nemirovsky)
Super Legacy, as they ended up calling

the final version, has become the staple
of a line of services offered by Andys
company, Aerochia. To date, seven copies of the aircraft have been built.
A couple weeks later, Justin Gillen and
I flew to Thermal, California, to check on
Andy and the fleet of Legacys he needed
tested. I looked over the recently modified Race 77, the recently completed
N357AW, and the champion itself,
Darryls Race 33. After seeing the airplanes, it was even clearer that this was
an opportunity I couldnt let slip by. In
lieu of time in type, I tried desperately
to find some way to prepare for the ride.
We are very lucky in Mojave to have
access to quite literally the best in the
business, so I asked everyone for their
N62MH, Race 77 at Thermal.
Andy and Elliot brief before Elliots first

flight in a Super Legacy. (Photo: Jenn Whaley)
Justin Gillen and Andy Chiavetta watch

N62MH running up at Thermal.
thoughts. Pete Siebold, Dick Rutan,

Matt Jackson, Darryl Greenamyer, Lee
Behel, Will Whiteside, Len Foxthe
airplane became a great excuse to ask
technical questions of heroes.
The backbone of the Super Legacy is
the hybrid engine that Andy and Darryl worked out through years of long
summer nights building up to Reno.
Larger aftermarket turbos replace the
stock Continental ones. The oil pressure
regulated wastegates are replaced with
automotive-style pneumatic wastegates.
The propeller governor is cranked up
to 3000 rpm, as opposed to the more
conventional 2700 rpm. Spray bars
cool the outside of the engine and antidetonation injection (water/methanol)
cools the inside of the engine. There are
fuel cocktails, obscene manifold pressures, and in general, enough motorhead
voodoo to get any race freak through a
week of Nevada sunsets. Its a true firebreathing dragon.
cruise at over 300 KTAS. As I taxied the

airplane back to Andy, I tried to act like
it wasnt a big deal, even though, in fact,
it was so freaking cool.
After Race 77 was delivered, we
started on N357AW. Known internally
as The Green Dragon, 57AW is the economy Super Legacy, built to be cheap and
simple. The airplane has no interior, and
a simpler panel than all the preceding
Super Legacys. The airplanes owner
was on a busy schedule in the military
and wanted someone to do the Phase I
flight test program for him, including
first flight. This was my third first flight
and my first on someone elses airplane.
It ended up being a gentle and friendly
introduction to the airplane. By the time
we delivered 57AW, we had run a dozen
fuel/turbo setups on it. We had hydraulic pump failures, autopilot runaways,
and plenty of other real flight-test
Hired Gun
I flew Race 77 in March of 2013. It was

the first time I had flown an Experimental aircraft in Phase I as a hired gun
test pilot. The airplane is a madman.
With flaps, gear, and full rpm, it would
glide at 4/1. Thats about half of SpaceShipTwos L/D.
The takeoff acceleration is distractingly rapid. The brakes will not hold
the airplane with more than about 200
horsepower on the crankshaft, which
forces final power application to happen on the roll. That will keep you busy.
And, oh man, will it go! For the engine
setup on Race 77, we had domesticated
the turbo package to less than 400
horsepower, but that was enough power
to climb at greater than 3000 fpm and
Jon Hadlich, Andy Chiavetta, Elliot

Seguin, and Justin Gillen with N357AW,
The Green Dragon, after the first flight.
Photos: Courtesy of Elliot Sequin
17
The bare-bones cockpit of N357AW, The Green Dragon.
events to tell at the bar. I started to feel

like I knew something.
Miss Karen
The spring and early summer with The

Green Dragon was in a lot of ways a rampup to the last Super Legacy I got to test
in 2014, the belle of the ball, Lynn Farnsworths Miss Karen, Race 44. Back on
another Sport Class race team, we had
run against this airplane, but over the
winter and spring, the masters at Pacific
Continental had torn down the engine
and incorporated some new whiz-bang
go-go bits, all of which needed to be
tested before racing at Reno.
From the first engine run, Race 44
intimidated me. The modified motor
had a different growl, and you could see
a change on Andys face when he moved
around the airplane. Andy is always a
blur of focused activity, but with Race
44 and the races drawing near, Andys
whole demeanor changed. You could

see him hunker down and bear the load
of the coming months. After spending
more time than expected getting the
engine on 44 ready for flight, we got
through enough engine runs that Andy
was ready for the airplane to fly. By this
time, I had flown for Andy enough
times that we could start to anticipate
each others moves, but his cadence was
changing, and the change of pace told
me that this was getting seriousthis
was the big dance.
First Flight
As I taxied out for my first flight in Race

44, the first flight of the new engine,
I could feel the weight of the Chia/
Greenamyer name. I could see that
Andy needed me to be a test pilot at the
level of Darryl, and while I knew I was
nowhere near that level, Id be damned
if that was going to get in the way.
The business end of N357AW, The Green Dragon. A TSIO-550-C

with aftermarket turbos and wastegates, seen here with the
Aerochia induction and cooling plenums. (Photo: Andy Chiavetta)
18
The Aerochia wing/body leading edge speed kit being installed

on N357AW, The Green Dragon. (Photo: Andy Chiavetta)
I added power and did a last-chance

engine check. Brake release and set 400
hp, enough power to get a good climb
going without taxing the engine too
much. Once we got above minimum
bailout altitude, the card was relatively
low risk: Set power for engine break-in
and orbit the field watching the hot-rod
engine run. Dick Rutan chased the takeoff roll in his modified Berkut; but at
those power settings, he couldnt keep
up, and soon I was alone at altitude, king
of the airport.
Twenty minutes into the flight, at
10,000 feet, four miles south at 300
knots, the engine sputtered and fell flat
on its face. Forty inches of manifold
pressure became atmospheric, and I
found myself out of the glidecone and
headed away from the airport fast. The
shoulder straps indicated deceleration
as I pulled the throttle out. I pointed
the nose uphill and dragged the nose
The team in the Aerochia uniform with N357AW and N23LF at

Mojave. (Photo: Jenn Whaley)
(Left) Close-up of the failed intercooler. (Right) Andy likes fixing things with carbon. This photo was taken after we figured out why
we lost boost during a high-power test flight in N23LF. The heat and hoop stress caused by the boost pressure caused the carbon
intercooler adapter to fail.
around to point back at the airport. I

called Andy and told him that we had
experienced a significant loss in power.
Pushing the nose over the top of the
recovery at best glide speed (125 KIAS),
Andy called and asked for temps and
pressures. Temps and pressures were
good, but without power it was going
to be tough to make it back to the airport. I was about to screw the pooch and
put the airplane on a dirt road, ending
the program or worse. I reached up and

slowly fed the power back in. Full throttle gave me 150 hp, enough for a gentle
climb back towards airport.
With a second to think, I decided I
had likely failed some part of the turbo
system. If it was the cold side of the
turbo, the biggest issue would be the
lack of power. If it was the hot side, the
exhaust leak in the cowling would likely
start the airplane on fire soon. I had two
choices: assume the engine was on fire

and bail out, or assume it was the cold
side and start working toward a landing.
In the meantime, the engine was making enough power to make some time,
and I nursed the airplane back toward
the airport, toward Dick, Andy, and
therefore external eyes on the airplane.
I arrived over the airport at twelve
thousand feet, listening to the airplane.
If I wasnt going to bail out, I needed to
19
Andy Chiavetta and Elliot Seguin after a sunset test flight at Reno
2014. (Photo: Jenn Whaley)
shut the unhealthy engine down and start

descending, after which I would quickly
be too low to bail out and a fire would be
worse. Dick called that he was waiting
for me at low key, and Andy couldnt see
me yet. It was time to make a decision. I
really liked this airplane and didnt want
to jump out of it, but I didnt have a whole
lot else to go on. So I decided to take the
risk and try for a landing.
Pulling the throttle back to idle, I
extended the gear at altitude to confirm
the change in configuration didnt make
the airplane unflyable with whatever
damage might have been done to the
lower cowl. Handling checked good, and
as I flew over the airport, Andy caught a
glimpse of the airplane. He called that
he saw the plane and it was smoking.
There are a lot of different kinds of
smoke. This was the light wispy smoke
that happens when oil hits the breather
and streaks the belly on its way out of the
airplane. I was, of course, immediately
presented with the mental image of the
other extreme, big black billowing smoke
with licks of yellow and orange flame. Is
that what Andy meant? Luckily I spent
Elliot Seguin, Andy Chiavetta, and Klaus Savier after a test hop at
Reno 2014.
too long thinking about it and quickly was

below minimum bailout altitude, and I
needed to get set up to land. Dick met me
as I reached low key for 26. He confirmed
I was still smoking as I turned final and
started the pre-flare. I landed and rolled
down to Andy at the end of the runway.
Debriefing
Fifteen minutes later both airplanes were

in the hangars, Andy and I were tearing
into the airplane for a peek at the engine,
and Dick showed up. Dick walked into
the hangar and I immediately started
talking about the airplane, about what
we had found since we started tearing
into the airplane, to which he showed no
interest. I saw a side of Dick I had never
seen before, and it stood out because I
was still amped from the mayday.
Dick walked slowly, but firmly, and
pulled me away into a corner of the hangar. He wasnt talking much, but I could
tell he wasnt in the same place I was. He
calmly asked me to tell him about the
emergency. We talked through the whole
flight, every decision I made on the way
up and on the way back down. We didnt
talk about the airplane; we talked about

the flying, about risk, and decisions. We
talked eye to eye as test pilots.
As a part of flight training, we all
spend a lot of time being instructed, so
the posture was very comfortable, but
the topic was different. Dick Rutan was
instructing me on being a test pilot, not
based on some hypothetical, but based
on the events that had just happened.
We walked through each decision, what
was known at that time, and what was
not known. He brought real criticism
based on his broad experience as a test
pilot, criticism that was tough to hear.
Dick asked why I had let myself get
out of the glidecone in the first place?
Why had I swung the gear so early?
Why did I not secure the engine as soon
as I was back in the glidecone? I gave my
reasoning, and he responded with cold
facts and figures of what could have
happened, and where I had been very
lucky. It was the other side of the dream
occupation, and the other side of the
hero suit and magazine covers. It was
pure flight-test gold in a cold and painful package.
Andy and three Super Legacys.

(Photo: Andy Chiavetta)
20
As the program went on, I had that

exact emergency two more times, and
I never made those mistakes again. I
made different ones, but not those.
Reno
The high point of the program was during Reno when Lynn asked me twice
to test the airplane during evening sessions over Stead. In that moment, as I
put the airplane on that magnificent
high-altitude left-hand orbit over the
race course, running race gas and ADI,
I was in a small way similar to what I

had seen Lockwood, Darryl, Penny,
Skip, and so many other hired guns do.
It was what I had dreamed about as a
boy, lying on the living room floor listening to those recordings.
I was living the yarn. But even now,
when I think about that triumphant
moment over Nevada, I get that feeling
in my gut, the feeling I got when Dick
laid down the law. I think about the cold
lessons I learned on that program, lessons I learned eye to eye with other test
Elliot Seguin
After the second Sunday test flight at Reno. Left to right: Lynn Farnsworth, Terry Travers,
Andy Chiavetta, Jenn Whaley, Elliot Seguin, Donald McMullin.
Elliot Seguin is a homebuilder, engineer, and test

pilot based at the Mojave
Civilian Flight Test Center
in California. He is a
member of the Society of
Experimental Test Pilots
and each year he competes
in Wasabi, the IF1 racer
he designed, at the Reno
National Championship
Air Races. He is also a
Test Pilot for Aerochia
Performance Aircraft and is
a project engineer and flight
test engineer
at Scaled
Composites,
founded by
Burt Rutan.
pilots, heroes turned into colleagues.

This is good work that we docold and
unforgiving, but good. J
21
Family Affair
Building a Legend Cub at the factory.

By Mike Taylor
John Takacs of Portland, Oregon,

spent a week at American Legend Aircraft Company in Sulphur Springs,
Texas, before I got a chance to speak
with him about building his Legend
Cub. He assured me the project was a
family affair. His wife had come out to
help over a weekend, offering expertise
with stitching the fabric covering. She
leaves tonight, stated John. He and his
son, John Paul, would stay four more
days. We will be doing a few modifications to the build, he added.
Both John and his wife Joan are physicians. John has a family practice, while
Joan is a specialist in physical medicine.
At 17 years of age, John Paul and his
father have been building balsa wood
airplanes for many years. John Paul flies
radio-controlled aircraft competitively.
Last year he represented the United
States in a world competition.
22
This was the first time they had built

a full-scale aircraft. Although John presently works in the medical profession,
he has a background in engineering. He
mentioned having specific knowledge
and experience in metal work. That,
coupled with the fact that my wife is
a human sewing machine, made John
confident the family would be up to a
project of this scale. Evidence his assertion was true is that both he and his
son built an entire wing in one day. He
interjected: Thus far weve had a really
great experience. It was a signal to me
he was proud of their achievement.
Finding the Perfect Plane
While working in engineering, John

assisted his wife in attending medical school. He later entered medical school too, a passion they shared
together. But his flying started as a kid.
John recalls taking the bus from New

York City to New Jersey to take flying
lessons. I earned enough money to
pay for them and got my pilots license
at age 16, he said.
Early on, John bought a Cessna 150.
He flew this during his medical school
years. And for a period of about 10
years, John had a German motorglider.
But I was a Jeep guy. The motorglider
was like a Mercedes, he quipped. I
went to Alton, Wyoming, to visit the
Husky factory and had one built to my
specifications. Some time afterwards,
I got extremely ill, near death, and the
Husky was sold.
After his recovery, John began building balsa wood models with his son. He
later successfully got his medical back
and started renting planes. With these
two hobbies, John noted, it became
obvious that we should build a plane.
His wife nixed the idea of building an

airplane at home in the garage, or even
in a hangar away from home, as this
would keep them away from the house
for extended periods. So John began the
search for an aircraft kit with a factory
assist program.
John met and talked with the owner
of Just Aircraft in South Carolina about
their Highlander. It seemed the right
aircraft for his desires. He toured the
factory and was pleased with the owners offer to assist with the build. He
also talked with CubCrafters, nearby
in the Pacific Northwest. According to
John, it was too much carbon fiber, too
much proprietary design, and materials
he expected would lead to costly and difficult maintenance.
He narrowed his decision down to
Just and Legend. While the Highlander
was optimum for STOL and fun, what
John really wanted was a Continental
engine. This made the Legend Cub his
final choice.
The research was thorough, but convincing mom took a bit more effort,
stated John. There would be no shed,
and no time spent at an airport where he
and his son would disappear. Both parents also realized John Paul wouldnt be
at home forever, so the option of building over several years was out, too. There
were no other choices, so John decided
to just do it. His sons two-week Easter
John Paul, Joan, and John Takacs take a short break to pose for a picture in the covering
shop at American Legend Aircraft Company.
break was the perfect opportunity to

make it happen.
Factory Assistance
The KwikBild program at American

Legend is designed to meet the FAA
requirement that 51% of the assembly/
fabrication be done by amateur aircraft builders. When planning his visit
to the factory, John initially budgeted
two weeks for pre-assembly of the fuselage, wings, and tail components. This
is typically enough time to get the aircraft ready for paint. But the Takacs
are pretty crafty, so progress was much
faster. John asserts that they did not
need any handholding, just a place to
start, and off they went.
Herman Harbuck (left) offers assistance with wing assembly to the father/son team.
Photos: Courtesy of the Takacs family
An example of their craftiness came

with the fabric covering work. Juan
Zuniga, an experienced technician at
American Legend, showed them the
normal steps. After the briefing, father
and son were ready to proceed and do
it themselves.
Thats not to say they didnt receive
help from the Legend Cub staff. John
conveyed numerous times that the factory workers are passionate about what
they do, and more than willing to share
their knowledge and skill.
Sometimes all that was needed was
a little simple guidance. For example,
John knew what a Cleco was, but never
knew how one was used. In four seconds
the mystery was solved.
Other problems were more complex.
When putting the seat in, John couldnt
get it to fit and was sure it was welded
wrong. But it slipped in just fine with
the technique demonstrated by a factory technician using a come-along
cable puller.
The factory is dedicated to getting the
job done well, said John. When building plastic models, you simply fit the pegs
in the holes. This is simply not the case
when building full-size airplanes.
He continued, The KwikBild program made it possible for us to learn
about the tools, materials, and techniques necessary to complete the kit.
Under the watchful eyes of regular
production line workers, and with
their help, our Cub is comparable in
quality to the factory aircraft, but we
23
John Paul and father (John) prep and fit the aluminum cowling
prior to paint.
were able to add custom touches that

make it unique.
John Paul added to the discussion:
The most amazing thing was the way
we were welcomed into the community.
John Paul had assumed they would be
put in a corner and handed some tools.
Instead, the factory workers really made
it feel like home. This program made it
possible for us to build the plane away
from home, yet involve the whole family, he said.
Doing it this way at the factory also
means well be able to fly it soon, said
John Paul excitedly. He recalls flying in
the Husky when he was a toddler. More
recently, his first seven logged hours
were in a 1946 65-hp Cub. His most
recent training was in a Cessna 152. At
13 hours he feels hes ready to solo. He
may wait to do this in the Legend Cub.
The Takacs family assembling a wing.
24
John Paul and mother (Joan) prep the wingroot prior to

covering.
With 100 hp, he imagines there will be a

significant difference.
Two Weeks Later
I called John up on a Sunday following their first two weeks of the build. I
was expecting they would be taking the
opportunity to get caught up on some
rest. Get much work done today? I
asked. John confirmed my suspicion
when he said, No, my son slept late. We
are using the day to recoup.
However, things didnt entirely
come to a halt on this day of rest. John
informed me that he met with Darin
Hart, owner of American Legend, for
a few hours. They did some planning
on the next phase of the build. John
had selected bigger tires, 8.00x6 vs. the
stock 6.00x6, and a Scott 3200-type
tailwheel. Together they refined the
instrument panel layout and, to Johns

surprise, they spent nearly an hour on
the aircraft registration paperwork.
Their discussions continued on which
assemblies would need work tomorrow.
They gathered wingstrut components,
expecting primer and paint to take
place in their absence. John also made
plans to cut metal liners for the baggage
compartment. Darin reviewed and confirmed with John that the wings were
done and ready for paint. He mentioned
the fuselage would get a bit of clean up
with a razor and an iron to smooth out
excess fabric.
John mentioned that his baggage
compartment would be finished out in
carbon fiber with the aforementioned
metal liners on the sides. Pat Bowers,
whos been working with Darin since
the companys launch, had helped John
John Paul test fits a wingtip bow.
John and Joan begin the wing covering process.
and John Paul with a turtledeck cabinet

in the aft stowage area, suitable for carrying fishing rods.
John was excited to see his ideas for
the instrument panel come together.
He mentioned that Darin would be cutting the panel on a CNC machine. In
its center would be an iPad mini with
Garmin GDL 39 3D ADS-B receiver.
The Garmin setup includes a moving
map, attitude indicator, and synthetic
vision. The glass panel will be flanked
by steam gauges, supplanted John.
Small Trig radio and transponder heads will be mounted in the
wingroot. The box for these controls
will be behind the panel, but the
wingroot mounting allows piloting
from the rear seat. John anticipates
putting passengers, even young persons, in the front seat. This way he can
John Paul sews fabric for the fuselage.
John covers the fuselage, bottom first.
be pilot-in-command and handle radio

switches from the rear seat.
John and Darin also discussed making an elastic sock for the back of the
front seat where a second iPad will
rest. Its display will mimic that of the
forward panel via a wireless Bluetooth
connection. John seemed very pleased
that Mark Krotky, the resident avionics
expert, and Darin worked closely with
him on ergonomics for placement of
panel items.
John confessed that, before the project began, he assumed the kit would
snap together. This was found to be
unrealistic, and he quickly learned that
any airplane requires some mechanical technique by the builder. John and
John Paul were prepared and enthusiastic about riding it out. He admits
that while some would be happy to
watch, they really wanted to be handson. The joy is getting in and doing it,
he explained. It felt really good to be a
part of this build.
The last day of the two-week program included tailwheel refresher time
with Darin and final touches on details.
With pre-assembly of the fuselage and
wings finished, and the complete aircraft covered, John and John Paul went
home to Portland, while the team at
American Legend painted the plane,
pre-wired and installed the avionics and
instruments, and received the engine
and prop.
Finishing Up
Returning to Sulphur Springs a few

weeks later, John and John Paul began
phase two of the KwikBild program,
which typically takes seven to 10 days.
John Paul bonds fabric to the upper fuselage.

