The Quintessential Light Homebuilt
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RISING FROM THE WRECKAGE: A STUNNING BEARCOUPE KITPLANES June 2020 Go-Around That Explained • About Maintenance Experimentals • Carb for Panels • Audio a Prospector From • A Bearcoupe Cruzer Zenith • ULPower’d Kitfox Buying a Used ® The SPEAK FREELY Your Guide to Quintessential Audio Panels Light Homebuilt SECOND TIME CHARM JUNE 2020 A Zenith Cruzer for BELVOIR PUBLICATIONS In the Shop: the Backcountry • Fix Your Bose Headset MIXER MAINTENANCE • The Case for Cantilever Wings • Easy Battery Charger Know When to Overhaul Your Carb www.kitplanes.com CONTENTSJune 2020 | Volume 37, Number 6 Builder Spotlight 8 CHECKERED PAST: Building the Bearcoupe from 3D plans. By Scott M. Spangler. 18 BACKCOUNTRY CRUZER: Gary Motley makes the most of the Zenith CH 750’s performance spectrum. By Scott M. Spangler. 26 BUYING USED—KITFOX: Always in high demand, be ready to act fast when you find one you like. By LeRoy Cook. 36 AVIONICS BOOT CAMP—AUDIO PANELS: Garmin and PS Engineering introduce full-featured audio systems aimed at the Experimental market. By Larry Anglisano. 36 44 WHERE HAVE ALL THE HOMEBUILTS GONE? Thousands of E/A-B aircraft have been removed from the rolls, but most of them haven’t existed for decades. By Ron Wanttaja. 48 CRIMPING STYLE: Repairing the cable on a Bose headset. By Dave Forster. Shop Talk 54 PLANE AND SIMPLE: Prepare for a charge. By Jon Croke. 60 HOME SHOP MACHINIST: The other P factor. By Bob Hadley. 62 MAINTENANCE MATTERS: Carburetor maintenance. By Dave Prizio. 72 AERO ’LECTRICS: Vertical, vertical and so very practical. By Jim Weir. 79 UNAIRWORTHY: Past due ELT batteries. By Vic Syracuse. Designer’s Notebook 76 WIND TUNNEL: Design process—cantilever wings. By Barnaby Wainfan. Exploring 2 EDITOR’S LOG: Experimental versus certified. By Marc Cook. 4 FREE FLIGHT: In-flight weather—practice for survival. 26 By Paul Dye. 56 BUILDING TIME: The one true airspeed. By Kerry Fores. 58 OUT OF THE BLUE: Go around. By Myron Nelson. 78 REAR COCKPIT: On getting dark. By Tom Wilson. Kit Bits 67 LIST OF ADVERTISERS 68 BUILDERS’ MARKETPLACE 80 ARCHIVE: Looking back at the September 2001 issue. On the cover: John McBean, president of Kitfox Aircraft, enjoys a flight in an S7 Super 8 Sport on a near-perfect Idaho day. Photographed by Richard VanderMeulen. For subscription information, contact KITPLANES® at 800/622-1065 or visit www.kitplanes.com/cs. KITPLANES June 2020 1 EDITOR’S LOG Experimental Vs. Certified As I go through our back issues for upgraded. In those days, there was no through the canopies of parked RVs and our Archive page and relive the world dedicated product or heavily strategized Lancairs and pined for the advanced, of homebuilding in the 1980s (and, by marketing plan for Experimentals. We lightweight, low-cost avionics they saw. extension, even before that), it strikes me roamed the boneyards and airshows We all sort of know this without thinking how far we’ve come. Once considered looking for deals, also spinning by the too hard about it. true outliers, somewhat crazy crafts- local airport bulletin board hopeful to The reason I bring it up here? Over the men/renegades building flimsy contrap- find a 3x5 card thumbtacked there on the last few weeks, I’ve been in the process of tions in their basements from nothing cork, promising some dream component. testing new products in my GlaStar. (Once more than discarded two-by-fours and begun, this process never stops. Paul Dye swing set parts—not true, of course— Now, However warned me, and yet I failed to heed!) homebuilders are now tantalizingly main- It’s a whole different thing today. I was Part of this latest round has involved stream. On any airport of a certain size, lucky enough to watch this emerge fitting Garmin’s new GI 275 round instru- there will be an airplane being begun or through the 1990s: a strong, Experimen- ments. I’ll give you a full review once readied for first flight—and anywhere in tal-first product set that fully leveraged I’ve finished this work and have enough between. On mine, there are many. the freedoms we have as designers and flying time to form a full opinion, but In those early days, homebuilders took builders. This is how we got custom let’s say the installation process—equal what they could get. Used engines, often engines from the big manufacturers. parts wire cutting and book learning, it from wrecked Cessna 150s or Cherokees, This is how companies like TruTrak Flight should be said—has been more than rebuilt for our needs. Avionics found at Systems, now part of Honeywell and a little interesting. What’s more, this the local fly market ready for a second BendixKing, got started. This is