Table of contents for August 2024 in KITPLANES

PUBLISHER DENNIS SHATTUCK took a flier on a growing segment of aviation back when magazines littered newsstands across the country and well before we ever had this thing called the internet. Experimental aircraft—homebuilts, whether built from kits or plans—were nothing new, but Shattuck recognized that the segment was really starting to blossom. Not only had homebuilts continued to capture the hearts of showgoers in Oshkosh and Lakeland (and at many other regional airshows as well), they were doing so as the major U.S. manufacturers like Cessna and Piper were pulling back. Although inflation had been cooling since the early 1980s and the elimination of the investment tax credit for aircraft purchases (which would have seismic effects in the GA world) was still a few years away, it was clear that…

WHEN PUSHING MY Hatz biplane back into the hangar after a flight one day, I noticed some oil on the stabilizer and also on the wing. A small amount of oil on the bottom of the fuselage was normal, if annoying, but this much was alarming, as oil leaking from a loose line onto the exhaust of my SA-100 Starduster a few years earlier had led to lots of smoke and a forced landing in a swampy field that didn’t end well (for the plane). I felt better when I remembered that I had gotten a little too slow over the top of a loop during that flight, and the brief zero-G probably let the oil spill out of the vent holes on the top of the breather catch can.…

ONE OF THE BIG MOTIVATORS to amateur aircraft builders is simply dreaming about the adventures that their personal aircraft will allow them to accomplish. One of the ways to “power out” of occasional dips in enthusiasm is to remind oneself of why you chose to build in the first place and daydream about the adventures that could lie ahead. My wife and I have always looked for interesting adventures to “air out” our RV-10 as the prime traveling machine that it is. In August of 2017, we decided to fly from our Arizona home up north to catch the solar eclipse. To that end, we embarked, along with our pilot son Riley, to Rexburg, Idaho (KRXE), for the eclipse. To be honest, my prime motivator for the Idaho trip was…

SEVERAL TIMES OVER the many years I’ve written a column for this magazine, I’ve told you about a computer program that makes very complex PC boards, all the way from the first rough sketch on the proverbial back of a napkin to the formula for the etchant of the excess copper on the fiberglass PC-board substrate. Twenty-four years ago, a very refined version of CircuitMaker/TraxMaker was released and was nicknamed CMTM2K (CircuitMaker TraxMaker 2000). Several particularly noxious bugs were replaced with elegant solutions to the program, and it has been my go-to (for the last 24 years) when I wanted to make a prototype PC board. In 2001 I came by this relic of an elderly 1958 Cessna 182A that I rescued literally from chickens roosting on the rear seat…

IN VISITING PROJECTS as a tech counselor and a DAR I’ve often thought telling the story will help others avoid the predicament. While every project is different, and there is nothing better than experience, having a few handy tips can save time and effort. Many of the questions I get are as psychological as they are technical. That’s one of the reasons I begin a TC visit with planning and self-knowledge, because no one wants to think about that, and it’s the one big thing that can delay project completion. If you’ve built before, are a serial builder or are just thinking about it, there will always be something new or something you learn from every project. In this column, I’ll tell some of the stories and suggest how to…

ONE OF AVIATION’S great pleasures is to meet up with a bunch of friends at some out-of-the-way airport and just watch airplanes, enjoy the scenery and wallow in all things aviation for a little while. This is the heart of what has been known for generations as “the fly-in.” Someone organizes the event, chooses a place and date and gets the word out on what is going to happen. Fly-ins can involve as few as two airplanes or can expand to the size of that little annual outing in Wisconsin each July. In fact, one of the big topics of discussion inside the EAA’s Homebuilt Council over the past few years is “how do we help create more widely spread out grassroots fly-ins?” Well here’s an answer: Disorganize them! I…

ONE OF THE FUN THINGS about our annual pilgrimage to AirVenture is seeing uncommon or rare aircraft. Sometimes it’s a new and rare bird at Oshkosh or a unique aircraft at a random airport on the way to or from. While making our way to AirVenture 2023, we stopped in at Brodhead Airport (C37) in Wisconsin. That is where we happened upon a Stolp SA-500 Starlet. It’s one of those planes that make you stop and say, “That thing is as cute as a bug. I wanna fly it!” For those not familiar with it, the Starlet was designed by Lou Stolp. The name may be familiar as he also designed the more common Starduster and Starduster Too. The Starlet is plansbuilt, and the plans are still available from Aircraft…