25
John Paul glues the fabric edges around the wing tanks.
The first day back, they installed the

landing gear system and attached the
wings and tail surfaces to the fuselage. A
day or so later the engine was installed,
and John noted that one of the coolest
moments of the entire project was putting on the propeller.
With all tasks completed, the plane
was ready for final inspection. In typical
fashion, the FAA-authorized inspector
thoroughly reviewed the completed Legend Cub. John recalls this lasting two
hours before it was pronounced fit to fly.
Johns factory-built Experimental
Legend Cub was certified as an ELSA.
This means that its construction conforms to the specifications of an SLSAcertified, ready-to-fly Legend Cub. All
of the privileges of a Sport Pilot license
can be exercised with an ELSA, and
the owner can perform routine maintenance and repairs. To sign off on the
Joan stitches wing ribs.
26
Joan adds glue along all taped joints.
annual condition inspection, an ELSA

owner must pass a 16-hour course.
Legend Cub kits can also be licensed
as Experimental/Amateur-Built, with a
gross weight of 1750 pounds (vs. 1320
for an ELSA). The test-flight period is
40 hours, and the builder can perform
all maintenance, including the annual
condition inspection, after receiving the
repairman certificate for the aircraft.
With airworthiness certificate in
hand, John concluded, Before becoming a physician, I never completed my
initial training as an aerospace engineer.
Dreams of being a test pilot or astronaut
never matured, and I went on to pursue
a medical career.
After making the first flight in his
new Legend Cub, John explained,
Without a doubt, it was the most natural thing for my son to fuel up N167J
and for me to test-fly it. I was calm, and
the flight was exciting and invigorating. Everything worked just fine, and
the plane flew perfectly. My son and I
worked extremely long hours, efficiently
and well, and I allowed myself a deep
sense of satisfaction.
Darin Hart and production flight test
pilot Chuck Olmstead also flew N167J
to make sure everything checked out
just fine. After the mandatory five-hour
local shakedown and a careful re-inspection were complete, John and John Paul
loaded their sleeping bags and camping
equipment into the Cub and flew the
1700 miles back to Portland.
The Legend cub can be piloted from
the front or back seat, so I was able to
allow my student pilot son, John Paul,
to fly front seat, said John. We made
the triumphant landing back home,
and our arrival was watched by a very
proud mom. J
John Paul reviews the covered fuselage

in the paint booth.
More than a timepiece.

Less than a flight deck.
Introducing the new Garmin D2 Bravo GPS pilot watch. First we invented wrist-worn portable navigation.
Now, weve made it even lighter, thinner and better: With new easy-to-access METARs aviation weather, Direct-To
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For a closer look, visit Garmin.com/aviation or see your Garmin dealer
2015 Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries
D2 BRAVO
The
Motivated
Builder
Building an airplane ranks right up there as one of
the most existential things you can do in your lifetime.
By Brent Owens
It almost seems arrogant to think we

can assemble a machine in our garage
that will hurtle us through the sky, sometimes at very high speeds. Whenever this
comes up in conversation, this is certainly
echoed in the response we receive: You
built an airplanein your garage?
Building a proper flying machine is a big
deal. It takes money, an aptitude for learning, problem-solving skills, a great deal of
time, and most importantly willpower.
What might surprise you is the last
commodity mentionedwillpower
can be the hardest to come by, and
therein lies the problem: If you dont
have willpower none of the other components matter.
28
No one lacks motivation when the

project is in its infancy. Most of us are
so excited, we seem unstoppable. But
sustaining that enthusiasm over the
long haul is the key. There are lots of
people who have sold their partially
completed projects, and others who
have literally spent over two decades
building and still havent flown. Setting
aside those who have had life-altering
circumstances blocking their progress,
for many this comes down to simply not
doing the work.
In defense of anyone who has languished on a project, its a universal
problem, as demonstrated by the leagues
of authors who write on the subject of
getting stuff done, Steven Pressfield

being one of my favorites.
For homebuilding the best way to
power through is to learn what has
worked for others and apply those strategies in a way that works for you. As part
of this article, we interviewed several
different builders to ask how they managed to see their way through to success.
Get in the Habit
One of the best techniques is to establish a cadence for your work sessions.
This can take many forms, depending
on your situation. Some people work
well doing short bursts each day, and
some prefer to work for long durations a
few times a weeklike on weekends. In

any case, the importance is forming the
habit. Habits can be a powerful force. If
you get your life in a rhythm with the
build, that will pull you through when
your willpower wanes.
If your body and mind know that
every morningor eveningyoure
going to spend a couple of hours building, it becomes second nature, and nothing short of a major life event will derail
you. The same holds true for those who
build only on weekends: The habits you
build up will strengthen your resolve.
Some other methods include the very
successful peer influence. If you have a
buddy who is also building, you tend to
urge each other on. Call it natural competitiveness or ego, but you dont want
to be the guy that didnt get anything
done since you last spoke. This peer
influence has gotten many people off the
couch and into the shop.
Another, more millennial, technique
is to use the Internet to keep you on
track. If you have a virtual audience of
friends and family watching your progress on social media outlets like Facebook or Twitter, or a dedicated web site
or blog, you will get a huge shot of motivation. Even for the less tech savvy, its
easier than ever to share your building
experience. Plus, itll make documenting it for the certification stage a breeze.
One of the best tips I received was
from one of the EAA directors. He said,
Do something every day no matter how

minuscule. That is sage advice from a
lifelong builder. It keeps your head in
the game and it keeps you moving forward, almost in spite of yourself. The
longer you go between build sessions,
the harder it is for most people to come
back to it. Its all about momentum.
Avoid Stagnation
Stagnation is the antithesis of progress

during construction, so do anything
you can to avoid it. One way to set yourself up for success is by making it easy
to go back to the shop for that next session. Keeping your workspace clean and
organized is a big help. I found that if
I pre-planned my next work session, at
least mentally, if not actually setting it
up in the shop, I was much more likely
to run out there and dive in, even when I
wasnt motivated.
I was a morning builder. That routine
was great, but dragging myself out of
bed at 4:30 a.m. in the dead of winter
required every trick in the book. Once I
was at it, I fell into the zoneand I dare
say it was therapeutic.
Other builders have their own ideas
about how to get motivated and stay
in the groove. We spoke with Cozy
plans builder George Mellen, RV-10
kit builder Dana Saucier, and Pietenpol
plans builder Michael Cuy to learn how
they accomplished their goals and completed their projects.
George Mellens Cozy Mk III
KITPLANES: How long did it take to

complete your Cozy?
George Mellen: Eighteen years.
KP: Did you have any long breaks
during construction?
G.M.: Yes, the first time was when
I separated from my first wife (not airplane induced).
The second time was when I moved into
an apartment while building a new house.
There were always priorities before
building. However, I never lost sight of
the goal.
KP: How often did you work on
the Cozy?
G.M.: I was told to do something
every day, no matter how little it was.
This was good advice, and I tried to stick
with it.
KP: What was the average length of
your work sessions?
G.M.: During the week it may have
been as little as 30 minutes each day
after the children were in bed. During
the weekends I could make a 10-hour
day, if I was lucky.
KP: Did you build alone or did you
have help?
G.M.: Mostly solo; I may have had
10 hours of help over a 2500-hour-plus
build time.
KP: What was your biggest impediment to progress?
G.M.: In the beginning it was money.
Family life has to come first.
After more than 2500 hours of building spread over 18 years, George Mellen enjoys a flight in his Cozy Mk III.
Photos: Brent Owens and courtesy of George Mellen, Dana Saucier and Michael Cuy
29
KP: How did you maintain motivation

after nearly two decades of construction?
G.M.: I always knew I would finish.
There was never a lack of motivation. I
really enjoyed building.
KP: Did you ever feel overwhelmed, especially since you had to
build everything?
G.M.: Having built a plansbuilt
composite airframe, I must say filling and finishing the fiberglass weave
seemed to go on forever. The wiring of
the electrical system was a close second.
On a composite airframe you cant use
the structure as a quick ground point.
Each connection requires a long run for
both the positive and the ground leads.
KP: Are you planning to build again
and if so, would you change anything?
G.M.: Maybe; perhaps something
low and slow. It would definitely be
plansbuilt again.
KP: What advice would you give an
aspiring builder to give them the best
chance for success?
G.M.: Ask yourself if you would
rather build or fly. If you really want to
build, do something every day, no matter how little.
Dana Sauciers RV-10

complete your RV-10?
Dana Saucier: First flight was three
years and one month from when I
Dana Saucier in the cockpit of his RV-10.
began my build journey. Along the

way, I was told by previous builders
that your project never gets totally
completed, and I never fully appreciated what they meant. I now have 155
hours and couldnt be happier with
the way everything has turned out, but
there are always new bells and whistles
Id like to add. Since its Experimental,
I love that I have the freedom to keep
improving things.
KP: Did you have any long breaks in
the project?
D.S.: Other than a week vacation
with the family here and there, I never
took any breaks. Even while on vacation,
there was always something I could plan
out or research that could be done so
that I was ready for the next step. I think
that some builders get too immersed in

their project and alienate their families
or work, but I decided up front that I
would maintain a steady commitment
to the build, but only after family and
work needs were met.
KP: How often did you work on it?
D.S.: Other builders encouraged
me to try and do something each day,
even if it was a small task, to help stay
focused and motivated, and that was
great advice. It always gave me the feeling that I was moving the ball down
the field. Being a morning person, the
bulk of my time building was done in
the very early mornings, particularly
on Saturday and Sunday. Like most,
my family would always sleep in on the
weekends, so they didnt seem to mind
Dana Sauciers RV-10.
30
Michael Cuys Pietenpol midway through construction.
that I was working on the plane during

those early weekend mornings.
your work sessions?
D.S.: Not counting time spent studying plans and Internet searching while
on the road or in the evenings, build sessions averaged four to six hours.
KP: Did you have a lot of help, or
were you mostly solo?
D.S.: I had tons of help along the way
from fellow builders, but my A&P and
RV-7 builder/composites expert friend,
Joe Strausbaugh, and electronics engineer brother-in-law, Mike Kundrat,
were particularly instrumental. Their
expertise allowed me to build a far more
capable RV-10 in a shorter period of
time. There were lots of solemn hours by
myself, as well.
D.S.: I realized early on that building the safest, most capable, and attractive plane was my dream, and while they
fully supported me, the dream was not
shared by my wife and two daughters.
I was OK with that. I also realized that
while I wanted to see my dream materialize ASAP, I didnt want them to resent
me for my commitment to the project at
their expense. There were many times
that I was eager to finish a certain step
and probably could have pushed my luck
with the family, but I opted to put down
the tools and spent time with them. As
a result, I think that my kids would say
that, Dad loves airplanes, rather than,
Dad is obsessed with airplanes.
KP: How did you maintain motivation?

D.S.: When I found myself getting
discouraged, I would put down the
tools, rent one of the flying clubs planes,
and go grab breakfast with a friend or
shoot some touch and goes. A little stick
time helped bring back some motivation
to keep soldiering on. It reminded me
why I was building. Im also fortunate to
have met a great group of fellow builders
who always offered me an empty seat to
some local fly-in and lots of encouragement to finish. Now that Im finished, I
get to give a few encouragement rides to
other builders.
KP: Did you ever feel overwhelmed?
D.S.: To be honest, at times the process was very overwhelming and it felt
like I would never finish. I realized that
building a plane is, in the end, one large
project, but it is made up of hundreds
of smaller projects that eventually come
together near the end. I hated spending
many hours building and fitting a certain section or part, only to take it back
off and put it on a shelf because leaving
it on would get in the way of the next
step. It was the right thing to do, but I
wanted to leave things on and see overall progress.
KP: Whats next?
D.S.: I told myself many times
that if I could complete this project, I
would enjoy my new plane and focus
on just being a pilot, which I have
done. My RV-10 has far exceeded my
dreams, and I couldnt be happier
and wouldnt do anything differently.
With that said, I found myself looking

31
Michael Cuy at the controls of his Pietenpol with Don Helmick holding the wing.
at Barnstormers.com periodically and

happened to find a Great Lakes 2T-1A
biplane project that was nearing the
end of a complete restoration, but the
owner had passed away. While I dont
see myself going through a complete
build again like the RV-10, I decided,
along with a partner, to buy the Great
Lakes project and finish it. I also have
my eye on a certain J-3 Cub on floats in
need of restoration that I may take on,
but only after the Great Lakes.
aspiring builder?
D.S.: There is plenty of builder
advice out there, but here are some of
the things that were helpful for me:
Keep your project at home as long as
you can. Resist the urge to take it to the
airport too early.
Limit the number of cosmetic modifications, add-ons, or improvements you
make, unless you think they are truly a
high priority. There is always some new
or cool mod to add, but they can delay
the overall build by a lotnot to mention add significant cost to the project.
Have a budget and stick to it.
One of the benefits of Experimental
aircraft is the ability to personalize to
your taste, but I constantly had to ask
myself, would I rather spend time installing this new, cool mod or be flying?
32
Michael Cuys Pietenpol

complete your Pietenpol?
Michael Cuy: The entire project lasted
four and a half years though I did not keep
a log of hours spent working on it in total.
KP: Did you have any long breaks in
the project?
M.C.: About three years into the
project, I took an unintentional twoweek break because I was physically,
mentally, and I think even emotionally
burned-out from working so much on
the project. I had two personalities at
war inside me during the build: One
wanted to get the project done as soon as
possible, and the other wanted to make
sure I did good, sound, quality work.
KP: How often did you work on
the project?
M.C.: I worked on the project probably six out of seven days of the week.
On a bad week Id only work on the
project four or five days or evenings out
of seven.
your work sessions?
M.C.: The overall average of my work
sessions would probably be about three
hours. There were some days when I
would literally work 12 hours on the
project, such as when I was fabricating
the 4130 steel control system. Of course,
my night sessions were shorter than

weekend sessions, but I could still very
easily start out watching the 6 p.m. news
while working on the plane, and end up
finally putting the work down by the 11
oclock news.
KP: Did you have a lot of help or were
you mostly solo?
M.C.: I would say that 95% of my
time on the project was spent alone.
The most significant help I received was
an incredible offer by my dear WW-II
B-24 pilot and friend, Bill Klosz, to
help me paint my covered airplane.
Without Bill and the generous help of
Don Helmick, who allowed me to use
his heated hangar to spray my aircraft, it
wouldnt have ever turned out as nicely
as it did. I basically owe any compliments on the plane to them.
M.C.: Visitors. I loved having visitors,
but some overstayed their welcome. I
had one visitor who lived nearby, and he
would stop over on his way home from
work and wouldnt go home. I actually
had to put black construction paper
on my basement windows to block the
lights from showing that I was working.
KP: How did you maintain motivation to keep working on it?
M.C.: My major motivation was
to get in the air again after selling my
Champ. Thanks to another good friend,
Frank Pavliga, for letting me solo his
Pietenpol. That experience of flying my
first open-cockpit airplane gave me the
motivation to finish my project.
KP: Did you ever feel overwhelmed?
M.C.: Very much so. Usually after
working on one part of the plane too
long, like woodworking, Id get burnedout. Id have to switch to metal work, or
control cables, or something else to get
out of that rut.
aspiring builder to give them the best
chance for success?
M.C.: Good question! I would
look for a partially completed project
out there that is not junk to give you a
jump-start on the building process. If
you decide to buy a project, have someone look it over who really knows the
type of aircraft and knows what questions to ask.

