® MAY 2014 ICK? T www.kitplanes.com ’S ON YOUR S ’S ON YOUR T Hunin the Sun the Fighting Still GreatWar P P! O GET A GRIP! WHA U SH HE Starter Troubleshooting 101 Wheel Alignment Panel UpgradesPanel T Protect Your Cowl Cowl Protect Your The Journey Begins From the Heat HIELDS Gyroplane M912 VORTEX • • • IN S AND A BEARHAWK AND THREE GUYS a Low and Slow inLow and KITPLANES MAY 2014 Vortex M912 Gyroplane • Get a Grip • Cowling Heat Shields • Panel Upgrades 1 • Starter Troubleshooting • Wheel Alignment • Building a Bearhawk LSA BELVOIR PUBLICATIONS May 2014 | Volume 31, Number 5 Reader Review 6 VORTEX M912 GYROPLANE: Low, slow…and fun! By Karl Storjohann. Builder Spotlight 14 BUILDING THE BEARHAWK LSA: The start of a long, enjoyable tale. By Ken Scott. 18 GET A GRIP! Choices in the stick grip market. By Tom Wilson. 26 HEAT sHIELDS: Protecting your cowling from excess heat. By Eric Stewart. 14 31 HOW THE PROS DO IT: Jim Kimball Enterprises—building the better biplane. By Dan Horton. 36 STRAIGHT AND NARROW: Wheel alignment 101. By Dave Forster. 42 ERROR CHAIN: First flight surprise! Canopy—closed and latched? By Mike Newall. 44 ALL ABOUT AvIONIcs: Panel upgrades—planning the project. By Stein Bruch. 73 AsK THE DAR: Operating limitations, selling a homebuilt, aircraft that can’t be registered. By Mel Asberry. Shop Talk 48 MAINTENANCE MATTERS: Look beyond the starter motor to solve starting problems. By Dave Prizio. 55 HOME SHOP MACHINIST: DIY safety wire drilling. By Bob Hadley. 58 PRACTICAL ELECTRICAL: Battery facts and fables for the aircraft builder—part 2. By Robert L. Nuckolls, III. 77 AERO ’LECTRIcs: The ultimate ground plane. By Jim Weir. Designer’s Notebook 74 WIND TUNNEL: Aeroelasticity II—aileron flutter. By Barnaby Wainfan. Exploring 6 2 EDITOR’S LOG: Eye’s on. By Paul Dye. 5 WHAT’S NEW: Strut camera mount from Aircraft Spruce. By KITPLANES® staff. 61 THE DAWN PATROL: Fun with the Hun in the sun. By Dick Starks. Kit Bits 4 LETTERS 67 LIST OF ADVERTISERS 68 BUILDERS’ MARKETPLACE 80 KIT STUFF: Drawing on experience. By cartoonist Robrucha. 61 On the cover: Karl Storjohann on short final in his Vortex M912 gyroplane. Photographed by Cindy Peters at Hay Springs Municipal Airport in Nebraska. KITPLANES May 2014 1 EDITOR’S LOG Eyes on. “Just be careful in there Mr. Dye— hands-on airplane building and mainte- a person nervous and afraid. But this those boron struts are each worth more nance experience, I was a shoe-in for the inspection party was more of a celebra- than your annual salary!” visit. And I never passed up an opportu- tion—a coming out with a challenge by At the time, I was peering through the nity to visit the Mojave. the builder: please, find the flaws in my hatch into the internal wing structure of The inspection was like any other project! He was open and honest about Rockwell Orbital Vehicle #105—soon to airplane inspection—you look for fit the fact that he wanted help, and not be known as Space Shuttle Endeavour— and finish, acceptable cable and tubing afraid to take criticism and critical com- and getting ready to crawl inside to do retention, safety wire—all of the things ments about his work. a pre-delivery airframe inspection. The that make the craft airworthy. Obvi- Truth be told, it was one of the nic- technician helping me get ready to enter ously, the men who built it felt it was up est building jobs I have seen in all my the wing wanted to make sure I under- to snuff, or they never would have let us years of working on airplanes and being stood just how important it was to watch in the building—but even then, the air- a tech counselor. When a builder takes my step. The struts in question—very frame began collecting a myriad of col- the time to lay the flat EGT wires against thin-walled cylinders with attachment ored Post-it notes highlighting areas we each other in a perfectly rectangular points on each end—actually formed wanted addressed. This wasn’t a knock bundle, you know he has paid attention the structure of the wing “ribs” and were against anyone—it just sometimes takes to details. easily damaged if you weren’t careful in a fresh set of eyes to spot anomalies that Yet as good as it was, there were at moving about. Summoning up the skills have become familiar to those too close least a dozen things that other builders I learned as a cave explorer in my youth to the project. found that the owner needed to look at. (“damage nothing” was the motto), I All of this was on my mind recently as I I personally found only one thing that I