Titan T-51 Mustang
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ADS-B UPdaTE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW KITPLANES AUGUST 2017 ® Titan T-51 • ADS-B • Engine Horsepower! Failure • Transition Training • Vortex Generators • Electrical Systems • Tube Bending • Cooling Fans • Scale Titan T-51 Model Testing Mustang EnGINE FAILURE BELVOIR Are You Prepared? AUGUST 2017 TRansITION TRAINING In the Shop: PUBLICATIONS • Cooling Fans Moving to Experimentals • Tube Bending VORTEX GENERATORS • Make Your Own Antenna Do They Really Work? www.kitplanes.com Clear, Vibrant Displays Meet SkyView HDX - the new Beautiful Design flagship from the market leaders in Unrivaled Control Ergonomics experimental and light sport avionics. Improved Touch Interface Capable and Compatible DynonAvionics.com [email protected] (425) 402-0433 August 2017 | Volume 34, Number 8 Flight Review 6 MARVELOUS MUSTANGS: Titan adds new engines and a B-style fuselage option to the T-51. By Patrick Panzera. Builder Spotlight 18 WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THE ADS-B SCENE? A quick review as we move closer to the 2020 deadline. By Dick Sunderland. 24 WHAT’S A NICE GUY LIKE YOU DOING IN A PLANE LIKE THIS? Making the transition from certified aircraft to Experimentals. By Todd DeVito. 18 32 SIZING AN AVIONICS COOLING FAN: How much is enough? By Norm Ellis. 38 VORTEX GENERATORS ON AN RV-8: Do they really make a difference? By Nigel Speedy. 48 ENGINE FAILURE! Are you prepared? By LeRoy Cook. 52 RAPID PROTOTYPING AND EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Scale model structural testing. By Eric Stewart. 66 ASK THE DAR: Increasing gross weight, adding IFR to operating limitations, transponder requirements. By Mel Asberry. Shop Talk 47 THE CREATIVE HOMEBUILDER: Simple tools for setting smooth pop rivets. By KITPLANES® Staff. 56 HOME SHOP MACHINIST: Tube bender Model 3. By Bob Hadley. 60 BEST PRACTICES: Electrical, part 2. By Dave Prizio. 72 AERO ’LECTRICS: Verticality. By Jim Weir. Designer’s Notebook 75 WIND TUNNEL: Gyroplanes, part 3. By Barnaby Wainfan. Exploring 2 EdITOR’S LOG: Failure of imagination. By Paul Dye. 6 64 CHECKPOINTS: Fun in cold weather. By Vic Syracuse. 78 REAR COCKPIT: The most necessary thing in aviation. By Tom Wilson. Kit Bits 4 LETTERS 67 LIST OF AdVERTISERS 68 BUILDERS’ MARKETPLACE 80 KIT STUFF: Drawing on experience. By cartoonist Robrucha. On the cover: John Williams flies Titan Aircraft’s “razorback” T-51B near Lakeland, 24 Florida. Photographed by Sheldon Heatherington. Photo Pilot: Michael Turner. For subscription information, contact KITPLANES® at 800/622-1065 or visit www.kitplanes.com/cs. KITPLANES August 2017 1 EDITOR’S LOG Failure of imagination. When the dust settled on the inves- about that. Flying itself is dangerous on because no one had ever thought about tigation of the Space Shuttle Columbia the face of it, but we mitigate the hazards them in advance. accident, the new program manager, with good design, certification, training, The biggest fears of most pilots— former Flight Director Wayne Hale, was practice, and the use of good judgment. loss of flight control, structural failure, asked by the press to simply state what When we get into the Experimental air- or fire—can all be dealt with by good failure caused the accident. Hale, a craft world, the certification part of each design and good practices in con- thoughtful, well-educated man paused design is taken away from the risk man- struction and maintenance. We know and answered with a phrase that was agement equation. We might use a certi- to design structure to much higher previously used to describe the cause fied engine, and a good designer might loads than we expect to see in flight, of the Apollo 1 fire back in 1967. “It was very well use the certification standards and we can build and inspect to make a failure of imagination,” he said. “We as their personal design criteria (many sure that the structure we fly is free just never imagined that a piece of do), but there are all sorts of little things of cracks and defects. Fire risk can be lightweight foam could knock a hole that can bring a flight to ruin—and many mitigated by using proven materials in the reinforced carbon-carbon lead- of them surprise us when they happen and assembly techniques for fuel and ing edge of the wing.” No one had ever questioned the strength of the leading edge, and therein lies the basic prob- lem with predictive failure analysis— dealing with things that you simply didn’t think of. Good risk management relies