Second, dont look at the mountain
of work ahead of you or the years it
might take, but compartmentalize each
project, each task, and work on that
until completion. Just keep tackling
those sub-tasks with blinders on, in a
sense, to keep from being discouraged
or overwhelmed.
Also, dont cheap out on your materials or cut corners. If you cant afford the
next step or phase of your airplane, take
a break. Give yourself time to raise some
kids or buy that house, but dont sell!
Finally, purchase all four of the Tony
Bingelis books on sport plane building;
they will save you hundreds of dollars in
mistakes and rework.
Go for It!
Many Experimental airplanes have been

constructed under terrible work conditions, but still they were successful
because of one thing: Their builders had
the resolve to see the job through.
The famous rocket scientist, Wernher
Von Braun, was once asked, Whats the
hardest thing about going to the moon?
His reply was, The will to do it.
But perhaps Eddie Rickenbacker
summed it up best when he said, Aviation is proof that, given the will, we have
the capacity to achieve the impossible. J
Brent Owens
Brent Owens is an ATPrated pilot and a flight

operations manager for a
large business jet provider.
He has flown his whole life
and enjoys all aspects of
aviation. He has rebuilt a
1946 Ercoupe and a 1970
plansbuilt Bucker Jngster I,
and built an RV-8. He is
formerly the vice president
of EAA Chapter 9 and
serves as an EAA technical
counselor and flight advisor. He is passionate about
promoting flight and sees the
Experimental sector as the
biggest growth opportunity
for recreational aviation.
33
So You Want to
Get Paid
to Build?
How to make your homebuilding skills really pay off.
By Eric Stewart
A fellow builder recently commented

that in the process of building a kit aircraft, some people discover that while
the original dream was the one we all
begin withsoaring free on wings of
our ownwhat they discover along the
way is that they enjoy the building aspect
even more than the flying. For some this
means that they will become repeat
offendersthe guys with two or three
or even a dozen planes under their belts.
For others, homebuilding is the gateway
to becoming an A&P or DAR. For young
builders, like the ones participating in the
Young Eagles Program, the experience
might launch them into an engineering
career. So if you really enjoy building airplanes, is there a way to make it pay?
Go Big: Scaled Composites
If ever a company embodied the spirit of

homebuilding, its Scaled Composites of
34
Mojave, California, founded by the legendary Burt Rutan. Of course, the engineering and tooling is in a different league
than someone fiddling on a Long-EZ or
Zenith in their garage, but the corporate ethos is surprisingly similar: Scaled
engineers take responsibility for entire
projects, not just, say, the hinge pin of a
gear-retraction door, which might be the
case in a larger aerospace company.
This can-do approach has put Scaled
at the forefront of aviation development with projects like SpaceShipOne
and -Two, and Stratolaunch. Aerospace
design has become notoriously conservative, both from the aspect of no risk to
life and no risk to bottom line. But as
Zach Reeder, project engineer for the
Stratolaunch wing center section says:
Taking responsibility and making mistakes is crucial to gaining the experience
needed to oversee entire projects.
Elliot Seguin, project engineer in charge

of propulsion on the Scaled T-X, with
the first version of the Wasabi Formula 1
racer inside Scaleds Hangar 78 (the main
assembly hangar). Although Scaled does
not have an official 20 Percent Time
(Googles famous policy allowing workers
to spend one day a week tinkering on personal projects), they are allowed to use the
shop after hours for personal projects.
To that end, pursuing ones own

homebuilding project (approximately
50% of Scaled engineers are building
or have built their own plane) is considered crucial for getting the best jobs
at Scaled. Reeder himself was given
Rutans old Catbird on the condition
that he restore and fly it to Oshkosh
within two years. Reeder made it to
Wisconsin, and later set the C-1c
5000km speed record in Catbird.
According to Elliot Seguin, project
engineer in charge of propulsion on
Justin Gillen, lead engineer for the Scaled Stratolaunchs maingear, built this Tango 2 seen
sitting in front of WhiteKnightTwo at a Scaled Composites family day. Scaled encourages its
engineers and fabricators to pursue personal projects like this to develop their skill set.
the T-X trainer (whose self-designed

and -built Formula One racer Wasabi
graced the cover of our January issue),
there are traditionally two ways into
Scaled: as an engineer or a fabricator.
That said, the boundaries between the
two are fuzzy: Engineers typically spend
at least half their time on the shop floor
working with fabricators to design and
build parts. And fabricators such as
Cory Bird (builder of the famous Symmetry, and now vice president at Scaled)
often work their way up into management positions. Its a very academic
situation, in that we are all constantly
learning new things, says Seguin. So
regardless of whether one enters as an
engineer or fabricator, those in upper
management have extensive knowledge
of all aircraft systems. Again, this is in
contrast to what youd find at a typical
aerospace company: As a friend who is
a project manager at a major gas turbine
company commented (on condition of
anonymity): I have engineers designing
turbine blades on their computers who
I am pretty sure if I handed them a real
turbine blade, wouldnt know what they
were holding.
The group of young engineers I spoke
with noted that the workload and schedule at Scaled can vary tremendously
depending on where a project is in its
schedule. There are lots of late nights
to meet deadlines and early-morning
test flights (Mojave gets windy in the
afternoon). These engineers are passionate, extremely hard-working, and their
ambitions carry over into their personal
projects: Both Reeder and Seguin have
set FAI world records with their planes,
and Justin Gillen did extensive mods to
his Tango 2 (pictured above) to provide
Photos: Eric Stewart
in-flight support to Seguin on his Mojave

to Oshkosh flight.
One way of thinking about whether
someone might fit in at Scaled is where
theyd like to end up after Scaled.
Although Seguin notes that Scaleds
turnover is relatively low, many of the
engineers are young and single. Some of
those decide to start a family or just want
to try something new and move to a more
urban environment, where they end up
working as consultants (remember, these
are people who are great at seeing the big
picture) and entrepreneurs.
Go Small: Murdoch Manufacturing
While some younger homebuilders may

be inspired by homebuilding to go into
engineering, that is obviously a major
educational commitment and one which
older builders may not be able or willing to make. And quitting a secure job
can be risky, or just not financially viable
for some. However, there are certainly
opportunities to make money in homebuilding with small startup costs that

still allow room for growth. Dayton
Murdoch is a prime example.
Murdoch has been machining aircraft
and medical-grade assemblies for over 36
years, so the jump into independent manufacturer of Experimental aircraft parts
was, he admits, pretty seamless. Nevertheless, Murdoch started small: He
began building an RV-4 in 1990 (his -4
appeared on the cover of our August 2014
issue), but dissatisfied with the quadrant
offered by Vans Aircraft, he fabricated
his own. It was natural to capitalize on
his machining skills, and he gradually
grew his product offering to throttle
quadrants, lightweight tailwheels, and
heavy-duty pitot tubes. Hes now on his
5th-generation quadrant and, as of 2015,
has surpassed 4000 quadrants.
Being a manufacturer also means
standing behind your producthaving
the funds and honesty necessary to deal
with problems if products dont deliver,
says Murdoch. For example, improper
vulcanization of the rubber on a set of tailwheels led to the solid rubber tires rolling
off the wheel. I replaced 83 units, says
Murdoch, at my cost, of course.
Staying on top of the manufacturing
game requires constant vigilance and
improvement. Murdochs quadrants
are in their 5th iteration with a bevy of
small improvements that improve safety
and function: They are now assembled
Dayton Murdoch machining parts in his shop. Murdoch says his previous experience as
a machinist made the transition to producing custom aviation parts pretty seamless.

35
Murdoch shows the evolution of his throttle quadrants. Constantly updating and
improving products is the key to success, says Murdoch.
with bolts rather than screws (reducing

the labor required for tapping threads).
Lever spacing allows proper accommodation of control cable clevises. A doublehinge design means that the main pivot
screw can be lost without the unit falling apart. Labels have been rotated 90
degrees to improve readability, and
knobs are now anodized aluminum
rather than painted wood.
Dayton notes that some manufacturers rest on their laurels once a product
is out, and this can make it easy for an
upstart to improve an existing product
and compete. For example, Murdoch
recently became interested in formation
flying and the smoke systems that often
go along with it. After looking into what
was available on the market, he decided
he could build a better system for less.
The manufacturer hasnt done any
R&D for five years, says Murdoch. His
products are heavy and expensive. It
would be pretty easy for someone else to
come and re-engineer that system to be
lighter, easier to use, and less expensive.
One caveat Murdoch did note was

that larger engineering firms sometimes approach smaller manufacturers
to subcontract jobs. On several occasions Murdoch has invested considerable time and money to custom-make
quadrant assemblies for well-known
companies, only to have them award a
contract for his design to an overseas
shop. Along with needing to be thickskinned when dealing with difficult
customers, Murdoch advises those
doing subcontract work to read the fine
print of any contracts they sign, and
consult with a lawyer if necessary.
One benefit of starting small is that
it allows you to control how much time
and money you are able or willing to
invest. It also allows you to keep your day
job. Murdoch only switched to full time
manufacturing two years ago.
Go Pro: Builder Assist
Freeflight Composites of Peyton, Colorado was started 11 years ago by Burrall Sanders and his wife Joyce. Sanders
Darla Slee of Freeflight Composites works on the gear intersection

fairings of a Long-EZ. Slees previous experience as a jeweler
trained her eye to hunt for detail, which is a skill that carries over
nicely to work at Freeflight Composites.
36
had just finished his own VariEze and

was approached by other builders with
requests to help on their projects.
Though employed with a secure job as
a heavy-equipment mechanic, Sanders
was tired of his job and quit to start a
builders assist center that currently
has three full-time employees in addition to himself. Freeflight Composites
focuses on plastic planes, namely the
Rutan EZ canards, but also Lancairs,
Glasairs, and Cozys. Not only do we
do builder assist, says Sanders, but we
also help owners and pilots with condition inspections, modifications, maintenance and repair, and we do a lot of
insurance work as well.
The benefit of this kind of job is that
I get to look forward to work in the
morning, and I get to work for myself.
Sanders also noted that even though
he was concerned about the backlash
from the Great Recession of 2008, it
ultimately did not seem to have a direct
impact; they stayed busy and have even
expanded since then. On the other hand,
Sanders notes that many of his clients are
building EZs because they want to save
money. So if a guy comes to me and
wants extensive help on his project, he
has to know right up front that it is going
to cost him a lot more that way than if he
just did it himself.
Aside from the monetary benefits,
Sanders enjoys helping enthusiastic
clients achieve their dreams. He contrasts this to the contractors he used
to work for who considered him pure
overhead and hated to have to pay for
maintenance from day one. This is one
Burrall Sanders checking out the Garmin avionics in a customers

Velocity TXL-5. Sanders says the key to making it as a builder assist
center is top-quality work and honesty with customers.
theme that recurred several times while

researching this article: Some people
are already working as mechanics, engineers, or pilots, but the corporate drive
to maximize productivity takes the joy
out of work. For some, its worth the
pay cut to go out on their own and do
the same or similar work, but at a pace
that is enjoyable, gives them time to
make products of which they can feel
proud, and have more time for family
or other pursuits.
Sanders only words of wisdom to

those thinking of making a go of it was
the importance of straight dealing with
customers: We jealously guard our
reputation. Weve never paid for advertising; its all word of mouth. That comes
from having a transparent operation, as
well as being highly competent and not
willing to compromise safety in any way.
If people understand that, theyll have
confidence in your operation, and it will
keep you busy.
Making a Small Fortune
Hopefully this article has shown that

channeling your passion for homebuilding into a means of employment is feasible,
and that the most important first step is to
have a clear understanding of your skills
and a game plan to make it work. Best of
luck and hopefully well be reviewing your
gadget or plane in these pages someday.
Just remember that old aviation chestnut:
The best way to make a small fortune in
aviation is to start with a large one!
Go Slow
I originally got into the sailplane business by purchasing the remaining

inventory of Richard Schreders Bryan Aircraft kit sailplane business.
My stock answer for why I would take on such an endeavor is, Well, it
seemed like a good idea at the time.
At that time, I had owned and extensively flown an HP-11A kit
sailplane for about a dozen years. Selling parts and upgrades for the old
HPs was my introduction to the realities of the aviation business. And as
education goes, it was relatively cost effective: I lost a handful of money
every year, but I learned a lot about how aircraft parts really get made.
Probably the first big lesson was that inventory, even very small
parts, takes up space. It was common to find that when I finally sold
a part that had originally been fabricated in, say, 1967, the profit was
dwarfed by what it had cost to store it for two or three decades (using
typical rates for commercial real estate). This, of course, is one of the
founding principles that drives the just in time inventory system
required to manufacture automobiles cost-effectively.
Another lesson was something former Soar Truckee proprietor Les
Sebald taught me one day when I was talking with him about the aviation parts business. You want to invest in new stuff. Move your money
toward the future, not the past. That piece of advice was one of the
things that moved me toward what eventually became the HP-24, a modern high-performance sailplane for todays homebuilt aircraft enthusiast.
The cost-benefit analysis of the HP-24 project constantly evolves. At
its heart is the understanding that times have changed, and that the boxfull-of-flat-stock aircraft kit that might have been popular in the 1970s
just wont make it today. For better or worse, todays homebuilder has
different skills and different concerns, and tends to have less free time
and lower tolerance for the homebuilding travails of yesteryear.
My standard pieces of advice for others looking to get into the
homebuilt aviation business are:
Expect a huge pay cut. Right now Im making about one-third of
what I did working in the Silicon Valleyand thats when things
are going well! But, Im doing the kind of challenging work that fully
engages my abilities.
Dont expect the world to beat a path to your door just because
you have a CAD model of a better mousetrap. CAD, CAM, FEA, and
associated manufacturing technologies have revolutionized the way
aircraft are designed and developed. But what it really comes down
to is what you can produce and deliver. One of the biggest lessons I
take away from watching Vans Aircraft become the single largest
Bob Kuykendall examines a wingspar at the April 2015 akaflieg.

Looking on are the owners of HP-24 serial numbers 2, 3, 4, and 6.
contributor to the U.S. general aviation fleet is that the homebuilt

aircraft market is extremely elastic, by which I mean that it is very
difficult to gauge how strong the market will be for a new aircraft.
Youll never really know your products potential until you actually
make one and start demonstrating it to folks in real life.
Develop content strategy, which is a fancy Silicon Valley way of
saying promote your products by educating and informing potential
customers. Skip the superlatives and adjectives, and just explain
what your product does, how it does it, and why it is better for your
customers than the competition. For the HP-24 project, I regularly
convene akafliegs, get-togethers where folks come to my shop from
all over the country to gain hands-on practice with composites [See
HP-24: Soaring on Homebuilt Wings, December 2013]. Relatively few
akafliegers have become kit customers, but the ones who do are the
kind of fully informed customers that are the best customers to have.
Invest in the square footage it will take to develop and produce your
product. I did most of the HP-24 development in a 1200-squarefoot shop (actually two separate 600-square-foot bays). Without
exaggeration, we spent 1520% of our time just reconfiguring the
shop to get at the next thing that needed to be done. Things started
moving much better and faster when we expanded into our current
4800-square-foot facility.
Buy a MIG welder and learn to use it. There will always be some sort
of jig or fixture you can weld together to make your life easier. J
Bob Kuykendall

37
Do-It-Yourself
Aircraft
Jacks
Having completed two basic welding courses,

I was a solution looking for a problem.
By Dave Smith
Jacking up an airplane is one of those

things that few of us are trained for, yet
it is very important. As an RV builder, I
had my airplane in jigs and on blocks for
several years. The goal was always to get
it on the gearnot jack it off the gear.
So I was poorly prepared for my first flat
tire and then my first condition inspection. I didnt know jack!
I am not offering any photos of my
original makeshift solution, which
38
was both scary and embarrassing. The

kludgey solution involved an auto jack, a
4x4, and a carriage bolt in the tie down
ring position. Each pump of the jack
handle was an opportunity for injury
to both myself and the airplane as it
rocked and shifted on the makeshift
solution. Last year I vowed to never do
that again.
In 2012, I completed two welding
courses at the community college in
preparation for future projects. With

some basic understanding of welding, I
was now a solution looking for a problem. Jack stands were the perfect opportunity to make something useful.
Custom Jacks for My RV-7
Others have designed jacks around

the Harbor Freight ram, which lifts
from 24 to 44 inches. My plan was to
use these rams and design my solution
Support arms that hold the jack attach to the large tube with
tabs. The small tube keeps the carriage bolt on top of the ram.
around them. Due to my inexperience

with metal, I worked hard to design
the supporting structure to minimize
cutting and finishing of metal. Speedy
Metals (www.speedymetals.com) will
cut to length, so I spent a considerable
amount of time designing the solution
so that it could be built with precut
pieces. The bill of materials on the next
page lists the specific pieces.
My jack solution was designed from
the wing down for my RV-7. With
inflated tires and a carriage bolt protruding 1.25 inches from the tiedown
location, there is 27.25 inches to the
groundless with a flat tire. The ram
starts at 24 inches, so my stands would
need to be flat; wheels were eliminated
due to height.
How would the ram carry the carriage bolt under the wing? Speedy Metals had round tube stock that fit as a
collar around the top of the ram. The

specified length provided about a half
inch to receive the carriage bolt, which
would ride on top of the ram.
Next, another round piece would be
required at the top of the ram to receive
the arms. This was probably the most
critical piece, and it took a couple of
orders from Speedy Metals until I got
the correct tube. The tabs, support arms,
and the base pieces are all flat stock cut
to length by Speedy Metals.
The tabs and arms were drilled for
5/16-inch bolts so the jacks can be disassembled for storage 360 days of the year.
There are four small angle iron tabs at
the base of the ram to keep it in positionthe ram is not fastened to the
stand. Grinding was done on all of the
tabs to eliminate exposed sharp corners.
My focus has been on TIG welding, which produces nice welds, but
The tiedown ring and lift point are located next to the pitot
tube on the authors RV-7.
Photos: Dave Smith
This is the ram from Harbor Freight. It has been used many
times for do-it-yourself airplane jacks.
would have taken a long time here.

These jacks are based on flat steel and
straight lines, which are well suited to
MIG welding. With MIG you pull the
trigger and zip right through welds
like this. I tack welded all the parts
with TIG and then took the stands to
my friend, Steve Hicks, who was anxious to demonstrate his MIG welder.
The welding took about an hour to
complete with MIG.
Paint Follies
I could have been done at this point,

but I decided to paint the stands.
Cleaning and preparing the metal
was probably the single most timeconsuming chore. I had some auto
epoxy primer and shot a few coats of
that using a Harbor Freight touch-up
gun. The finish coat is Rust-Oleum
in the touch-up gun. I also had some
A carriage bolt replaces the tiedown ring when the airplane is

lifted with the jack.

39
Fully assembled stands. Scrap plastic was glued to the bottom

for floor and metal protection.
unused tub surround in the shop and

glued that to the base of the stands
with contact cement. The stands were
assembled with hardware-store bolts
and wing nuts for disassembly.
There always seems to be one hairball in any of these projects. I cleverly
designed a wire rope clothesline that
spanned my 44-foot hangar. Each end
of the clothesline attached to the wall
with a turnbuckle. As I painted parts,
I moved them from left to right as
necessary to paint them and then let
them dry. While painting the finish
coat, with only a couple of parts left,
the clothesline with all of the wet parts
fell to the floor. Luckily these were jack
stands and not airplane parts. So the
paint job is not flawless. Note to self:
Lifting the wing: The ram with receiving tube is meeting the
carriage bolt where the tiedown ring would normally be.
when being clever with turnbuckles, be

sure to count the number of turns or
threads engaged before loading heavy
metal parts.
My goal was to have a better solution
than what I had been using. I feel this is
much safer and more reliable. You can
see in the photo on the first page that the
tire is off the ground using eight inches
of ram lift. Both jacks should be used
to lift each side equally. Lifting with a
single jack that does not move with the
airplane causes the jack to tilt and could
eventually become unstable. This brings
us to the obligatory qualifying statement: I am not an engineer, and I am not
as clever as I thought I was; you should
review every aspect of this and validate
your design before using.
The Bottom Line
As you can see from the bill of materials, I spent $210.64 for two unpainted
jack stands. I worked on this project
an hour or two at a time over several
months until completed. I built my own
jack stands because I am content to value
my time at $1.00 per hour to break even.
This was about the same hourly value as
the original RV construction.
There are a number of completed jack
solutions out there from many suppliers. Plan on spending anywhere from
$500.00 to $800.00 for a pair of jacks by
the time you include shipping and jack
point provisioning to connect to the
plane. Is it worth it? It all depends how
you value your time. Ill leave it to you to
decide whats best for your situation. J
Bill of Materials for Two Unpainted Jack Stands

Item
Speedy SKU
Base full piece

Base short pieces
0.125
Thick
24.00
Material
Each
Qty
Cost
Flat steel hot rolled
12.24
24.48
hf.125x5
0.125
9.50
4.85
19.38
hf.125x1-24
1.00
24.00
0.125
1.88
15.04
dom3.25x.120
3.25 od
1.75
0.120
Round tube
2.94
5.88
Support legs
Collar for legs at top
Length
hf.125x5
hf.125x1.5
1.50
1.50
0.75
16
11.99
Collar at end of ram
Tabs at base and collar
dom1.25x.109
1.25 od
1.50
0.109
Round tube
1.96
3.92
Tabs at base of ram
hf.125x.75
0.750
12.00
0.125
Angle
1.95
Subtotal
Shipping and tax (approx.)
20.00
Steel order
5/16 x 1 bolts, washers, wing nuts
Harbor Freight 3-ton RAM flat bottom #60393
Total Parts Cost
40
1.95
82.64
102.64
1.00
50.00
8.00
100.00
$210.64
Aircraft Wiring
Understanding Alternators
and Voltage Regulators
By Marc Ausman
42
Internally Regulated
Externally Regulated
B-lead
B-lead
ALT
ALT
Field
Switch
BUS
BUS
The alternator provides power to

electrical devices (like lights and avionics) and also charges the aircraft battery. The voltage regulator continuously
monitors the bus voltage and adjusts the
output of the alternator. The regulator
works when it is powered from a bus
through a wire called the field wire.
Choosing the correct alternator
and voltage regulator is an important
part of planning your electrical system. There are two types of alternators
to consider in your design: internally
regulated and externally regulated. The
typical newer automotive alternator is
internally regulated.
The voltage regulator does simply
thatit regulates the voltage to the field
wires in the alternator. Varying the field
voltage affects the output of the alternator. Higher voltage means a stronger field
to generate current, which means more
output. An internally regulated alternator provides the same function, but the
regulator is housed in the alternator itself.
In Figure 1, you can see that internally
regulated alternators are easier to wire,
and you dont have to mount a separate
voltage regulator.
Externally regulated alternators have
the regulator in a separate box outside the
alternator. Most voltage regulators provide only the voltage regulation function,
and some allow you to adjust the voltage level. The B&C LR-3C (www.bandc
.biz) external voltage regulator provides
three functions: 1) voltage regulation,
2) low-voltage alerting, and 3) overvoltage protection. It is generally regarded
Field
Switch
Voltage
Regulator
Alternator
Alternator
Figure 1. Internally regulated and externally regulated alternators. F = field wire input,
B = B-lead output.
as a high-quality product that has been

through years of field experience.
The diagrams illustrate how the
alternator and voltage regulator work
together. F on the alternator is the field
input wire, and B is the B-lead, which
is the power output. The field input of
about 2 to 3 amps, combined with engine
power, can output up to 60 or 100 amps
depending on the alternator rating.
When the field (alternator) switch is
closed, the voltage regulator can read the
bus voltage. If the voltage is low, the output on the field wire (to the F terminal)
is increased. This causes a stronger magnetic field inside the alternator, which
causes the output voltage to increase.