why, for endeavor has answered my initial ques- lease on life after the Bonanza owner years, pilots of certified aircraft peered tion about why the new Garmin boxes are expensive relative to the existing product for Experimentals. This answer came as the differences were laid bare in one image. In the pro- cess of wiring and plumbing the panel, I had two GI 275s mounted next to a pair of G5s and saw, from the back, just how radically different these instruments are in terms of approach. The G5 is light, compact, mostly plastic. It’s inexpensive for what it does and has been, in my experience, thoroughly reliable. It’s not very deep and can be readied for use with little more than connections to power, ground and the pitot-static system. Even the GPS antenna is built in. The G5 reflects The two GI 275s on the far right compared to the pair of G5s in the middle. One look says a lot about the intentions for each product. Marc Cook is KITPLANES’ Editor in Chief once again, after a hiatus playing with motorcycles and learning about e-commerce. A veteran special-interest journalist, Marc has built two airplanes, an Aero Designs Pulsar XP and a Glasair Aviation Sportsman, and now owns a 150-hp, almost- as-simple-as-it-gets GlaStar based in central Oregon. Marc has 4500 hours spread over 200-plus Marc Cook types and three decades of flying. 2 KITPLANES June 2020 www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes Garmin’s apparent belief that it could go to a modern navigator with just four wires upon discovering that you’re using only in any aircraft, from simple lightweights to share nav and EFIS/air-data back and a fraction of the instrument’s capabili- to high-end stuff as a backup to larger forth, seamlessly. It can take that info and ties, but paying for them all. You don’t glass. I hasten to call the G5 toy-like, but it output analog signals to autopilots and have to, and that’s my point. Sometimes was clearly designed with cost, complex- accept analog signals from older naviga- you have to look back to appreciate how ity and low weight in mind. tors. It is, from both design and execution good we have it. The profusion of Experi- Now look at the GI 275. It’s a tank. With standpoints, an amazing device. mental-only (or Experimental-first) prod- a die-cast aluminum case, hearty bezel ucts is, when you think about it, fairly out and thick knobs with we-mean-business And So? of proportion to the number of aircraft detents, the 275 feels ready to go into Imagine that the Experimental sub-mar- out there. (See Ron Wanttaja’s piece on a King Air, which, well, it is. The battery ket for cool, innovative products never Page 44 for more on homebuilt registra- module—optional for the non-essential materialized. Then imagine ogling an tion numbers.) We are all the beneficia- flight displays but required for the pri- instrument like the 275 and wonder- ries of relatively low-cost, high-capability mary attitude version—snaps into a slot ing how it might fit into our machines. pieces for our aircraft—engines, accesso- with a satisfying thunk, is bolstered by Imagine teaching yourself how to man- ries, avionics, all of it. As much as I love to rubber stoppers and fits under a tight- age a pair of 78-pin high-density con- renew my understanding of homebuilt fitting, metal cover. I once had a Beech nectors when your day job isn’t as an innovation in its early days, I’m in abso- Bonanza with older Collins radios and avionics installer. Imagine your dismay lutely no rush to go back. J looking over the GI 275 reminded me of how overbuilt certified avionics can EDITORIAL ADVERTISING be. At 3 pounds, the GI 275 with internal Editor in Chief Marc Cook Advertising Director Tom Bliss ADAHRS is three times the weight of a [email protected] Belvoir Aviation Group [email protected] 602/625-6815 G5. It’s also longer, though not as deep as Editor at Large Paul Dye Executive Editor Mark Schrimmer Advertising Representative Ivy Ericksen the cranky old vacuum DG that I’m finally [email protected] kicking to the curb. Art Direction Dan Maher 612/743-8512 More telling than the length of the Contributing Editors LeRoy Cook, Jon Croke, BUSINESS OFFICE Kerry Fores, Robert Hadley, Belvoir Media Group, LLC install manual, nearly 500 pages, are Dan Horton, Louise Hose, 535 Connecticut Avenue, Norwalk, CT 06854-1713 the ways the GI 275 talks to the rest of Amy Laboda, Dave Martin, the airplane. In the G5, reflecting the Sid Mayeux, Myron Nelson, EDITORIAL OFFICE David Paule, Dave Prizio, Ken 535 Connecticut Avenue, Norwalk, CT 06854-1713 much more open architecture found Scott, Dick Starks, Eric Stewart, [email protected] in homebuilts, a CAN bus system (two Vic Syracuse, Barnaby Wainfan, Jim Weir, Tom Wilson.