on the imagination. You have to think up all of the things that could possibly go wrong with a machine or an operation, and then once you have that list, you sit down and come up with ways to mitigate each of the risks. Some you can prevent with a redesign. Some you can make less criti- cal by adding redundancy. Others you simply end up accepting; hopefully they are extremely low probability. But all of those efforts fail to keep you safer if you have unimagined or unidentified risks. And the truth is, they are always going to be out there. Building and flying our own airplanes NASA flight controllers spend countless hours analyzing systems drawings for potential is a risky endeavor—there is no doubt failures. And they still miss those they can’t imagine. Paul Dye, KITPLANES® Editor in Chief, retired as a Lead Flight Director for NASA’s 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, as well as a Dream Tundra they recently completed. Currently, they are building a Xenos motorglider. A Paul Dye commercially licensed pilot, he has logged over 5000 hours in many different types of aircraft and is an EAA Tech Counselor and Flight Advisor, and a member of the Homebuilder’s Council. He consults and collaborates in aerospace operations and flight-testing projects across the country. 2 KITPLANES August 2017 www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes other combustible lines and containers, crimp or a corroded connection in a wire. a moving flight control surface and a as well as doing the same thing for elec- Installing wiring in an aircraft seems like fixed portion of structure—leading to a trical systems. Loss of control can be a small part of the overall build—espe- jammed or sticky control. That’s going caused by poor aerodynamic design, cially when you have something that to have a really bad result if it happens in control system failure, or failure on the looks like an airplane—but these small flight. So, is that perfectly straight, small- part of the pilot to maintain skills or and seemingly trivial installations can clearance gap that you hoped to give properly load the aircraft. lead to all sorts of problems. you an extra knot really worth it? Again, All of these “big three” fears can be More and more Experimental aircraft imagine what can happen, and don’t be mitigated if the pilot wears a parachute are flying with electronic ignition sys- afraid to think outside the proverbial box. and has the capability to bail out—but tems, many of which are dependent In fact, the only way to free our imagina- most of us don’t fly around with para- upon ship’s power to operate. Older tions is to open that box. chutes all the time, so we design and aircraft engines with magnetos will There are no trivial decisions when build so that these risks are very tiny. keep running so long as the P-lead is it comes to building an Experimental But those are things we have thought ungrounded and the engine has com- aircraft, and every one of those deci- about; how about all of the things that pression and fuel. But those electronic sions needs to be looked at with a we haven’t? Mishap reports that can be ignitions that don’t generate their own healthy dose of imagination to think traced back to design or build errors are power depend on good electrical wir- about what might go wrong. No one’s often unique—and once determined, ing to keep them in the air. Yeah, it can imagination is boundless, so don’t be we sit back and say, “Wow…I’d never be really tough to reach into the nest of afraid to ask others for their opinions thought of that before.” It’s a failure of wiring behind the engine or under the on a change; you might not agree with imagination, right there. panel to make those last few crimps, but their conclusions, but if they can come One way to have a bigger imagina- imagine the case where those crimps up with a scenario you haven’t thought tion is to study the history of accidents come undone. of, it’s a win. Imagine what can happen due to design and construction failures. I have also seen places where ther- when we all work together in Experi- I cannot tell you how many times I have mal expansion or deformation due to air mental aviation to make our planes— traced systems failures back to a bad loads has caused interference between and operations—safer. J Photo: Paul Dye KITPLANES August 2017 3 EDITORIAL Editor in Chief Paul Dye [email protected] In Memoriam—Geoff Jones “fall into lockstep,” deepening and Executive Editor Mark Schrimmer Sadly, the KITPLANES® editorial staff evening out the threads.