The current flows out the B-lead to the
main bus, causing the bus voltage to rise.
The cycle repeats itself to maintain the
desired voltage (about 14.2 volts).
Internal or External?
There is a long-standing debate in the

Experimental community about the
benefits of internally versus externally
regulated alternators, and also about
the use of automotive alternators. The
table below shows some of the pros and
cons of each type.
Automotive regulators have a failure
mode that causes an overvoltage condition,
Internally Regulated vs. Externally Regulated Alternators

Alternator Type
Pros
Cons
Internally regulated
alternator (automotive)
Simple to wire.
No external boxes.
Certain failure modes will cause overvoltage

condition that cannot be stopped by
removing power from the field wire*.
Separation of the voltage regulator from

the alternator, and each can be serviced
separately. Removal of power from
regulator shuts down alternator.
Extra box to install and wire.

Extra cost and weight.
Externally regulated
alternator
*Note: According to Plane-Power, their internally regulated alternators are designed to eliminate this failure mode.
Overvoltage protection can be

provided by the Vertical Power system.
Overvoltage Protection
An overvoltage (OV) condition is initiated by a failure in either the voltage

Illustrations: Marc Ausman
regulator or the alternator that causes

the voltage to rise above a safe level for
the avionics and other electrical equipment. Typically the overvoltage level is
set at 16.0 volts for a 14-volt system and
32.0 volts for a 28-volt system.
Overvoltage protection is provided by
the voltage regulator (if built in), a separate overvoltage protection module, or
an electronic circuit breaker system such
as the Vertical Power system. The overvoltage condition must be detected and
resolved in less than 1/10th of a second, so
it is not something you can do manually.
If you wait longer, you risk damaging
many thousands of dollars of electronics
on the aircraft.
I highly recommend installing an
overvoltage protection system. Fortunately, many aircraft-specific alternators
include an OV protection system.
Frequent alternator field circuitbreaker trips may mean you have an
actual overvoltage condition or it may
be a loose wire. The first place to check
Alternator Capacity
As with anything concerning custom

airplanes, there is no hard-and-fast rule
that applies across the board. The same
is true for alternator ratings. A safe rule
of thumb is to plan your electrical system to use no more than 80% of the
maximum rated capacity. Some alternator manufacturers claim their alternators exceed the maximum rated load; if
you want to be sure, contact the manufacturer directly.
The best way to verify that your alternator can support the aircrafts electrical
load is to perform a real-world test in
flight. Once the plane is built and flying,
turn on all the loads and watch the voltmeter on the EFIS. Leave everything on
Vertical Power OV Protection
Crowbar OV Protection
Voltage
Regulator
ALT
Voltage
Regulator
ALT
VP-X
GND
1. Vertical Power recognizes OV

condition and turns off field wire
2. Alternator output stops
BUS
and removing external field wire power

cannot stop it. For that reason I do not
recommend automotive alternators, even
though they are less expensive than alternators designed for aircraft use.
Some common backup alternators
are the accessory-drive mounted SD-20
alternator and the SD-8 PM alternator, both available from B&C Specialty
Products. Plane-Power also makes a
30-amp pad-mounted alternator. The
one you choose is driven in large part by
the size of the loads you need the backup
alternator to carry.
If you have two alternators tied to a
single bus, only one alternator should
be powered on at a time. Therefore, we
refer to one alternator as the primary
and the other as the secondary. If both
are on simultaneously, they do not
equally contribute to powering the
loads. The alternator with the voltage
regulator that is set to the highest voltage will provide all the current (sometimes called current hogging), possibly
overloading the alternator.
Todays Experimental aircraft are
powered by either 12-volt or 14-volt systems. Often you hear systems described
as either 12 volts or 14 volts. Why the
difference? The reason is because the
battery is rated at 12 volts. When the
engine is running and the alternator is
turned on, the alternator generates 14
volts, slightly higher than the battery
voltage to keep the battery charged. So
both monikers are actually true.
is where the B-lead and the field wires

attach to the alternator. Be sure to look
at these visually (use lots of light) as well
as give them a good tug. Look for burn
marks at the connections. A loose connection can lead to surges that cause the
overvoltage protection to trip.
There are several ways to detect and
shut down an overvoltage condition.
These are described in Figure 2, and
the steps listed explain how that type
of protection works. The microprocessor in the Vertical Power system detects
the overvoltage condition and then simply turns off the field wire. The crowbar
overvoltage system shorts the field wire
to ground (visualize a crowbar shorting
across power and ground wires), causing
the circuit breaker to trip and shut off
the field power.
Field
Switch
(closed) Field
Breaker
(open)
1. Voltage regulator recognizes OV

condition and shorts field wire
2. Field circuit breaker opens and removes
power from field wire
3. Alternator output stops
Figure 2. Different methods to detect an overvoltage (OV) condition.

43
Batt
Battery
Contactor
STARTER
GND
Bus Bar
B
A
Starter
Contactor
Alternator
Figure 3. Three possible locations to install a shunt. Arrows show direction of current flow.
Low-voltage Indication
During flight, the normal bus voltage

should be around 14.2 volts. A low voltage condition is most likely due to one of
the following conditions:
The alternator or voltage regulator
has failed causing the bus voltage to
drop from 14.2v to 12.4 volts or less
(double for a 28v system).
The electrical loads on the aircraft
exceed the capacity of the alternator,
which is unable to keep the battery
fully charged. The bus voltage will
slowly decline until the low voltage
alarm is triggered.
The alternator is turned off.
The alternator field circuit breaker
has tripped.

Tip: Set your low voltage alarm
on the EFIS at 13.0 volts, and
you will get a low-voltage alarm
when the alternator fails.
While it is important to identify the
low-voltage condition when it happens,
there is no sense of immediacy like
there is with an overvoltage condition.
The aircraft will continue to get power
from the battery for some period of
time (depending on the battery size and
44
the loads). Simply turn off the alternator switch, turn off non-essential loads,
and turn on the backup alternator if
installed. With modern avionics you
should be able to load shed to get the
total current draw below the backup
alternator capacity, thereby providing
you with an indefinite supply of power.
If the electrical system is designed properly, an alternator failure should not
become an emergency condition.
Alternator Current Sensing
You can optionally install a current sensing device to measure either alternator
current output or battery charge and discharge rates. The current sensing device
is typically a shunt or hall effect sensor
and is provided with the engine monitor kit. For simplicity, well use the word
shunt to refer to both types of sensors.
A shunt can be installed anywhere
you want to measure current. Typically
a shunt is installed on the B-lead (the big
wire) coming from the alternator to the
main bus. In older aircraft, a shunt was
installed to measure battery discharge
and charge rates. The Vertical Power
system has a shunt on each power output and can measure the current on each
circuit individually.
Shunt A in Figure 3 is installed on
the B-lead and measures the alternator
output in amps. Shunt B is mounted on
VOLTS
for at least 10 minutes (theres nothing

special about that number) and watch
to see if the voltage remains constant. If
the voltage declines, then the alternator
cannot support the loads. If the voltage
remains constant, then the alternator is
sized correctly.
Another point to note is that the
alternator is not always putting out
its maximum rated capacity. It is only
putting out enough current to power
the loads (avionics, lights, etc.) and to
charge the battery as needed. The voltage regulator is constantly adjusting the
output in real time as you turn on and
off the lights, motors, and other devices.
the feed to the main bus, and measures

current draw of all the devices on the bus.
If a Vertical Power system is installed,
shunt B is not needed. Shunt C
measures the battery charge and discharge rates, in amps. Shunt A is the
most common use and provides the
most useful information.
A shunt is not required to tell if the
alternator is working. You can tell if the
alternator is working correctly by simply
looking at voltage. If you see 14 (or so)
volts with the engine running and the
alternator on, then it is working. If you
see 12 (or so) volts with the engine running, the alternator is not working or
not turned on, or the total electrical load
is higher than the alternator output.
Detecting Failure Conditions
Many electrical problems and failures

can be detected just by looking at the
voltmeter (typically displayed on the
EFIS) and knowing how to interpret
the number.
When the aircraft is off, the battery
voltage is around 12.4 volts. With the
engine running and alternator on and
working correctly, it goes up to 14.2
volts. After engine start, turn on the
alternator and watch as the voltage rises
from 12 to about 14 volts to verify the
alternator is working correctly. When
the alternator fails, the voltage will drop
back down to 12, triggering the lowvoltage alarm. Therefore, the low-voltage
alarm is often synonymous with a failed
alternator. If the field circuit breaker
trips frequently, it is often an overvoltage condition. The Vertical Power system specifically calls out an overvoltage
condition, whereas traditional breakers
trip without explanation.
16.0 volts
(over-voltage)
Bus voltage should not exceed this level or

damage to electronics may occur.
14.2 volts
(alternator ON)
This is the normal operating voltage when the

alternator is turned on and engine is running.
13.0 volts
(low-voltage alarm)
12.4 volts
(battery only)
falls from 14.2 volts to around 12 volts, causing

the low-voltage alarm to sound.
Normal voltage for the battery while not being
charged.
Figure 4. Important voltage levels to know. Double the values for 28-volt systems.
A One-Finger
Hand
When to Turn on The Alternator
A question that often comes up is

whether to turn on the alternator
before engine start. Many pilots have a
preference based on what theyre used
to over the years. From an electrical
perspective, having the alternator on
during engine start does not do anything other than draw current. When
the engine is off and the alternator is
on, the voltage regulator sees low bus
voltage (about 12.4 volts) and tries to
raise the bus voltage to 14.2 volts by
increasing the output to the field wire
to its maximum capacity. Because the
engine is not turning, nothing happens and the voltage stays at 12.4 volts
while the voltage regulator is at maximum output, drawing about 4 amps of
current. This also makes the alternator
harder to turn and adds drag while the
engine is starting (how much drag is
added, I dont know).
Based on this assessment, I dont recommend turning on the alternator until
after engine start. Get the engine running, then turn on the alternator, then
turn on the avionics.
Read the Book
Hopefully this article has helped you

understand alternator operation and how
to read voltage levels to help with troubleshooting. It is an excerpt from my new
book entitled Aircraft Wiring Guide. For
more information, or to order a copy, visit
www.aircraftwiringguide.com. J
Marc Ausman
Marc currently flies an RV-7

that he finished building in
2006. He was founder and
president of Vertical Power
and has served as an EAA
Director since 2011. He flew
with the U.S. Navy as a
Naval Flight Officer on
board the P3-C Orion.
He lives in
California
with his wife
and three
children.
SHOP
TIPS
By William Rynone, Ph.D., P.E.
Sooner or later youll need to install a

hex nut in a place where it is impossible to
hold the nut with two fingers. Sometimes
the nut can be positioned at the end of the
bolt with tweezers. Another approach is to
use rubber cement to temporarily attach
the nut to your index or middle finger. You
can also try putting a piece of masking tape
over one side of a box-end wrench to hold
the nut in place. Or you can use an openend wrench with a piece of masking tape
wedged between the nut and wrench jaws
to position the nut at the bolts end.
In all my visits to stores that sell tools, I
have never seen a tool that was dedicated
to holding a nut remote from the mechanic;
thus the following gizmo was developed.
It consists of a hollow brass tube through
which a 15-inch nylon tie-wrap is threaded
into and out of the tube. At the far end, a loop
is formed, and by pulling on the near end of
the nylon tie-wrap, the nut is held in place.
A round or square brass tube will function
as the tool handle. A square tube is preferable since the tie-wrap is less likely to twist.
The brass tube outside dimensions are
x x 5 inches. A rubber grommet with a
-inch hole is stretched over the tube to
hold the loose end of the tie-wrap in place
when the tool is used.
For nuts in a more remote location, the
square-tubing handle may be cut to 6
inches, and an 18-inch nylon tie-wrap may
be used.
A 15-inch nylon tie-wrap threaded

through a 5-inch long brass tube
makes it easy to install hex nuts in
remote places. (Photo: Dena Selby)
Required Parts
Square Tube: 0.25-inch O.D. x 0.032-inch thick x 12 inches long, OnLineMetals.com; or K&S
Precision Metals #8155 sold by McMaster-Carr, #8859K46.
Rubber Grommet: 0.25-inch I.D. x 0.5-inch O.D., Anchor Marine Grade Products, #760375,
sold by West Marine.
Nylon Tie-Wrap: 0.05-inch thick x 0.184-inch wide x 15 inches long, sold in packages of 100,
Harbor Freight Tools. J

45
Risky Business
Checklistsgiving the
madness method.
One-thousand unrelated miracles
occurring in the proper order. That was
how my squadron life support officer
described how the F-4 Phantoms Martin-Baker ejection seat functioned. In
another briefing on another subject, our
squadron weapons officer used the same
phrase to explain how an AIM-7 Sparrow
semi-active radar-guided missile worked.
These lessons took root early in my
career as an Air Force F-4 weapons
systems officer, and they made perfect sense to me. The seats and the
missiles proper function required specific mechanisms to correctly operate
in the correct order. If anything happens out of sequence, then the entire
sequence may fail.
Hey, its no different when it comes
to building and flying an airplane. We
build certain components before others. We build up and install the engine
before the baffles. We usually build the
fuselage before that, so that well have
a place to hang the engine. Its usually
smarter and easier to install the wing
lights and wiring before mounting the
wings to the fuselage.
Most all aircraft kits come with a construction checklist in the form of a builders manual. My RV-7A build manual was
a real lifesaver. I learned early that I could
successfully complete a reasonably wellcrafted aircraft part or assembly if I stuck
closely to the steps outlined in the manual. As I completed each step, I checked
it off in pencil with a completion date,
which made it possible to find the dated
photo entry in my KitLog Pro builders log.
We use checklists in the airplane to

make sure we cover all required actions,
and in the proper order. For example,
for fuel-injected engines, our checklists have us engage a fuel boost pump
before takeoff to lessen the chance of
fuel pressure loss. We write fuel/air mixture adjustments into our climb, cruise,
and descent checklists.
Now, to be clear, the FAA doesnt
actually require operators to build and
use an aircraft checklist. However, I contend that a well-operated aircraft should
have a well-built and executable ops
checklist. Furthermore, a conscientious
pilot runs the checklist every time, either
directly from the printed page, or from
memory (but then verified by referencing the checklist). A pilot running the
checklist builds his passengers confidence and comfort. And a pilot comfortable and versed in running a checklist
The Checklists Origin

In case you havent heard the story,
checklists were invented after a 1935
bomber crash at Wright Airfield (now
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). Boeing
launched their sleek four-engined Model
299 bomber as their entry to an Army Air
Corps bomber competition. At the time
(only 33 years after the Wright brothers flew their E/A-B project), the Model
299 was the most complex aircraft ever
built. Yet pilots had to know their jobs by
heart, and checklists didnt exist.
On that autumn day, the pilots forgot to release a new locking system
on the empennage flight controls. The
bomber roared steeply into an uncommanded climb after takeoff, then
An example page from the authors RV-7A checklist.
Sidney Mayeux
46
is more likely to successfully and accurately run an emergency checklist when

the going gets rough.
Sid Scroll Mayeux has over 25 years of experience in aviation training, safety, and
risk management in the military, civilian, airline, and general aviation sectors. He
currently trains Boeing 777 pilots, and he is building a Vans RV-7A.
Checklists were invented after the Boeing Model 299 bomber crashed in 1935. The pilots forgot to release a new locking system on the
empennage flight controls. The design eventually went into production as the B-17 Flying Fortress.
stalled and crashed, killing two of the

five crewmembers. This nearly doomed
Boeings chances at winning a contract
for its bomber.
After the event, Boeing engineers recognized the greater array of tasks required
to pilot this machine. By organizing these
tasks into a checklist format, they transformed aviation and aerospace safety in
ways that echo through all levels, from
Cessnas to space shuttles. They revived
the 299s potential, saving the airplanes
place in history as the B-17 Flying Fortress.
Boeings checklist heritage continues
to this day. Take for example the Boeing
777 airliner. In my job as a Triple-Seven
Ground School Instructor at American
Airlines, I teach upgrading captains and
first officers how to run the big airliners

electronic checklist (the ECL). The crew
can call the ECL up on any of the three
multi-function displays, and it will run
in orderfrom Before Engine Start to
Parking. The ECL features two types of
checklist items: open loop and closed
loop. For closed loop items, the airplane
senses the applicable switch position.
If its in the right position, the checklist
greens up the item, and the pilot need
not call it out. Open loop items require
pilot action, and then he clicks off the
item with his cursor and moves on.
For such a modern, automated piece
of machinery, the 777 is surprisingly
checklist-oriented. Pilots soon realize
that the checklists exist to make sure
all actions and systems are properly

configured and are working properly.
Pilots have great trust in this fine Boeing
machine, but the checklist helps them
verify that all unrelated miracles are
indeed occurring in the proper order.
Memory Items, Boldfaces,

and CAPs
Have you written critical action procedures into your POHs emergency section? Some emergencies (like fires and
The authors construction manual. Note the completion dates, which served as a
backup record for his formal builders log.
Photos: Sid Mayeux and National Museum of the USAF
47
engine power loss) require immediate

pilot action to remedy the situation,
keep the situation from getting worse,
or stop the problem before it becomes
unstoppable. For decades, aircraft builders and operators included special
checklist steps and recommended pilots
commit them to memory. The Air Force
prints them in bold print and calls them
boldface items or CAPsCritical Action
Procedures. American Airlines draws a
red hashed box around them and calls
them simply memory items.
In all cases, pilots have to know them
by memory to get to fly the airplane.
Airline and military pilots are tested
on the steps; 100% is the minimum
passing grade. When I flew the mighty
Phantom, I had to complete a handwritten boldface exam on the first flying day of every month. If I incorrectly
wrote any item of the memory test, not
only would I not get to fly, but I also
would have to explain the test failure
to the squadron commander. To this
day, I remember all of the F-4 boldfaces, such as the boldface for a takeoff
abort (ThrottlesIdle, ChuteDeploy,
HookDown). I never failed a boldface
exam. Never. Ever.
The boldface was gospel: You never
deviated from it. But what if you face
a situation when, at that moment,
a checklist step actually creates a

greater or new hazard? This is that
part of the movie when the pilot must
earn his flight pay. If the emergency
or multiple compound emergencies
makes it necessary to deviate from the
checklist, the pilot should exercise
good judgment and deviate. Dont
make the situation worse.
Rolling Your Own Checklist