crawled into the wing with my flashlight slowed down to enter the pattern at San thought needed careful attention, and in my mouth and hoped not to tear my Martin/South County Airport in Santa that is the point of having multiple “eyes white bunny suit. Clara County, California. The builder of on” the target plane—everyone will find The purpose of this “management a soon-to-be-flying RV-7 had advertised something different. Inspection” was to determine if the air- an “airplane inspection party,” inviting Don’t be afraid to let others find the frame was in a condition good enough builders who were interested to come flaws in your work; the truth is, anyone for NASA to accept it from the contractor and pick apart his work before calling for competent enough to find your mistakes who was building it in Palmdale, Califor- the DAR to come for a licensing visit. Hav- and omissions has made countless num- nia. If it passed muster, it would then be ing a large number of experienced build- bers of their own. It’s how we all learned. shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in ers and opinionated pilots (are there any Take the inspection to heart and realize Florida for final finishing and equipment other kind?) drop in to dissect your many that you are probably just inches from installation before its first flight in about years of careful work takes intestinal the finish line—take your time, analyze two years. NASA assembled a group of fortitude of the highest order—and it the comments, and fix what needs to senior engineers with management cre- shows a commitment to honest, open be fixed. dentials for this two-day trip to the high risk management that should be our Whether you’re building a Cub or a desert to fill a square on the checklist to standard in the Experimental world. space shuttle, everything is open to scru- that first flight, and since I was one of Inspections can be like check rides or tiny—it’s how we keep each other alive the few folks on the prospective list with a test in school: something that makes to fly another day.J Paul Dye 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 home- builder, he began flying and working on airplanes as a teen and has experience with a wide range of construction techniques and materials. He currently flies an RV-8 that he built in 2005 Paul Dye and an RV-3 that he recently completed with his pilot wife. A commercially licensed pilot, he has logged over 4500 hours in many different types of aircraft. When not writing on aviation topics, he consults and collaborates in aerospace operations and flight testing projects. 2 KITPLANES May 2014 www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes At just $4,375*, it won’t cost you a wing and a tail. Fact is, only the Garmin G3X™ can give you so much capability, situational awareness and cockpit integration for just $4,375. And that includes Garmin SVX™ synthetic vision with standard 3-D “pathways” flight route guidance. Plus a built-in GPS receiver, feature rich moving map, solid-state ADAHRS reference, terrain/obstacles alerting, engine monitoring, and pre-loaded FliteCharts® and SafeTaxi® with built-in geo-referencing capability. And you get all that and more for the ridiculously low price of just $4,375. For details, visit Garmin.com/experimental ©2013 Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries ™ *Minimum Advertised Price for the G3X flight system only. Antennas and some connector kits sold separately. G3X Systems 17442 G3X Lower Price Ad-KitPlanes.indd 1 5/7/13 7:45 AM EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Paul Dye [email protected] UL Power Update column than I did in four years of aero- Managing Editor Mark Schrimmer nautical engineering school. Keep up the Art Direction Dan Maher Although we strive for 100% accuracy, Editorial Director Paul Bertorelli we do make occasional errors. In our great work. Contributing Editors Larry Anglisano, Roy Beisswenger, March 2014 issue, the table on page 27 PETER KUYKENDALL Chuck Berthe, LeRoy Cook, Robert Hadley, Dan Horton, for UL Power engines was inadvertently Ed Kolano, Amy Laboda, Rick scrambled. We regret the mistake and Dick Stark Responds: Just about every- Lindstrom, Dave Martin, Robert Nuckolls, Dave Prizio, Doug have published the correct table below. where we go, we are made aware that Rozendaal, Dean Sigler, Dick We thank the many readers and UL our planes are not authentic. You know Starks, Eric Stewart, Barnaby Power who brought this error to our what? We don’t care.