KITPLANES的March 2024目录

You might think that a long-running proposal to streamline certification and greatly expand (and make far more usable) LSA and sport pilot rules would have the industry locking arm, raising voices in song and, therefore, on a clear path to success. You might, but you’d be wrong. See, while a very large proportion of general aviation has seen the value in the FAA MOSAIC program, it is not unanimous. And some cagey late-inning gamesmanship by a key “alphabet” seems intended to unravel some of that goodwill and momentum. I’ll come back to that. MOSAIC is important, both for general aviation as a whole and for our little corner of the world. In short, MOSAIC represents a significant opening up of LSA rules and would make many more aircraft available to…

First off, it’s pronounced “gooey duck,” which is easy enough. When spelled geoduck it represents a grotesque, oversized mollusk, or clam to we pilot simpletons. Said clam burrows deep in the sand, looks horrid, tastes great (we’re told) and is something of an unofficial mascot of the Pacific Northwest. It embodies the pride Seattleites have in their gorgeous, isolated corner of the map; thus, it’s a natural to invoke when naming anything regionally relevant: sports teams, flying boats and so on. Ross Mahon goes on to note all the obvious seabird names had already been appropriated by Grumman and others—Duck, Widgeon, Goose, Mallard, Albatross, Petrel and so on were unavailable. But somehow geoduck remained open in an aviation context. Clearly spelling and pronunciation bedlam would ensue from “geoduck” so the…

It can happen to anyone, but maybe more so with age. We don’t, or can’t, get up as much. Health issues arise. Other interests consume our energy. Maybe it’s not as exciting anymore or the effort to maintain the relationship becomes too much. The longer we remain inactive, the longer we remain inactive. Inertia, you see, works both ways. However, when the day does come to restore the spark—a day of excitement and apprehension—it should be done thoughtfully. Engines, you see, need frequent activity. When they sit, they corrode. I’ve been parking engines for Wisconsin’s long, salty winters for decades. When I know a vehicle will sit unused—I mention, again, with great pain, Wisconsin’s long winters and salty streets—I take steps to preserve its engine. But hobby vehicles can go…

It had been a long, cold night. A night begun burning on one side and freezing on the other while facing a desert campfire, then finished in a sleeping bag that refused to warm up because I had no heat to give it. Cold as in painful. Cold as in feet so iced they demanded attention, sleep coming in 20-minute packets as conscious endurance waxed and waned. It was also something of a cheat, because the thermometer—OAT instrument if you insist—in the ancient Cessna read 27° F when I slipped into the down bag at midnight and was rosily reporting 23° F when the bladder could no longer be denied a few minutes before dawn. Those numbers were reassuring; it had been a miserably cold night and I had been right…

I want to present a strategy and method to get a few more prospective airplane builders off the fence and into the workshop. This is targeted to those of us who may not be ready for the big financial and time commitment that is required for buying and building an aircraft kit. While there is no magic bullet for drastically reducing the cost of the completed aircraft kit, there are ways to ease into the project while never spending more than you can afford along the journey. And this can be done without a visit to the bank for a loan! Special feature: You can decide to completely bail (or take a pause) from the project as early in the process as you desire, with no kit or subkit to…

An airplane’s cooling system must keep the engine temperature within its operating range over the entire flight envelope and the entire range of outside air temperature (OAT) the airplane will encounter. This is not a simple task since both the amount of heat the engine must reject and the amount of airflow available to cool it vary dramatically depending on flight condition. For airplanes with a relatively small speed range from stall to cruise, or airplanes where high-speed performance is not an important mission requirement, a fixed-geometry cooling system will work well. The inlets and outlets are sized to cool the engine properly at full power and low airspeed as is typical in a maximum-performance climb. In this situation, the engine is generating the maximum amount of waste heat, and…

The brothers Wright, arguably the world’s first collaborative airplane homebuilders, were faced with a dilemma when powering their biplane glider. They needed a propeller and, there being no Spruce outlet at the time, were faced with having to make one themselves. In their analytical Midwestern fashion, they started whittling and wound up with a pair of chain-driven airscrews with amazingly adequate efficiency. We have it much easier today. There are any number of certified and Experimental aircraft propellers available to us, and long-established manufacturers will be ready to serve our needs. The art of propeller making is alive and well in the jet age. Choosing the right prop to go with your homebuilt’s engine has significant impact on the aircraft’s performance, probably second only to the powerplant selection. The designer’s…

Installing small screws into the tight confines of a deep avionics tray is a challenge that can be both annoying and frustrating. Certain trays require a screwdriver 12 to 14 inches long. Since you can’t get your hand in there to start the screws, you need to stick them to the driver. Since the screws are almost always stainless steel, a magnetized bit won’t work. The people I’ve talked to (all RV builders with Garmin stuff) resorted to a variety of solutions: multiple extensions and then masking tape, hot glue, super glue or sticky clay to hold the screw to the driver. Tape seemed to be the most common method. Glue and clay, unless you wax the screw (yet another step), can leave behind flecks of dried adhesive or clay…

Way back in 2019, I gave you a fairly deep discussion of diodes and how electrons flowed from the negative source to the positive source…no matter what Ben Franklin thought his lightning bolt kite may have discovered. And I am afraid that I used that common term without much thought. Enter a word we use rather flippantly when perusing electronic circuitry—ground. We have one person on the hook for this malapropism: G. Marconi (I use the “G” because nine times out of 10, I get Guglielmo wrong). Think about it…a metal airplane, a wire antenna ground plane, an automobile chassis, a metal radio chassis…they are all given the title “ground” without a lump of dirt in the mixture. Words like “common,” “neutral,” “negative” and a few more are quite literally…

On our July 2006 cover was the Aventura II, written about and photographed by our longtime favorite aviation writer Dave Higdon. “Egrets and herons cleared a path during my first approach to a water landing in Aero Adventure’s Aventura II amphibian, as sure of their need to leave as my doubts about what I was doing. With more than a decade passed since my last water landing in anything with wings that float, my instincts urged me to advance the throttle and head for the comfort of a dry runway. But at the urging of demo pilot Bill Simmons, I left the Rotax 912 ULS at approach power, kept the nose pointed down at about 70 mph indicated, and waited for the water to arrive.” When Dave flew the Aventura,…