Although not required for E/A-B aircraft,
its a very good idea to build a POH for
your airplane. That POH can serve as
the basis for your flight checklist (if you
build one). Theres nothing wrong with
printing the checklist on good oldfashioned paper, perhaps protecting it
by laminating it at Kinkos or sticking it
inside plastic sleeves.
Today, however, we live in a more
modern flying environment. Kitbuilders have dozens of app options to load
their checklists into their iPads, tablets,
or other electronic media. One simple
solution involves building your checklist in Microsoft Word, saving it as a PDF
file, then loading the PDF into iBook.
The pilot can then open the checklist
in iBook, and even execute the fingerspread maneuver to enlarge the text.
Typing aviation checklist into an app
store search yielded 30 results, many
The space shuttles Orbit Pocket Checklist (nearly two inches thick) provided immediate
actions for malfunctions and emergencies.
48
The Boeing 777-200ER electronic checklist, displayed on the lower center multifunction display. Items with grey boxes
are open loop items, so the pilot must
check it off. Other items are closed loop;
the system senses the proper switch or
handle position, and checks off the item.
Green items are complete.
of which are customizable to our E/A-B

needs. For instance, FltPlanGo (from
Flight Plan LLC) has a great checklist feature, is fully customizable, and even has
a voice feature that can read the checklist items to you over your intercom.
All safety aside, for me, heres the best
part: Of all the positive aspects a checklist
brings to my airplane, I look forward to
the crew concept most of all. When I finish the Phase I fly-off, my bride Kelli will
become my copilot. You can bet Ill put
her to work, making her a part of the crew.
Oh, Ill have my own checklist handy, and
Ill implement boldface memory items
into the emergency section. But I want
her to run the normal ops checklists; shell
call the items, and Ill run the switches. I
think shell appreciate the chance to be
more than just the passenger.
After all, if theres anyone that insists
I accomplish things in the proper order,
its my Kelli Girl. J
Note: All references to actual crashes are

based on official final publically-released
NTSB and Air Force Accident Investigation Board reports of the accidents, and are
intended to draw applicable aviation safety
lessons from details, analysis, and conclusions contained in those reports. It is not
our intent to deliberate the causes, judge or
reach any definitive conclusions about the
ability or capacity of any person, living or
dead, or any aircraft or accessory.
CHECKPOINTS
As I write this column, I am sitting in
the hospitality tent and watching the
airshow at homebuilt camping during
Sun n Fun 2015. I know by the time you
get to read this Oshkosh will probably
have come and gone. But Ive had so
much fun the last few days, I feel compelled to write about it while it is fresh
in my mind.
Ive been coming to SNF since I was
the first-ever RV-4 here in 1984. Its certainly a much larger event today and
much more youth-friendly. During my
first visit, I was told that I was too young
(27) to have built a metal airplane and
that I should get one of the older guys to
show it! Over the years it had been our
usual practice to park on the flight line
with all of the other show planes. I really
love to meet other builders and aspiring
builders, and we have met some of our
best friends on the flight lines at OSH
and SNF. For the last couple of years,
we have camped in the HBC area and
truthfully it has been the most enjoyable
experience we have had at SNF. The
camaraderie and family atmosphere
created by Mary Jane Smith-David and
her crack crew of volunteers is topnotch. And its pretty clear we arent the
only ones who have figured this out. As
of Thursday the number of airplanes in
HBC outnumbered the airplanes on the
show line. Pretty cool, huh?
There are so many new and interesting
things to see at SNF that it is very hard to
take it all in given our short three days
here. Weather in the Southeast overall
has been horrible this year, and it looks
Sun n Fun musings.
Vic Syracuse
Photo: Vic Syracuse
like we need to get back to Atlanta on

Friday before another round of weather
comes through.
Meet Mark Giron

The highlight of SNF this year for me
was lunch on Thursday with an FAA
representative. Yes, I bet some of you
are saying, Huh? However, this was
no ordinary FAA employee. It was
Mark Giron, who is the author of the
Additional Pilot Program (APP). Marks
responsibilities also include other areas
that directly affect various areas of
Experimental aviation such as our operating limitations. It was a most enjoyable lunch, and I came away feeling
really good knowing people like Mark

are working at FAA headquarters.
For starters, Mark and his friend
flew Marks RV-6 to the show! No desk
jockey hereMark has all of the ratings
through ATP. During our longbut too
shortlunch conversation I was able
to gain a lot of insight into the thinking and liaising that went into creating the APP. Having utilized it a couple
of times already, I was able to provide
some feedback. This is where I thought
Mark shined. He came across as a very
bright individual, thoughtful and intuitive at the same time. And I gained some
insight into the workings and challenges
Mark faces when dealing with multiple
What a way to wake uphot coffee for those who need it and the sounds and sights of a
morning balloon launch in the mist.
Vic is a Commercial Pilot and CFII with ASMEL/ASES ratings, an A&P, DAR, and EAA Technical
Advisor and Flight Counselor. Passionately involved in aviation for over 36 years, he has built
10 award-winning aircraft and has logged over 7800 hours in 69 different kinds of aircraft. Vic
had a career in technology as a senior-level executive and volunteers as a Young Eagle pilot and
Angel Flight pilot. He also has his own sport aviation business called Base Leg Aviation.

49
interested parties, both government and

industry. He truly is an avid aviator who
is also responsible for some of the rule
making, and I think we are very lucky to
have him in our midst.
You may have read my article, APP
in the Real World [July 2015], regarding
Bob Beautys first flight in his RV-10, coincidentally at this very same airport, and
my participation using the APP program.
Between having acted as a Qualified
Pilot a few more times, and combined
with my experience on the maintenance
side of Experimental aviation, I have a
few observations I thought I would start
sharing in this months column and then
build on them in future columns. I certainly welcome your feedback!
Time to Change Phase I

Requirements
I think our operating requirements during Phase I requiring 25 or 40 hours
solely dependent on whether you have
a certificated propeller/engine combination are way outdated. As a DAR, as well
as an experienced Phase I pilot, it seems
silly to issue the same Phase I limitations
on a Day-VFR Kitfox or an Experimental/
Mary Jane Smith-David really creates a

family atmosphere at HBC during SNF.
Theres even a kiddie pool, hot coffee in
the morning, and hot meals every night,
along with cold beverages all day long.
50
Amateur-Built RV-12 as a Lancair IV-P

with all of the bells and whistles.
In the case of an ELSA RV-12, Vans Aircraft actually provides flight test cards
that must be completed prior to completing Phase I. To thoroughly complete
them takes approximately five hours.
Completing those test cards ensures the
builder has really verified that the aircraft
has no unusual characteristics and is performing in a way that the kit manufacturer intended. Yet another builder who
presents an RV-12 that was perhaps modified by using a different EFIS is required
to perform a 40-hour Phase I. And the
E/A-B RV-12 is not even required to have
a POH, just the usual documentation of a
few airspeeds and the CG and weight at
which they were obtained.
At the other end of the spectrum, I
can personally attest that on a technically advanced aircraft (TAA), it is
sometimes challenging in 40 hours to
accomplish enough testing to ensure
that all systems are really working in a
safe and reproducible manner. Many of
the avionics and systems in the newer
Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft today
rival, and sometimes exceed, the capabilities of airline and corporate aircraft
that are flown by a crew of two. The
technology can be overwhelming at
times, and downright confusing.
Just look at some recent industry accidents such as Air France Flight 447. If
there is ever a case for allowing, and even
requiring, a crew of two in the aircraft, it
is while testing the systems once the aircraft has been proven solid. Too much
of the systems testing ends up being
heads down in the cockpit, and I think it
is a recipe for disaster. Right now we are
just required to document the various
V-speeds and any aerobatic maneuvers if
the aircraft is capable of aerobatics. Why
shouldnt we also be required to document various coupled approaches during the Phase I testing if the aircraft has
that capability?
More Condition Inspections

Theres another area I think we should
start looking at as well, and I know this
will probably irk some of you, but understand that I am coming at it purely from
a safety standpoint: I think waiting a
whole year for the first condition inspection is way too long.
I know many of you will argue with
me saying, Vic, I take the cowling down
every time I change the oil. To you, I say,
Wonderful. I do the same, and you are
not the reason for my opinion.
Experimental aviation is not the
same as it was a generation or two ago.
Many, many owners are not the builder
The evening meals at HBC are wonderful. Friday night featured steak and salmon, which is
brought in fresh that day.
of their aircraft. In the last few years, I

have performed condition inspections
on many Experimental aircraft that
never even had Phase I signed off, have
no operating limitations in the aircraft,
and in some cases have not even had
a condition inspection! One example
had been flying for seven years with
no Phase I sign-off and had passed
through multiple owners! It wasnt
necessarily un-airworthy, but it wasnt
legal either.
A couple of aircraft were sold right
after they had been built, with the new
owners having no experience with
Experimental aircraft. They had no
clue as to the requirements relative to
Experimental aircraft, nor would they.
When initially learning to fly, there is no
requirement to learn about Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft.
Our Experimental aircraft are typically
built much lighter than their certified
brethren. It doesnt mean they are any
less stout, but we do have to agree that
every one of them is custombuilt. There
are differences, and in a lot of cases there
is not a whole lot of fleet information
readily available. In my opinion, to go a
whole year during the first year without a
condition inspection is too long.
Im not advocating that this condition
inspection has to be performed by an
A&P because that would add an extra
financial burden to the owner. But perhaps we could use the same example as
the flight test cards and require a checklist to be performed and documented
in the logbook. And I certainly advocate
that any Experimental/Amateur-Built
aircraft that is sold during the first year
should be required to have a condition
inspection. It has been my experience
that most of the wear areas will show up
during the first 100 hours of operation,
and I always tell everyone to not trust
the airplane until you have completed
those 100 hours.
So there you have ita couple of my
opinions that I bet might create some
controversy, which is not my intent at all.
To me it is all about the fun factor, and
I think it is much easier to keep the fun
factor alive if we are also keeping the
safety element front and center. J
Give Us Your
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There is nothing like a little contest

to help folks share more and better
ideas about Experimental aviation.
Each month, were asking for pictures
on a specific topic like:
Best example of aircraft wiring
Best VFR panel
Best tool storage idea
Best homebuilt on a beach
Best small workshop
Best workshop extraction (getting
an airplane out of a basement or loft)
Theres a new topic every month,
so enter the contest often.
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online, and for promotional purposes.
51
The Dawn Patrol
You know youre gonna

get some, sooner or later.
Oh no! Sharon moaned, Look at my

poor aileron!
I looked in the direction she was
pointing and my heart sank. There was a
wrinkle in the fabric on the trailing edge
of her Kolb Twinstars right aileron. It
was a big wrinkle. You could see the very
obvious bend in the thin-wall 5/16-inch
6061-T6 aluminum tubing that makes
up the trailing edge of the aileron. We
knew from past experience that when
you see a wrinkle in a fabric-covered
airplane that hadnt been there before,
you were in deep doo-doo. It meant
that you had some structural damage
hiding somewhere under the fabric.
Actually, in retrospect, thats a pretty
good feature to have in a fabric-covered
plane. A wrinkle tells you something just
isnt right. We just didnt want to see a
wrinkle on this particular fabric-covered
plane. Not today!
We knew it was going to happen
sooner or later, and since wed built the
Kolb in 1988, we were way past due.
Even the great flood of 93, that trashed
every plane on the field, hadnt done
any structural damage to the Kolb. It
had just filled the Kolb up with mud.
Wed stripped all the fabric off, flushed
out the mud-filled tubes, coated each
tubes innards with LPS Hardcoat, recovered it, repainted it, and drove on. It
took all winter to get finished.
In this case we were pretty sure how
this damage happened. We were right in
the middle of one of our big fried green
tomatoes fry-in picnics (as opposed to a
fly-in) at Liberty Landing International
Dick Starks
52
Airport. The field was crowded with

planes that had flown in for the picnic,
and we had cars parked all along the
road. We had three different deep fryers
going like gangbusters trying to keep
everyone fed.
For once Sharon was not one of the
cooks. This was a rarity. She was actually flying! Shed been taking people for
rides in her Kolb. Then she jumped out
of the Kolb and punished the sky in her
Airdrome Aeroplanes Morane-Saulnier L
Parasol replica. She was having a ball.
I was flying my Graham Lee Nieuport
11 replica and doing the same. It was
just swell!
This unexpected little bump in the
road brought all that to a screeching halt.
The day suddenly turned dark brown
with a vengeance.
We knew from when wed covered

the Kolb after the flood how fragile the
thin-walled, trailing-edge tubing on the
aileron was. You had to be really careful
when shrinking the fabric that you didnt
turn the aileron into a pretzel by shrinking the fabric too much. And this was
lightweight 1.8-ounce Dacron! Even with
this super-lightweight cloth, too much
heat on the Dacron will warp the frame of
whatever youre working on. What probably caused this damage was that someone bumped into it and didnt even know
theyd done any damage. It didnt take a
lot to bend that fragile, lightweight tube.
So, on the spur of the moment, we
decided to fix the damage on the spot.
We had fabric, pinking shears, Stewart
Systems EkoBond cement and brushes.
And most important, wed found some
Heres where the broken tube came from. The author is holding the replacement trailing
edge in his right hand.
has written two books about the joy of flying; You Want To Build And Fly A What? and
Fokkers At Six Oclock!! He was the recipient of Flyings 2001 Bax Seat Award for perpetuating the Gordon Baxter tradition of communicating the excitement and romance of flight.
Dick and his wife, Sharon, both fly WW-I replica aircraft.
The splice has been inserted in the trailing edge on the left side
of the break and riveted in place.
extra 5/16-inch 6061-T6 tubing left over

from some forgotten project up on the
mezzanine in the hangar. I didnt think
wed need the tubing because it looked
like wed be able to straighten the bent
trailing edge after wed cut the fabric
away from it.
We knew we couldnt straighten it
with the fabric on it. That was a nonissue. Wed tried that before on some
other damaged tube-and-fabric aircraft
parts. You were doomed to even think it
might work.
You might be wondering why we
chose to do a slam-bam-thank-youmaam shade-tree-on-the-field type
repair instead of taking the wing off,
removing the aileron and doing the repair
right according to the FAAs AC 43.131BAcceptable Methods, Techniques, and
PracticesAircraft Inspection and Repair.
Well, Ill tell youwe were planning on
recovering her in the coming winter, so
for right now, a shade-tree type repair was
just what the doctor ordered. After all, this
was not a critical structural problem that
would compromise flight safety.
So, we got all our tools and ingredients
together, went down to the end of the
row of hangars to the Kolbs hangar, and
got ready to work. Stand back and duck
sports fansWe were going into Baslee
Mode! Yessirreebob, thats what we call it
when you decide to get r done! No blue
sky moments. No frosty Diet Dr. Thunder breaks. No sitting. No hangar talking.
No horseplay. It was time to kick some
serious covering butt and take names.
Photos: Dick Starks
Using the awl to move the splice into the replacement trailing
edge tube. This was the hardest part of the whole repair job.
When were in Baslee Mode, we pretend were in Bullwhip Baslees House

of Pain working on a project, and hes
behind us watching what were doing.
Trust me, if youve ever been to The
House of Pain, you know what Im talking
about. If Robert catches you standing still
not doing something, he will find something for you to doRight now!
Its a great incentive to start working
on something. Or pretend youre working on something. Most of the time that
wont work. He can tell when youre stalling. Hes got the piercing gimlet eyes
of a starving eagle. Remember, he built
four full-scale Nieuport 17s for the movie
Flyboys in only 52 days. Thats from start
to first flights! Baslee Mode is his normal
operating speed.
When were in Baslee Mode, were usually not really concerned with cosmetic
appearances. We just want to get it done
and get it in the air.
The Kolbs 20-year-old paint job was
looking pretty seedy by now anyway.
The fabric was still in excellent shape,
but the paint jobwelluhhhScrofulous would be the best word to describe
it. There were places where it was
peeling, and some surface tapes had
edges coming up. So, we just wanted
to fix the wound and get her back in
the air right nowthat dayP.D.Q! We
were in Baslee Modelet the carnage
commence!
The first thing I did was walk 500 feet
all the way back to the big hangar to get
some razor blades Id forgotten to bring
The aileron trailing edge repair is ready for cover.

53
The fabric is pressed into the fresh EkoBond cement. It tacks up

quickly, so theres no real wait time between jobs.
with me. I needed them to cut the fabric

away from the bent tube. Baslee Mode
took a hit there. On the long walk back
to the Kolb with the razor blades, I was
trying to think of what else Id forgotten
to bring.
Trimming very carefully, I cut the fabric away from the tube between the ribs.
Then I gently pulled at the middle of the
bent section to straighten it out and get
ready to do the fabric patch.
SNAP!
Id just barely started to pull when it
broke at both ends of the bend and just
fell out in my hand. Baslee Mode came to
a screeching halt.
OH *&@#$*()!!! I screamed.
Was that a bad thing? Sharon
cheerfully chirped as she peered over
my shoulder.
Dear, I said. This was a very bad
thing. It was the baddest of all bad things.
I need a blue sky moment here. I sat
there on a milk carton and studied the
shard of tubing I was holding in my hand.
It had broken right at both of the holes
where a rivet was used to rivet the aileron
rib to the trailing edge.
Sharon went back to reading one of
her steamy bodice-ripping novels.
I was at a loss as to what to do. Just
about then, Dick Lemons came sauntering by. Hed just taxied up in his doublewide Quicksilver MX Sprint to fill it up
with gas and take a break. Hed been giving non-stop rides to kids and their parents all morning long.
54
Starting to duplicate the same process on the top of the aileron.