THE EFFECT THAT COVID had on the homebuilt industry affected almost everyone. Parts, if you could get them, were often back-ordered for months—or years—and costs ballooned terribly. Glasair Sportsman builders were especially hit hard. While the shutdown of the company’s exalted Two Weeks to Taxi program garnered the headlines, DIY builders were orphaned indefinitely while the company regrouped for better days. Sometime mid to late 2023, a thread emerged on the Glasair Owner’s group (www.glasair-owners.com) from builders seeking options for obtaining 521-1501-003 static ports. While most static ports are pretty basic—a flange with a small hole, or in the case of RVs, where a pop rivet (sans mandrel) replaces a bucked rivet—the Glasair design has a beveled segment that bisects the centerline of the port. This adds more than a…

THE TASK OF an airplane designer is to generate a design for an airplane that flies successfully and executes the user’s mission. The manufacturer must be able to build the airplane and sell them in sufficient numbers to generate sufficient revenue to stay in business and make a profit. The designer must consider all three factors: Mission, Manufacturing and Marketing. We have already considered “mission” in some detail in previous editions of Wind Tunnel, so we now turn our attention to the other “M’s.” Manufacturing The first choice the designer must make is what materials the airplane will be made of and what manufacturing processes will be needed to fabricate the parts and assemble the airplane. Usually there will be more than one set of materials that will meet the…

IT WASN’T UNTIL the last day of training with TacAero when we swapped seats that I realized my instructor (also company director) Ian Waghorn had to put up with my flailing in the front seat of the Carbon Cub FX-2 with the control stick darting around like an over-caffeinated Jack Russell in the small space between his, er, lower extremities and my seat back. Add to that the view from back there, which is to say not much of one. His calm demeanor and sense of humor never let on what he must have been witnessing. I feel like I should have slipped a $20 into his shirt pocket after every flight —a sympathy tip. But I digress. I’d found myself in Fredericksburg, Texas, at the prompting of CubCrafters’ Brad…

ONCE WE HAD the wings and fuselage, it was time to kick some plans into gear. We needed to take apart the wheels, finish up the brake system, install the electric trim, seal the firewall, mount the engine and electronic ignition, work on the fuel system and prepare to attach the throttle and mixture cables. The Night Crew Checks In Ah, the wind. That’s nice. After a 100° day in Sacramento the Delta breeze sweeps through, cooling the valley and making the heat more and more bearable. With the 9:00 p.m. sunsets, the days are long, making the evenings the best time for projects and productivity. With good company and some vibey tunes, summer nights at the hangar couldn’t be better. One evening, I invited a troop of young workers…

WITH THIS, our last chapter of the Affordaplane build, I will describe how an engine mount was created to complete the last major step. As a quick recap of the previous chapters in this series, I was attempting to plans build a legal ultralight using common tools and store-purchased materials. For example: No welding allowed! So, now the biggest challenge confronting me was creating an engine mount needed for the engine installation. First, what engine should be used in this project? This decision could not be made until we were nearly finished with the entire project. Why? The choice of engine is determined by how much weight remains after deducting the aircraft’s total weight from the 254-pound limit imposed by the FAA ultralight regulations. With the wings and tail attached…

ALMOST EVERYTHING WE DO in life has some form of risk, and flying certainly has its own risk multiplier. As pilots we do our best to eliminate as much of the risk as possible, starting with weather planning and preflight checks. As builders, there are choices we can make along the way to help minimize risk. In the end, there’s only so much we can do to eliminate risk, so it becomes more about risk tolerance, which is usually different for everyone. Many of you may know my real job in life was in technology. For many years I had responsibility for large data centers, including financial services. As you can imagine, there was not a lot of tolerance for downtime. In the connected world in which we live, money…

WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT of Roswell, New Mexico, as the new home of the National Air Races, it seems a good time to give an update on the go-fast crowd. Change is the operative word, as the Reno Air Racing Association (RARA) and their National Championship Air Races (NCAR) at Reno-Stead were for decades the central characters in what was really a loose confederation of sanctioning bodies and classes. With the decline of the big-iron Unlimiteds and then the huge casualty of Reno-Stead last year, that confederation loosened with the various classes both considering their futures individually while at the same time hoping RARA could find a new place for the big, multi-class NCAR shindig. Ultimately this could be good for the sport as there could be more racing in front…