You can see our fake German observation balloon in the background. Its been flamed hundreds of times and always reappears.
Dick looked at me sitting there holding the piece of tubing and studying the
forbidding gap in the aileron. He could
see I needed to fabricate a splice to go
in-between two tubes that were fixed
in place. Think about that for a minute.
An oversleeve splice would work but
it would show up like a diamond in a
pile of poop. It would be really easy to
do, too, but would be so noticeable I
wouldnt even consider it. After all, this
is my Sweeties plane. She expects and
demands only the best. Ask me how I
know this!
I didnt have a clue as to how to fix it.
Dick looked at it for a while and then
spoke up. Youre going to have to cut
more fabric away. Remove the rest of
the trailing edge between those two ribs
where the break is. Then cut two 3-inch
long pieces of that 5/16-inch tubing. Split
them lengthwise. Then cut enough out
lengthwise, so that when you press the
split edges together you can slide them
into the new piece of trailing edge youre
going to make. Splice them together and
youll be ready to cover.
I sat there looking at him like he was
speaking in tongues.
Dick looked at me and sighed. He
knew I was in deep doo-doo. Ill show
you what I was talking about. I need to
take a break anyway. Grab that piece of
5/16-inch tubing and follow me.
Salvation was at hand. Arent buddies
great to have around? Particularly if they
know what theyre doing!
We went back to the big hangar

where our workbenches are. Dick got
me to cut off two 3-inch pieces of
tubing. Then I carefully split them on
one side lengthwise. We got out our
smartphone calculators and did some
ciphering on how much of the split
needed to be cut out so that when we
pressed them together, the diameter
of the new modified piece of tubing
would slide into the existing trailing
edge tube and the new replacement
piece. It took a few tries, and we tried
out some new words, but we finally got
them to slide together.
Thundering back to the Kolb, we
got ready to make a splice. We reamed
out the existing ends of the trailing
edges so the splice would slide into
them easily. Next we did the easy one.
We pushed one of the splices into the
existing trailing edge tube halfway. It
was riveted in place. Then the new trailing edge tube was slid over the splice
and riveted in place.
Now it was time for the problem child.
There was one more thing we needed
to do, and wed be ready to do the deed.
In the old end of the trailing edge, I
drilled a 1/8-inch hole through one side of
the tube. Then I reamed it out again, so
the splice would still slide into it easily. I
marked the splice at its midpoint with a
black Sharpie marker.
It was crunch time. I slid the splice all
the way into the existing trailing edge till
it was flush with the end.
Final shrink on the top of the repair.
Then, lining up the new trailing edge

section with the old end, I worked with
a sharp awl to move the splice halfway
into the end of the new trailing edge.
We did this until the black mark on the
splice could be seen at the joint between
the old trailing edge and the new piece.
This took all six hands from me, Dick,
and Sweetie trying to hold everything
in place. More new words were tried out.
Just about then, to muddy the waters,
Big Bad Bob Loyd came wandering up
from his Avid Flyer to offer unneeded
commentary and totally useless advice
while all this was going on. He really
added to the moment.
White paint is used first to give a good base for the colors that
will be going on top. The white base makes for a much more
vibrant color top coat.
When everything was in place, the

entire assembly was riveted. The ribs
were reattached to the trailing edge, and
she was ready to cover.
All this feverish activity had taken
about an hour and thirty minutes. The
picnic was still going on strong, so Dick
went back to flying his doublewide.
Sweetie and I went back into Baslee
Mode. While I was applying Stewart Systems EkoBond cement to the
aileron, Sweetie was cutting out the
piece of fabric we were going to use
for the repair. She made sure we had
a lot of overlap. We needed to have
enough area for the patch to grab,
Applying the yellow Glidden Evermore Gloss Exterior Latex.
so it wouldnt creep when we shrunk

the fabric. When the cement got tacky
after about five minutes, we carefully
laid the fabric in place.
Then we brushed EkoBond through
the rest of the fabric till all the weave was
filled and the EkoBond had penetrated
all the way through to the existing cloth
underneath the patch.
Next we folded the fabric over the
trailing edge and did the same thing to
the other side of the aileron.
The last thing we needed to do was
carefully wipe the excess EkoBond
cement off both sides with a damp
paper towel. This was a step I normally
Finishing up the red, ready to start on the blue. The plane was
back in the air in two days.

55
forgot, but Sweetie was right on top of it

this time. It makes for a much smoother
finish, a better cement bond, and some
weight savings.
We were forced out of Baslee Mode.
The cement would need to dry overnight
before the patch could be shrunk, filled
and painted.
The next morning we were out there
bright and early, ready to kick butt and
take names. While Sweetie was ironing
down the edges of the patch, getting it
ready to shrink with our close-quarter
covering iron, I was hunting up our little
fabric iron we use for larger surfaces.
After the edges were sealed down,
Sharon started the first shrink at 175
degrees. She did this to both sides of the
aileron. Then she cranked up the iron to
250 degrees and hit both sides again.
And thats where we stopped. You
can shrink at a lot higher temperature
before the fabric starts to crystallize (a
very bad thing to have happen), but we
stopped here because we didnt want to
warp the aileron.
Airdrome Aeroplanes
www.airdromeaeroplanes.com/
Now it was time to seal the fabric. We

use EkoBond for this, too. It does a great
job. Did I mention its odor free and
water cleanup? Sharon filled the weave
on both sides of the aileron and it was,
once again, time to let everything cure
before painting.
We went flying for the rest of the
morning. Patrolling the trenches around
the field and hunting German observation balloons is a fine way to spend the
morning until the air gets bumpy. Then,
its time to head for home.
The next day dawned bright and sunny.
It was going to be a perfect day to paint.
We had our Glidden Evermore Exterior
Latex ready. We started off with a base coat
of white. It dried in about thirty minutes.
Then Sharon started on the colors. The yellow went first and then the blue and red.
In about two hours, the Tweetie Bird was
ready to fly again. All in all, it hadnt been
that bad. Wed learned a lot, and thats what
flying Experimental aircraft is all about.
The Adventure was ready to continue
once again! J
Airparts Inc. of Kansas City

www.airpartsinc.com/
B and B Aircraft Supply of
Gardner, Kansas
www.bandbaircraftsupplies.com/
Close Quarter Covering Iron
www.coverite.com/accys/
covr2700.html
FAA AC 43.13-1B and 43.13-2B):
www.amazon.com/
Aircraft-Inspection-RepairAlterations-Acceptable/
dp/1619540215
Graham Lee Nieuport plans
http://nieuports.com/
The Kansas City Dawn Patrol
www.kcdawnpatrol.org/index.php
LPS Hardcoat Corrosion
Inhibitor
www.lpslabs.com/index
Quicksilver Aircraft
www.quicksilveraircraft.com/
Stewart Systems Covering
Supplies
www.stewartsystems.aero
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56
Home Shop Machinist

My best friends in the shop are Mike
and Cal. Mike is a Mitutoyo digital
micrometer and Cal is an eight-inch
Fowler X-Series digital caliper. Virtually
every job starts and ends with one or
both of those measuring tools.
The modern digital caliper is the latest
in a long line of sliding jaw (one fixed and
one moveable) rulers, dating back at least
2000 years. The big breakthrough came
when a renaissance-era mathematician
name Pierre Vernier invented a system
that coupled a primary scale of graduations with a secondary Vernier scale of
graduations. The secondary scale added
the precision of two additional decimals
to the primary reading. Soon after, the
system was adapted to screw-calipers
and the micrometer was born.
You can still buy direct-reading vernier calipers and micrometers, but they
have largely been displaced by models
with an electronic digital readout. Digital takes all the guesswork out of reading the tiny lines on the vernier scale.
Even for old-timers (like me) who grew
up with vernier mikes and calipers, the
Mike and Cal.
Meet Mike (bottom), a one-inch digital micrometer and Cal (top), an eight-inch digital
caliper. Note the caliper has a set of jaws for measuring outside (A), a set for measuring
inside (B), and a depth probe (C).
big display means we dont have to get

our close-up glasses to read the number. A few reasons to consider nondigital tools might be if youre working
in sub-zero weather conditions (which
will freeze the LCD screen), or if you get
a really good deal on a premium brand
tool. As far as accuracy of measurement, theres no difference. A digital
display might have four or five digits
right of the decimal, but for all practical purposes, theyre no more accurate
than a vernier scale reading to three

digits. People who do metrology for a
living will tell you, dont confuse resolution with accuracy.
Basic calipers come in sizes from as
small as four inches (meaning a measuring capacity from 0 to 4 inches) to
more than 20 inches. Six- and eightinch calipers are probably the most
typical. Standard calipers are capable of making outside, inside, and
depth measurements.
The standard caliper is a versatile tool capable of outside, inside, and depth measurements.
Bob Hadley
Photos and illustration: Bob Hadley
Bob Hadley is the R&D manager for a California-based consumer products company. He holds
a Sport Pilot certificate and a Light-Sport Repairman certificate with inspection authorization
for his Jabiru J250-SP.
57
From the top: 20-inch caliper without

the depth measuring feature, a 12-inch,
and an 8-inch standard caliper.
You might come across different

types of specialty calipers. Models with
extended or gooseneck jaws could be
for measuring odd shapes. Calipers
designed for electronics are sometimes made of non-conductive plastic
or composites. Ive never had the occasion to need a special caliper. I use my
eight-inch Fowler 99% of the time. My
12- and 20-inch calipers come in handy
from time to time. But I loan them out
to other people more often than I use
them myself.
Compared to calipers, micrometers
have limited versatility but are more
precise. Mikes are the go-to tool when
doing precision lathe work. A good
example would be when making a
force-fit (aka press-fit) part. According to Machinerys Handbook, the rule
of thumb for force-fit components is
0.0015 inch per inch of diameter (with
a tolerance of 0.001). In other words,
if you need to turn a pin to force-fit
into a 0.250 hole it should be 0.250 +
(0.00015/4) = 0.250375, which we can

round up to 0.2504. Such precision is
possible with a good micrometer, but
not with a caliper. Yes, the resolution
of the display might extend four digits. But remember, resolution is not the
same as accuracy!
The most common mike style is the
outside micrometer, and the most
common form is a C-frame with a 01
inch (025mm) range. Outside refers
to the type of measuring that it will do
based on the shape of the frame, anvil
(stationary face) and spindle (moveable face). Since the anvil and spindle
have flat faces, it is used to measure
the outside dimension of a shaft, block,
wire, etc. Some mikes have adapters
or are specifically designed to measure irregular features. These include
blade anvils for measuring grooves or
V-notches to measure screw threads.
You can also find inside micrometers.
They are generally used for production
applications and are not very common
in the home shop. In a future column

on boring holes and cylinders, Ill talk
about the different ways to measure
the inside of a bore.
Most micrometer readouts or scales
are based on 0.025 inch-per-revolution
of the handle. While great for accuracy,
it also means it takes a bunch of turns
to move the spindle back and forth
through the range (40 per inch, to be
exact). The Mitutoyo micrometer shown
in the photos has the Quickmike feature,
which moves the non-rotating spindle
0.25 per turn (on most mikes the spindle
rotates with the handle). This feature
puts the mike on a near-par with calipers
for speed and convenienceat least
for making outside measurements on
objects one inch or smaller.
When it comes to calipers and
micrometers, far more important than
the number of digits on the readout is
developing the right feel to get the
most accurate readings. Ive heard more
than a few machinists say it takes years
Using a 1-inch gauge block, practice getting the feel that produces an accurate and repeatable result. Even with the clutch feature and a
high-quality micrometer, the wrong feel can affect the reading. Granted, 0.0003 inch is hardly a problem for most jobs!
58
My 12-inch caliper is an inexpensive generic import from China. Although not quite as
smooth as the Fowler, its quite accurate and, with good habits, just as accurate. The
one-inch gauge block sells for about $30 and can also be used to verify the caliper
jaws are parallel.
to properly use a caliper or micrometer.

You can go a long way toward developing the correct feel by practicing with a
precision gauge block. Youre not only
verifying the caliper against the gauge
block, youre verifying your handling of
the tool. Every caliper will be a little different. Play with the gauge block by putting it at the tip, the middle, or the base
of the jaws, and see how much pressure
is needed for each position to render the
same reading. The same goes for the
micrometer: Get the feel for what point
of contact renders the gauge-block
value. Many micrometers come with
a clutching handle to prevent over- or
under-tightening the screw. While this
takes some of the guesswork out of how
much pressure to use, even with a clutch
feature, a fast or slow rate of closure can
affect the readout.
It is always necessary to reset the zero
on a digital caliper or micrometer prior
to taking measurements. Before you rezero, inspect the jaws or anvil surfaces
for dust or dirt. They should be spotless. Even still, you will notice very often
that when resetting zero, the previous
zero-set may have drifted slightly. This
is normal and could be due to thermal
expansion or hysteresis in the electronics, or both. Its nothing to worry about,
as long as you reset zero frequently.
Calipers are relatively inexpensive.

The eight-inch Fowler X-Series (for Xtra
value) model is $70 or less from Amazon
and other sources. Harbor Freight sells
an imported six-inch electronic digital caliper for about $15, and they are
often on sale for $10. The accuracy of
the newest low-cost imported calipers
is excellent. They are not as smooth in
terms of the sliding parts, and the battery life is usually a few months instead
of a year or more, but overall, they are a
good value. The longer the caliper, the
more the price goes up. I paid $80 on
eBay for the 20-inch caliper shown here.
New they sell for around $230. As long
as the condition is good, theres nothing wrong with buying used. Of course,
you can pay a lot more for a new waterproof, shock-proof, super-caliper with
extended battery life and wi-fi data link.
But it might be a bit more than you need
for a home shop!
Micrometers follow the same trend.
A new Mitutoyo with the Quickmike
feature is around $300. The same mike
without the Quickmike feature is around
$150. No-name or off-brand import
models, with traditional 40 turns-perinch spindle, start around $60. J
59
maintenance matters
Safety wire and cotter pins appear
in many places as you build or maintain
your airplane. It is not too hard to become
proficient with these important items,
but as with most things, there are better
and worse ways to go about employing
them. This overview of the subject, along
with AC 43.13-1B, should get you well
on your way to being a proficient safety
wirer. By the way, AC 43.13-1B is that
book put out by the FAA that contains
what they consider to be acceptable
methods of repairing and maintaining
aircraft. This book can be found online or
in paper form from aviation vendors such
as Aircraft Spruce. Everyone who builds
or maintains an airplane should have this
Propellers need to be safety wired. Use the

size called out in your propeller manual,
or .041 inch if nothing is specified. Due to
tight access, it may be necessary to loosen
and re-torque some bolts to get safety wire
into the proper position.
Dave Prizio
60
Safety wire and

cotter pins.
book for reference. Chapter 7, Section 7

has a good description of safety wiring
including many helpful diagrams.
Safety Wire
Safety wire comes in a number of types
stainless steel, Monel, brass, copper and
aluminumand in different diameters
.020-inches, .032-inches, and .041-inches.
But by far the most common is .032 stainless steel, with .041 stainless steel running a rather distant second. That said,
do not assume that every safety wire
job can be done properly with one size
of stainless steel wire. Some safety wire
applications are designed to break away
under emergency conditions, and thus
Small bolts and screws that are close

together can often be secured with this
type of safety wire arrangement. This
arrangement uses the small .020-inch
safety wire.
need to be of weaker material such as

.020-inch brass. In all cases do not substitute one type or size for another.
Something that should go without saying is that safety wire and cotter pins are
single-use items. Do not attempt to reuse
these because they work harden and
become brittle after being installed the
first time. Their failure after an attempt to
reuse them is almost guaranteed.
Cotter Pins
Cotter pins are used on airplanes primarily to secure castle nuts on bolts that are
subject to rotation, but also on bolts subject to heavy vibration. These are most
commonly found on control linkages for
The dipstick tube needs to have the safety

wire extend from the far side. Securing it to
the near-side hole will not impart any positive pull in the direction of tightening and
thus will not prevent it from loosening and
leaking.
Dave Prizio is a Southern California native who has been plying the skies of the L.A. basin and
beyond since 1973. Born into a family of builders, it was only natural that he would make his
living as a contractor and spend his leisure time building airplanes. He has so far completed
threea GlaStar, a Glasair Sportsman, and a Texas Sport Cuband he is helping a friend
build a fourth, an RV-8. When he isnt building something, he likes to share his love of aviation
with others by flying Young Eagles or volunteering as an EAA Technical Counselor. He is also
a licensed A&P mechanic and a member of the EAA Homebuilt Aircraft Council.
Bolts exposed to extreme vibration such

as this engine mount bolt are better
secured with castle nuts and cotter pins
than ordinary lock nuts.
Cotter pins can also be installed flat such

as this one on this clevis pin.
throttles, propeller controls, and similar

applications. Cotter pins also secure axle
nuts on most airplanes. Cotter pins are
covered by the designation of AN380X-X, with suffixes appropriate to their
length and diameter. The first digit in
the suffix is for the diameter of the pin in
32nd of an inch ranging from 1 to 6. The
second digit in the suffix is for the length
measured in quarters of an inch, ranging
from 2 to 10. For example an AN380-2-4
would be a 1/16-inch diameter pin with a
length of one inch.
There is also a MS designation for cotter pins, but the suffixes do not easily
lead one to the size of the pins. Aircraft
Spruce lists them in sizes ranging from
MS24665-5, a 1/32-inch by 1/2-inch long
pin, to MS24665-500, a 3/16-inch pin with
a length of 2.5 inches. In all cases the
length does not include the loop at the
closed end of the cotter pin.
Cotter pins are available in cadmiumplated steel or stainless steel. Under

the older AN system, stainless steel cotter pins were designated as AN381 and
cadmium-plated pins were AN380. In
the newer MS system all pins use the
MS24665 designation.
Cotter pins may be installed so that
one leg laps over the top of the bolt
being secured and the other is turned
down and cut off so as to not interfere
with the rotation of the bolt. Alternatively
they may be installed in the flat position
with the legs wrapped around the sides
of the nut or pin being secured. The flat
position is preferred for clevis pins.
The key to proper safety wiring is to

remember that the wire should always
act against the loosening of the bolt.
You may wish to think of it as trying to
tighten the bolt, although it isnt actually doing anything more than holding
it in place. In the vast majority of cases,
tightening means turning clockwise as
viewed from the top of the bolt. Here are
the steps to a good safety wiring job:
1. Pull a length of the proper size
and type of wire through the hole
in the bolt or other item you wish
to secure and bring that wire,
along with the wire not yet pulled
through the hole, back to the termination point so that you have
two wires that will reach about two
inches past the hole where they
will be secured. Then cut the wire
off there, always allowing enough
to grip with the pliers and still have
enough for a pigtail.
Wrap safety wire around bolt so that it

will act to tighten the bolt. Pull wraparound wire tight and place it underneath
the other wire as shown.
Grab one wire in each hand and twist

them together in a clockwise direction to
secure them tightly against the head of
the bolt.
Grab both wires together with the tip of

the safety wire pliers at a point just past
the hole you plan to use on the second
bolt.
Photos: Dave Prizio
Wiring Made Easy
This throttle linkage is secured with cotter

pins and castle nuts because of the rotation that it will experience. Cotter pin tails
should extend to at least the midpoint of
the bolt they are securing, but not past
the full diameter. The other tail should be
cut so that it does not interfere with the
rotation of the bolt.
61
Twist both wires together until you have

six to eight twists per inch.
Pull the top wire through the bolt hole

and pull it tight. Secure it by twisting
the wires together in a counterclockwise
direction.
Twist these wires together as before with

your pliers, except in a counterclockwise
direction to form a pigtail. Cut the tail off
about -inch from the bolt hole and twist
it back into itself to prevent the cutoff end
from cutting or scratching anyone.
2. Loop the safety wire around the

head of the bolt so that the wire is
wrapped around the far sidethe
side away from the direction in which
you plan to pull. Pull the wire tight
around the head of the bolt and draw
the wrap-around wire down inside
the wire coming straight out of the
bolt hole.
3. Give both wires a tug to set them in
place and remove any slack. Then
twist the wires together for a half
turn clockwise to secure them in
place. This setting procedure makes
for a much tighter and neater looking
safety wire job.
4. Next pull both wires to the termination point (hole in other bolt) to
gauge the length of the twist. You
should set the pliers at a point just
beyond the termination point to
allow for the twisting to shorten
the wires a bit. The rule of thumb is
to grip the straight wires about 15%
longer than they need to be when
twisted together. I find this often
makes the twisted wires a bit too
long, so I like to use a gripping point
much closer to the termination point
and then add a few more twists if I
need them. Untwisting the wire if it
is too long is not acceptable.
5. With both wires securely gripped,
clamp down and set the catch on
the pliers. Then pull out the knob at
the back end of the pliers and allow
them to rotate, twisting the wires as it
goes. Several pulls of the knob may be
necessary to fully twist the wires. The
end result should be a twisted pair of

wires with six to eight twists per inch.
Adjust your final length as needed.
Remember, do not untwist the wires
to get the correct length. If you have
too long a wire, you must start over.
6. Take the wire that lies on top of the
twisted pair and insert it into the hole
at the termination point, looping the
underneath wire around the far side
of the bolt or other anchor point, as
the case may be. Pull the wires tight
as at the beginning, pulling the wraparound wire inside the other wire
and securing both with a half twist
counterclockwise.
7. Now grip the wires about one inch
away from the twist you just made
and twist the two wires together to

make a pigtail. This twisting will be
in the opposite direction of the first
twist (counterclockwise). If you have
reversing pliers, it is a simple matter
to change the direction of the twist. If
not, just twirl the pliers in your hand
to make the short pigtail.
8. To finish up just snip off the pigtail to
a length of a half to three-quarters of
an inch, and then fold it back on itself
to keep the sharp end of the wires
from sticking out.
62
Safety Wiring Turnbuckles

Hopefully you have new-style turnbuckles that use clips instead of safety
wire. If not, get out your copy of
Sometimes a special wand with two holes in the end will work better in tight places than
a pair of pliers. These are available for about $20 from Aircraft Spruce and other aviation
tool vendors.
clips will work for MS21251-2S, -3S, -4S

and -5S turnbuckle bodies. MS21251-3L
and -4L bodies require MS21256-2 clips.
Clips should not be reused.
Tight Quarters Safety Wiring
Turnbuckles secured with clips. Only newer turnbuckles will come slotted for these clips.
Order MS21252-4LL for 1/8-inch cable with -28 threads.
AC43.13-1B and look at the diagrams of

how to safety wire turnbuckles. Look
at Chapter 7, Section 10. The doublewrap method is preferred, but the single-wrap method is acceptable. As a
rule you will be using .041-inch safety
wire for this.
For a single wrap pass a wire through
the hole in the middle of the turnbuckle
body and bend one end toward the
left and the other toward the right.
Pass each end of the wire through the
respective fork or cable eyeone at
each endand then wrap the end
of the wire around the turnbuckle at
least four times. For a double wrap
you will essentially do this twice, using
two pieces of wire. No more than three
threads should be exposed when you
finish safety-wiring the turnbuckle, and

each termination needs to include at
least four wraps around the turnbuckle.
To use safety clips simply line up the
grooves in the turnbuckle body with the
grooves in the cable eye or fork on each
end. The longer tail of the clip goes into
the slot formed at each outer end, and
the short-hooked tail goes into the center hole of the turnbuckle body. Install
two clips per turnbuckle. MS21256-1
Sometimes you will run into a safety wiring problem where there isnt enough
room to get a pair of pliers into position,
or if in position it simply wont turn. There
is a tool just for this. It is a wand with two
holes in the end into which you can slip
your safety wire and twirl it to get the
required twists. Aircraft Spruce simply
calls it a safety wire tool (part #12-01072).
The aileron hinge bolts on a GlaStar are
best safety wired with this tool, but there
are no doubt other places where it would
also come in handy.
Another tight-quarters tool that might
come in handy is the short 6-inch version
of the standard (9-inch) safety wire pliers.
These are also nice to include in a compact tool kit where space and weight are
at a premium. J
This drawing from AC43.13-1B shows various ways a turnbuckle can be safety wired
if it doesnt come slotted for MS21252 clips.

63
Stressing Structure
Load Distributions, Part 2

By David Paule
In the last part, I discussed the way

loads on a structure can be calculated if
you know the external load. Our basic
example was a cantilever beam that we
assumed was fixed at the left end and
free at the right end.
But some structures arent conveniently fixed or cantilevered at the left
end. Some, like biplanes and strutbraced wings, not only arent fixed at
the root, they have a load from the strut.
This situation is more complicated. We
know that if a structure is hinged, that
it cant carry any moment at the hinge.
Thats fundamental. But what about
the strutwhat effect does that have
on the load distribution across the spar?
64
For a spar thats hinged at the root and

has a strut, we need to find the moment
at the root as if it were a cantilever beam
with no strut, as we discussed in Part
1. Then, since it does have a hinge, you
would calculate the load perpendicular
to the spar where the strut connection
is, by dividing the cantilever bending
moment by the distance between the
root pin (the hinge) and the strut fitting.
The next step is to determine the
moment and shear load anywhere along
the spar.
The top sketch of Figure 1 shows a
uniform running load w on the spar
of a strut-braced wing. The fuselage
attachment fitting is on the left, and the
Figure 1: The basic geometry of a strutbraced spar.
strut attaches to the circle in the middle

of the spar. The load in the example is
a uniform load. We learned in Part 1
how to calculate the loads on the spar
for this kind of applied load, applicable

to the outboard portion of the spar, and
assuming a constant load has the additional advantage of simplicity. For a real
spar wed use the real load.
The upper sketch in Figure 1 shows
the physical structure and its load. The
lower sketch is a free body diagram that
shows the spar with the applied load w
and the reaction forces from the strut
and the hinge at the root. Im writing the
reaction forces with R and the strut
forces with S, and using h for the
horizontal components and v for the
vertical components.
The first thing to do is find the forces
on the strut. The moment at the left end
of the spar, if there werent any strut and
it were fixed there, would be:
1
2
M=
*w* L
2

Where
M Virtual cantilever moment at

the left end, inch pounds force
w constant running load, pounds

force / inch
L Total length of the load, inches
The load Sv is the vertical component
of the load on the strut.
M
Sv =
a
Where
Sv Vertical component of the strut

load, pounds force
a Distance, left end to the strut

fitting, inches
We can find the load in the strut by

Pythagoras Theorem:
Strut Force = (Sh2 + Sv2)1/2
The strut force is also in pounds force.
If the bottom of the strut is located
some distance forward or aft of the spar,
youll have to find that component of
force the same way and include it in the
strut force equation.
The next step is to determine the vertical reaction force at the left end. Since
the forces must balance, we find the
total shear force. Knowing Sv,
Rv = w * L - Sv
Where
Rv Vertical component of

the left load on spar hinge,

pounds force.
If Rv is negative, the vertical reaction load at that point is up instead
of downwhich could happen; its
affected by the actual load distribution
and the location of the strut on the spar.
Next, for the inboard section between
the root fitting and the strut, we need to
find the moment and shear loads adjacent to the strut fitting on its outboard
side. This represents the most inboard or
left-most point of the cantilevered part
of the spar. Here, the moment is
1
2
Mr =
* w * (L - a)
2

and the shear force there is
Vr = w * (L - a)
Where
Mr Moment immediately outboard

of the strut, inch pounds force
Vr Shear immediately outboard of

the strut, pounds force
Inboard, between the two fittings, we
need to look up the Aerospace Structures
Manual, section B4.0.0, especially table
4.1.1-2, particularly load cases 13 and
15. Kitplanes has it here: www.
kitplanes.com/pdfs/asm-B400.pdf.
The top sketch in Figure 2 shows
how the moment Mr from the
outboard portion of the spar is distributed between the strut and the
left end. At the left end, there is zero
moment because that end is a pinned
end. The moment load has a linear
distribution between the strut fitting
and the root hinge.
The middle sketch shows the moment
distribution from the constant load, from
Aerospace Structures Manual. Note that
its sign is opposite that of the moment
from the outboard side, since its below
the line. Be sure to keep track of that.
In a pin-ended rod like a strut, the

force always goes through the pinned
ends, since neither end can carry any
moment. This means that the components of that load are proportional to
the components of its length. In this
case, that means that

a
Sh = Sv *
b
Where
Sh Horizontal component of the

strut force, pounds force
b Distance, vertically, left spar hinge

to strut bottom fitting, inches
Illustrations: David Paule
Figure 2: The inboard portion of the spar, between the root and the strut, is influenced
by the moment from the outboard section and the moment generated by the inboard
portion of the applied load. These are shown separately here.

65
Figure 3: The shear and moment distributions for this strut-braced spar.
Figure 4: The Pietenpol strut fitting as

shown in EAAs 1932 Flying and Glider
Manual. While simple, it imposes a local
eccentric moment on the spar.
Figure 5: The force reactions on the Pietenpol strut fitting, although we dont know
how the reaction force Rh will be shared
between the bolt and the plywood plates.
These moment distributions are superimposed, as shown in the bottom sketch.

The shear distribution is interesting.
In Figure 3, its the middle sketch. Vr is
the positive peak (that is, above the line)
of the shear load, just outboard of the
strut. Then the strut load gets added in.
The blue vertical line at Vr is the vertical component of the strut load Sv. The
shear distribution inboard of that is due
to the distributed load w. In the load
and shear diagrams, I drew the inboard
shear load as if it were positive, and so its
reaction force Rv is shown negative.
So far, weve been looking at a spar
that has its strut fittings and its inboard
(left end) fitting centered vertically on
the neutral axis of the spar. Now lets
look at a strut fitting which puts a local
moment into the spar.
As long as the strut fitting lines up
with the strut, the fitting will act as if
it is attached at the neutral axis on the
spar, even if its attachment point is
located below the wing. In that case, the
strut load isnt offset from the fitting,
so the fitting doesnt have any moment
arm to generate a bending moment at
the sparthe line of action of the force
in the strut is directly through the centroid of the fasteners of the fitting to
the spar. The term commonly used to
describe this condition is zero eccentricity. In this context, the word eccentricity means that theres some offset in
the joint that, combined with the force
in the joint, creates a moment. Generally speaking, these extra moments due
to eccentric joints need to be considered. They sometimes show up in poorly
designed joints where they add to the
stresses in the joint and contribute little
thats good. Zero eccentricity means

that theres zero offset and therefore
zero addition moment.
The classic Pietenpol Air Camper
was originally designed with a highly
eccentric strut fitting, shown in Figure
4. Imagine that the strut is attached to
it and that the strut is angled so that it
goes to the lower left. The fittings force
loads are nicely carried by the plywood
plates and the fact that the fitting goes
over the top of the spar. The force balance is quite neatly done. The geometry
governing the eccentric moment, shown
in Figure 5, is
The effect of this eccentricity is shown

in Figure 6, where the peak moment
immediately inboard of the fitting is
reduced by the eccentricity, and the
moment along the inboard span is
increased. These things, and the difficult
moment-carrying design of the strut fitting, are issues that youll have to assess.
The moment Me, along with whats
usually a considerable strut load, must
be carried by the fasteners that attach
the strut fitting to the spar.
What about off-center inboard end
attachments, such as the Super Cub
wingroot shown on page 64? An eccentric joint can be designed into a structure
and used for a specific favorable purpose.
In the case of this wing, the fittings are
located above the neutral axis of the
spar. Remember from Figure 1 that an
upward aerodynamic load on the wing
develops an inward axial force due to the
angle of the strut. That, combined with
this eccentricity, results in a moment at
the wingroot that puts the upper side
of the spar in compression, just like the
moment outboard of the struta positive bending moment. This moment is
the opposite sign of the moment that
is typically located in the mid-span of
the inboard portion of the spar, and
thus reduces magnitude of the negative
moment, developed by the air loads,
inboard of the strut.
66
Me = c * Sh
Where
Me Local moment on the fitting,

inch pounds force
c Arm for the eccentricity, inches
Sh Horizontal component of the

strut force, pounds force
and must be carried by the spar. In this
case, for a positive flight load, it puts
the lower edge of the spar in compression. Thats the opposite of moment load
that the flight load on the outboard portion of the spar puts in. Note that the
moment in the spar is based on the parallel component of the strut load Sh
and the distance to the neutral axis of
the spar.
I drew Figure 5 showing one way to
define the eccentricity. The more formal way would be to measure it perpendicular to the strut axis and use
the full strut force for the load. Pay
attention to the sign of the resulting
moment, of course, and that will work
as well as this method.
Figure 6: The effects on the bending

moment inboard of a strut fitting thats not
oriented along the strut axis.
Put Some Numbers on a Strut-braced Spar
Figure 7: The favorable moment distribution reduction that an offset root fitting
can provide.
If the perpendicular distance between

the neutral axis of the spar and the
inboard fitting is d, then the root
moment becomes:
Mroot = d * Rh
Where
Mroot is the moment generated by

the eccentric fitting in

pounds force.
d
is the eccentricity, inches,

from the spars neutral axis,

positive above the spars

neutral axis.
Rh Reaction force parallel to the

spar, pounds.
This design detail works best for
longer inboard sections. For very
short ones, with the strut fitting close
to the fuselage, the moment from the
outboard part of the wing dominates
since the inboard section doesnt have
enough length to build up a significant
negative moment. This illustrates that
each aspect of the design of a strutbraced spar needs to be considered as
part of the whole wing.
David Paule
David Paule retired after 30

years of structural analysis
and is now building an
RV-3B to keep from getting
bored. The structural
engineering included a mix
of aircraft and spacecraft. He
has been a private pilot since
age 18 and
currently
owns and
flies a
Cessna 180.
To determine the load perpendicular to the spar at the strut fitting, we first need the moment at the root of the
spar as if it were cantilevered. These examples have a constant load across the length.
L = 180 in
Length of the spar, root to tip
lbf
w = 21
Constant upward load on the spar, positive flight condition.
in
1
Moment at the root, in this case, the left end
M = 340,200 in lbf
M = w L2
2
a = 124 in
Location of the strut intersection with the spars neutral axis, from the left end.
M
Sv =

Vertical strut load at the spar-to-strut attachment Sv = 2,744 lbf
a
b = 50 in
Rise of the strut its attachment at the bottom of the fuselage to the spar root.
a
Sh = Sv
Axial load in the spar from the strut
Sh = 6,804 lbf
b
This axial force is high. The strut itself will need to be checked for buckling. The axial force in the strut is
found using Pythagoras Theorem:
Load in the strut
Strut Force = 7,336 lbf
Strut Force = (Sh2 + Sv2)1/2
In this case, this is a tension load. Next we need to find the bending moment immediately outboard of the
strut attachment.
1
Mr = 32,928 in lbf
Mr =
w (L - a)2 Moment at the strut fitting
2
Vr = w (L - a)
Shear at the strut fitting
Vr = 1,176 lbf
To find the moment on the spar between the strut and the root end for the flight load, look at ASM, Table
4.1.1-2 #13 and adjust the terms to match the symbols were using here, remembering that this moment
will be negative compared to the outboard moment. The moment at any location inboard of the strut is:

-w a
x2
Mx =
(x - ) Moment at any point x along the inboard spar section
2 a
You can verify that, for the variables used above, these are the values obtained:
For x = 0,
Mx = 0 in lbf
x = 124
Mx = 0 in lbf
For x = 62 inches, heres how it looks:

lbf
- 21
124 in

in
(62 in)2
Mx =
(62 in )
Mx = -40,362 in lbf

2
124 in
Remember that the effect of the outboard moment on the inboard section is that the inboard moment tapers from
the strut fitting towards zero at the root end. Since x is measured from the root end,
x
Mrx = Mr
Moment for the inboard section of the spar due to the outboard spar moment.

a
Combine the outboard moment and the inboard moment in the inboard part of the spar: Minbd = Mx + Mrx
Verify that the maximum combined negative moment is -25,576 inch pounds force at 49 inches outboard of
the root fitting. Im leaving this to you; use the equations presented above and itll work.
Look at an eccentric strut fitting like an original Pietenpols fitting:
c = 2 in
Local eccentricity at the fitting
Me = -c Sh
Bending moment due to the strut eccentricity
Me = -2 in * 6,804 lbf Bending moment due to the eccentricity
Me = -13,608 in lbf
As you can see, this is a considerable load.
Its distribution on the inboard section is linear like the outboard moment, except that this is negative.
x
Mex =
Me
Moment along the inboard section due to the eccentricity.

a
Checking this moment at 60 inches outboard,

60 in
Mex =
(-13,608 in lbf)
Mex = -6,585 in lbf

124 in
Adding this to the other loads gives: Minbd = Mx + Mrx + Mex
You can check your own calculations: for 60 inches outboard of the root, the combined moment is
Minbd =-30,972 in lbf.
That covers an eccentric strut fitting. Sometimes an eccentric root fitting is used.
d = 2.5 in
Root fitting eccentricity, positive is an upward distance.
Mroot = d Sh
Inboard moment at the root due to a spar fitting eccentricity.
Mroot = 2.5 in 6,804 lbf
Mroot = 17,010 in lbf
The moment at any point along this inboard spar section is

a-x
Mrootx = Mroot

a
With this, moment load distribution in the inboard portion of the spar is Mspar = Mx + Mrx + Mex + Mrootx
Thats if all these are actually present. If one of these is not there, well then just remove its term from the
equation. For the case where theres no strut eccentricity, the desired case, Mspar = Mx + Mrx + Mrootx
You can check your algebra with this result:
Mspar = -15,785 in lbf at x = 56 inches. J

67
Required placards, placing an Experimental

in an S-Corp., licensing a KR-2 as an LSA.
By Mel Asberry
Question: I know that we must

display the large Experimental
placard. Are there requirements for
any others? I have seen some planes
with a small placard that states,
Passenger Warning: This aircraft
is amateur built and does not comply with the Federal safety requirements for standard aircraft.
Answer: The placards you mention
are the only ones required for Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft. For
Experimental Light Sport aircraft, the
passenger warning is similar, but uses
the words Experimental Light Sport
aircraft instead of Experimental/
Amateur-Built aircraft.
The Experimental placard must be
between 2 and 6 inches tall. There is no
size requirement for the passenger warning. It just has to be easily readable and
visible to people entering the cockpit.
Question: I am starting the paperwork to get my RV-7A licensed and
want to put it in an S-Corp. I have
one I use for work and was considering putting the plane in it for tax
reasons. Can I do this?
Answer: I have never run across anyone registering an Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft owned by an S-Corp.
68
Ive had several using an LLC, and that

is not a problem. Keep in mind that a
corporation might be listed as owner,
but not the builder. The builder must be
an individual. When submitting the aircraft for certification, the applicant must
submit a notarized statement from the
corporation authorizing the applicant to
sign for the corporation.
Question: Im toying with the idea
of building a Rand-Robinson KR-2.
It has a low enough gross weight to
be an LSA, and if you build it light,
it has a low enough stall speed. But
the top speed as designed is much
faster than 120 knots. If I build a
modified KR-2, with a lower cruise
speed, can I fly it with a Sport Pilot
license? And could I do the same
thing if I buy one that was certified
with the original cruise speed and
modify it to slow it down?
Answer: The KR-2 is not a good candidate for LSA. You can build anything
and claim it to be in compliance with
LSA. But remember, the maximum
stall speed requirement for LSA is a
clean stall speed (i.e., flaps up). Also
the KR-2 was originally designed as
retractable. You would have to build a
fixed-gear version.
If you build your own engine and

restrict it to a certain rpm or horsepower
output, you might get a KR-2 to comply
with LSA speed requirements. To do
this, however, you must be the manufacturer of the engine.
The problem comes when there is
an issue such as an accident or a ramp
check. If questioned, it is your responsibility to show compliance. Would you
be able to convince an FAA inspector, a
judge, or an insurance agent?
As far as buying and modifying an
existing airplane, this would not qualify. The definition for LSA states that
the aircraft must have been in compliance continuously from the original certification (i.e., you cannot back into
LSA compliance).
Also, the airplane could not be certificated as an Experimental Light Sport
unless the kit manufacturer offered a
certified ELSA kit; the aircraft would be
certificated as Experimental/AmateurBuilt, so the inspector does not need to
verify LSA compliance. That is strictly
up to you if the need arises. J
Please send your questions for DAR
Asberry to editorial@kitplanes.com with
Ask the DAR in the subject line.
Photo: Mel Asberry
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In the 112 years since the Wright brothers flew, an enormous amount has been
written about airplane design. Courses
in airplane design are taught at many
major universities, and students study
the physics and technology of flight in
great detail.
All of these efforts aim to teach the
proper way to design airplanes. What is
missing from the textbooks and courses
on airplane design is how to do it wrong.
This is unfortunate because the mistakes of the past are a great source
of insight and understanding. There
are several common design traps that
show up repeatedly throughout the
history of aviation.
This month we will look at one of these
sad stories, so that we can learn how not
to repeat the same unfortunate script in
our own design efforts.
Getting it wrong.
That sounds pretty obvious. Unfortunately, some designersparticularly
of homebuiltsseem to design the airplane first and then see what it can do.
If they are lucky, the airplane does what
is needed well enough to be acceptable.
If not, they end up with a machine that
does not meet requirements. It may be
very good at something that the operator of the machine does not need done. It
may perform poorly in the areas that are
important. In either case, it is unlikely to
be a success.
This type of problem is particularly
common when the designer chooses the
configuration first, and then tries to make
the configuration match the mission.
This is a backwards approach, which
rarely produces a good airplane.
Designers often fall into this trap

because they fall in love with what they
see as a large advantage of a particular
configuration. Unfortunately, the perceived advantage is frequently not as large
as originally imagined, and the offsetting
disadvantages of the configuration can
quickly eat away the initial advantage. It
is crucial that the designer evaluate the
advantages and disadvantages of a configuration in light of how they affect the
airplanes performance of the design
mission. If the designer looks only at the
pluses of a concept, the minuses are likely
to sneak up and kill the design.
Perceived Advantages
Often, the designer will choose a particular configuration because it appears to
Let the Mission Design

the Airplane
One of the most common design traps,
particularly in the homebuilt and startup
company world, is to fall in love with a
configuration too early in the design
process. A fundamental tenet of good
design is, Let the mission design the airplane. Dont let the airplane design the
mission. This is probably the single most
important bit of advice I can give to any
aspiring airplane designer.
Setting mission requirements is the
first step in the development of any good
design. Every airplane is designed to perform a specific mission. Once the mission is
defined, the airplane should be designed
to best perform that specific mission.
Barnaby Wainfan
Photos: Richard VanderMeulen, Vic Syracuse
Canard designs, such as the Velocity, have had great success in the homebuilt world. However, there were many problems when the configuration was applied to larger aircraft for
business travel.
is a principal aerodynamics engineer for Northrop Grummans Advanced Design organization.

A private pilot with single engine and glider ratings, Barnaby has been involved in the design of
unconventional airplanes including canards, joined wings, flying wings, and some too strange
to fall into any known category.
75
offer significant advantages for the mission. This is particularly true of unconventional configurations. The advantage
(real or perceived) can take several forms:
Performance: The configuration might
have the promise of better performance
than other concepts. It could have lower
drag, higher maximum lift, better packaging that makes it lighter, or some
other advantage related to the performance of the airplane.
Cost and Manufacturability: Not all
innovation is aimed at increasing the performance of the airplane. Cost and ease
of manufacture are major players in the
commercial success of a design. Assembly time and ease of assembly are major
factors in the kit and homebuilt world. If
a configuration or construction technique
offers a significant decrease in cost or
assembly time, it could provide a significant advantage over competing products.
Marketing: A very common reason for
a designer to prefer a particular configuration is because it is promised to appeal to
potential customers. If the airplane looks
sleek or advanced, it will often sell better
than a more pedestrian-looking airplane
with equivalent performance. If the cool
look is combined with a good story about
technical advantages of the configuration, you have a marketers dream.
Having an unconventional or
advanced configuration is often the
only way a startup company can attract
financing. Investors are likely to be wary
of a startup company that wants to produce a conventional machine to compete with established manufacturers. If
the potential investors can be convinced
that the new airplane will be technologically superior to the established companies offerings, they are more likely to
take the risk of financing the company.
This phenomenon was likely responsible for the flock of canard turboprop
business airplane prototypes that
appeared in the 1980s. Avtek, OMAC,
and AASI all planned to develop and
sell canard-configured turboprop business airplanes. All three companies flew
prototypes or proof of concept airplanes, and AASI even got an early version of their Jetcruzer certified. But none
reached production.
76
KITPLANES contributor Vic Syracuse flies his Prescott Pusher circa 1988. Vics was the first
customer-built Prescott to be completed.
Now, before we get a lot of unhappy

letters from canard aviators, there is
nothing fundamentally wrong with the
canard configuration, as the VariEze,
Long-EZ, Berkut, Cozy, Velocity, etc.
prove. Despite this, none of the business airplanes mentioned ever got to
the point that they had any advantage
over conventional airplanes. They also
had some serious problems that were
unique to the canard configuration for
airplanes of the size and power appropriate for business travel.
Problems
As noted above, the mission should
shape the configuration of the airplane.
If we choose a configuration in advance,
it might not work very well because the
configuration does not match the mission. Problems can arise in several ways:
Advantages Might Not be Real or
Useful: Assuming the designer was not
totally bewildered from the start, a configuration might be chosen because it
appears to offer an advantage. Unfortunately, sometimes that advantage is
more theoretical than real. We might,
for example, choose a pusher configuration because we believe that getting
the propeller slipstream off of the fuselage will reduce drag by eliminating
a built-in headwind. While this may
be true in theory, we are likely to find
that the drag increment is very small,
and other considerations will dominate

the design so much that it will actually
prove to offer no measurable improvement over a tractor.
In evaluating a configuration, it is
important to determine if the perceived
advantage of the configuration will actually produce any useful improvement in
performance or cost. If it doesnt, then
even if the advantageous effect actually
occurs, it is not useful.
Advantages Overcome by Disadvantages: This is probably the place where
most configuration-driven designs get
into trouble. The favorable effect we are
trying to get with our configuration might
be real and work as advertised. Unfortunately, the configuration might have other
problems that negate the advantage.
The pusher configuration in our previous example can be one such example. A
pusher definitely does get the slipstream
off of the skin of the airplane and reduces
skin friction drag. At the same time, the
pusher configuration puts the propeller
in the wake of the fuselage and flying
surfaces. These wakes can hurt propeller efficiency and make a lot of noise.
The reduction in propeller efficiency
can quickly eat up any gain we got from
reduced drag, and the noise annoys airport neighbors. Inability to meet flyover
noise requirements was one of the reasons AASI cited for terminating their Jetcruzer 500 program.
Another example is the often-cited

advantage for canards that the foreplane
lifts to trim the airplane as opposed to a
conventional aft tail that usually pushes
down to trim the airplane. While this is
true, it is overcome by another phenomenon. An aft tail is much more effective
at trimming the pitching moment of
flaps on the main wing. Accordingly, an
aft-tail airplane can have a more effective high-lift system. This lets it work
the main wing hard enough that it more
than overcomes the canards advantage
of trimming with foreplane lift instead of
tail downforce.
Difficult to Integrate: Regardless of
how advanced its concept is, the airplane
must still carry its payload, balance, have
good structural load paths, and generally
function well as a machine. Some configurations lend themselves better to these
tasks than others. It is not uncommon
for a new configuration to fail when the
designer tries to get everything aboard,
install the engine, make it balance, and
get the structure to hold together.
Cool, But Doesnt Fly Well: A coollooking configuration with a lot of ramp
appeal might enjoy a brief period of
excitement when it first appears and get
some sales based on its attractiveness.
In the long run though, if the airplane
doesnt perform very well, or has poor
flying qualities, the word will get out
quickly and sales will dry up. Customers
want airplanes that fly well, and will not
forgive poor performance or a hard-tofly airplane just for looks.
The Prescott Pusher was a good
example of this phenomenon in the
kit airplane world. The Prescott got a
lot of attention when it first appeared
because of its pusher configuration
and jet-like appearance. Unfortunately,
once it got into the air, it proved to have
disappointing performance. It also had
some flying-qualities issues that were a
matter of concern. The combination of
lackluster performance and quirky handling quickly overcame the excitement
generated by the appearance of the airplane, and the Prescott faded from the
scene. There is still one Prescott Pusher
active that I know of. It has been at
Oshkosh repeatedly and is an example
of pure persistence on the part of its

owner. It has numerous modifications
that solve many of the shortcomings of
the original design.
Warning Signs
If you are working on a design, here are a
few things to watch out for that will warn
you that you are in danger of falling into
the configuration first trap.
Conceptual purity: If you find yourself thinking more about maintaining
the purity of the concept of the airplane
than about how the airplane will work,
then beware. It is not uncommon to hear
someone say, We cant do that because
then it wouldnt be a true (configuration
concept). It doesnt matter if your final
design is a pure example of the concept,
as long as it does the mission well.
Wishful thinking: A new configuration must work over the entire flight
envelope, and the designer must evaluate its performance honestly. Thinking
primarily of the perceived advantage
of the configuration, while paying less
attention to overall performance, leads
to trouble. If you find yourself fixating
on the good features of the configuration while trying to minimize or explain
away problems, you are probably
headed for trouble.
Integration and Compromises: As
you work to put the design together, be
alert to how many changes and compromises you have to make to make things
work. The more compromises you must
make to keep the configuration intact, or
to preserve the perceived advantage of
the concept, the more likely it is that the
configuration is a technical dead end for
your particular mission. If you look at the
history of unsuccessful, unconventional
airplanes, you usually find a series of
modifications and fixes appearing as the
designer tries to patch up the problems
that made the configuration unsuitable
in the first place.
Radical and unconventional configurations have their place, and sometimes
they can lead to great advances. Just be
sure that your unconventional approach
really works and gives better mission
performance than a conventional lowrisk design. J

Fits Your Budget

and Your
Garage!
Visit www.SonexAircraft.com
or call: 920.231.8297
77
Back in June and July of 2012, Kitplanes ran my columns on LED strip
lighting. At the time, you didnt have a
real choice as to how to run them from
ships power; you had to go through the
special little control box that came with
the lights.
Fortunately for us, a company called
Adafruit has come out with two improvements over the original design. One, they
now run directly from a 12-volt bus, and
two, they incorporate a white LED as one
of the color options on each and every
LED chip in the strip. The web site is www.
adafruit.com/product/2440. The Adafruit
part numbers are 2440 (cool white) and
2439 (warm white).
You can buy these strips in lengths
ranging from one meter to four meters
all interconnected for $20 per meter.
Once you have them, you can cut them
into 2-inch (5-cm) segments if you wish,
or run them as one long strip. Each segment has three of these multicolor LED
chips, plus dropping resistors to give
us a 12-volt segment. Since there are 20
segments to a meter, you could, if you
wanted to, cut each meter of LED strip
into 20 separate segments, each one
having three LEDs, and each LED having
four colors (red, green, blue, and white).
Thats versatility you just dont find every
day. And certainly not for a dollar a segment (33 cents a lamp).
Not only that, each segment, or 20
segments for a one meter strip or 80 segments for a 4 meter strip, all run from 12
volts maximum. Each segment, if you
wish, has small copper solder tabs that
Jim Weir
78
Revisiting the
LED strip club.
Early LEDs were an improvement over the original incandescent flood light in a 1958
Cessna 182, but they were still quite dim.
are interconnected, so no matter whether

a single segment or 80 segments, there
is only one power wire and four ground
wires (one ground wire for each color).
What Color Light is Best?

If letting you know about the improved
Adafruit LEDs was all I had to say this
month, this would be a very short column. However, in a recent back-andforth on one of the maintenance forums
(www.pilotsofamerica.com), we got into a
discussion of what color light works best
for night instrument illumination. While
good old red was embraced by some,
there was also support for white, green,
blue-green, and so on.
The authority on this subject seems
to be the U.S.A.F. Flight Surgeons Guide,
Chapter 8. I quote:
The use of red lightfor illumination of the cockpit is desirable, because
itdoes not affect dark adaptation. Red

cockpit lighting has been traditional
since World War II.
However, the author, Dr. T.J. Tredici,
goes on to say that:
With the increased use of electronic
devices for navigationnew problems
have been created. Low-intensity, white
cockpit lighting is presently used to solve
these problems.
And still further into the chapter:
Blue-green light is the easiest for
accommodative focus and is seen by the
rods more readily than any other color. It
is not seen as blue-green, however, but
only as light.
But with blue-green, theres a problem
that we dont generally have in light aircraft operations:
The enemy can easily see a bluegreen lightwhereas a low-intensity red
light would be invisible.
is the chief avioniker at RST Engineering. He answers avionics questions in the Internet newsgroup www.pilotsofamerica.comMaintenance. His technical advisor, Cyndi Weir, got her
Masters degree in English and Journalism and keeps Jim on the straight and narrow. Check
out their web site at www.rst-engr.com/kitplanes for previous articles and supplements.
There are three 4-color LEDs per segment, with four surface-mount current-limiting
resistors per segment.
Lets then turn to standard airline practice as I understand it. Low-level lights of
many colors are used for departure and
climbing to altitude. However, once at
cruise altitude, the overhead white dome
light is turned on and remains on until
the initial approach procedure for landing, at which time the low-level lights are
turned back on.
From these two very definitive sources,
we can draw one apparent factthere is
no one best, and you can choose the
color that works best for you.
See for Yourself

Keeping what you just read in mind, I am
going to show you five photos of a typical instrument panel with each of five
LED colors on the strip that are half-lit. In
an attempt to compare the light brightness equally, I ran the different LED colors at the same current, and not the same
voltage. It seems that at full brightness,
the LED colors were all drawing about
0.75 amperes ( amp). I ran them down
to about 50% of brightness and ran
them all at 0.50 amperes ( amp). To my
uncalibrated eyeball, the lights were all
about equally bright. (Dont worry just
yet about how to control the brightness
of the lights; thats coming in a future
month of this column.)
The benchmark I chose was the way
that my venerable 1958 Cessna 182A
test bed came from the Wichita factory
with one modification that was written
up in KITPLANES a few decades ago:
I replaced the original incandescent
overhead flood with the brightest LEDs
available at the time. The dimly lit photo
shows the early LEDS, which were a definite improvement over the incandescent
Photos: Jim Weir
flood. Even so, you can barely make out

the instruments.
Now look at the other five images using
the new LED light strip. Note that with
every color, each instrument can be easily
viewed. It is now your choice as to which
of the presentations you prefer. Or, if you
get really creative, you can gin up a little
push-button switch to rotate between
red, white, green, blue, and blue/green
while in flight. The choice is yours.
One other thing you may consider
when using this technique is that the
one-meter long strip is comprised of 20
individual 2-inch (5-cm) segments that
you can divvy into individual segments
and have three LEDs per segment for
each instrument.
There are three 4-color LEDs per segment, with four surface-mount currentlimiting resistors per segment. You can
cut the strip into individual segments
with scissors if you like to give a singlesegment light for a separate instrument,
while the original strip remains intact less
one segment. Each segment runs from
12-volts (max) and is dimmable.
A final thought, and we will wrap this
month up: The strip comes insulated with
a clear plastic sleeve. While I normally
advocate sticking things to the panel
with hook and loop fasteners, this sleeve
appears to be made from a slippery silicone of some sort, and the glue on the
back of the peel-off fasteners would not
stick to the sleeve. Those of you more
versed in the art of stickum than I might
offer your comments on what you would
use to fasten the strips down.
Look for a new class of dimmer for
these and other types of panel lights in a
future column. Until then, stay tuned J

New LED light strips from Adafruit allow

each instrument to be easily viewed. You
have a wide choice of colors: red, white,
green, blue, and blue/green.
79
By Robrucha
80

Kitplane Sept, 2015

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Mojave HIGH: BECOMING A TEST PILOT

Ten Years with an F1

September 2015 | Volume 32, Number 9

22 Family Affair: Building a Legend Cub at the factory.

28 The Motivated Builder: Building an airplane ranks right

up there as one of the most existential things you can do in your

34 So You Want to Get Paid to Build? How to make

38 Do-It-Yourself Aircraft Jacks: Having completed

68 ask the DAR: Required placards, placing an Experimental in an

2 Editors Log: Its about the people. By Paul Dye.

49 Checkpoints: Sun n Fun musings. By Vic Syracuse.

KITPLANES September 2015

Its about the people.

It was about my fourth or fifth trip

KITPLANES September 2015

It had become about the peopleand

the grounds: My gaze had shifted from

After the first couple of days carrying

10.4 HXr System

10.4 or 12.1 Horizon HXr

(w/engine monitoring and

6.5, 8.4 Sport, HX

Mini- EFIS Series

KITPLANES September 2015

In Maintenance Matters [July, 2015]

the first thing to do with the resin is to

Thanks for this excellent article [Black

Eric Stewart responds: Im glad you

I have no clue if this is right, but since

Thanks, Eric. That explanation certainly

Web site Information:

KITPLANES September 2015

www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes

You love to fly. Not spend money.

*Manufacturers suggested retail pricing. Installation extra.

Life with a finished F1 Rocket.

KITPLANES September 2015

www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes

Surveying a pile of new airplane partsmy gosh, what have I done?

knots, the compression of distance into

Theres a common joke among builders

something more than just a flat piece of

I had decided early in the process

The Blue Mountain EFIS provided great functionality for a reasonable

KITPLANES September 2015

mounted down by the throttle quadrant, so a little rotation of the wrist is

Switches and fuses are hidden behind a panel and armrest.

The $100 Hamburger

When they first learn that we fly, some

Weather and Equipment

Having a faster airplane means covering

a leisurely lunch. On the return trip, we

KITPLANES September 2015

gallon, or 20 statute miles per gallon;

Of course, building an airplane is not

getaways. Valentines Day of 2009 provided just such an opportunity.

Whats Up with Team Rocket?

KITPLANES September 2015

resort was purchased out of bankruptcy

reduced parts count, simpler construction, and weight savings of almost

Happy wife, happy life! Avril Forster in the

Needless to say, the champagne and

One of the mandatory destinations for

The French Quarter

22 Family Affair: Building a Legend Cub at the factory.

28 The Motivated Builder: Building an airplane ranks right

34 So You Want to Get Paid to Build? How to make

38 Do-It-Yourself Aircraft Jacks: Having completed

68 ask the DAR: Required placards, placing an Experimental in an

49 Checkpoints: Sun n Fun musings. By Vic Syracuse.