BUILDER SHORTCUTS BIG-SCREEN ADVICE Should you buy a partially built kit? How to plan your EFIS installation get LiveOut! the backcountry adventure— homebuilt style! NOVEMBER 2005 New Life for a www.kitplanes.com $4.99 CANADA $5.99 $4.99US $5.99CAN Classic Design Engine 11 The SkyRanger II Preservation: Pickle Before See Clearly Now You Park 0 09281 03883 2 Plexiglas Care & Feeding 101 Contents NOVEMBER 2005 VOLUME 22, NUMBER 11 On the cover: Richard VanderMeulen traveled to the Alaskan backcountry to shoot Glasair Aviation’s Sportsman 2+2. Read Brian E. Clark’s trip report on Page 4. Flight Reports 61 AERO ’LECTRICS If it’s not your transmitter, then it must be your 4 SIX PILOTS, THREE AIRPLANES, antenna; by Jim Weir. ONE GREAT ADVENTURE 72 ENGINE BEAT Flying through Alaska and Western Canada is a once- Pickle it when you park it; by Tim Kern. in-a-lifetime experience; by Brian E. Clark. Designer’s Notebook 17 SKYRANGER II 67 WIND TUNNEL A new take on a classic design makes for fun fl ying; Neglect to consider internal airfl ow, and you’ll by Dave Higdon. pay the price in drag; by Barnaby Wainfan. Builder Spotlight Exploring 37 HOW TO PROWL THE HOMEBUILT JUNGLE 2 AROUND THE PATCH Consider these fi ve factors when evaluating a Recovery from Oshkosh. Good thing we do that partially built kit; by Ron Wanttaja. just once a year! By Marc Cook. 48 LACK OF CORNCENTRATION 24 OSHKOSH 2005: BIG NEWS FROM THE BIG SHOW Another Dawn Patrol trip to Cap Girardeau, and an The developments at this year’s AirVenture fl y-in other airplane ends up in the stalks; by Dick Starks. made it one of the best in years; a staff report. 52 COMPLETIONS 65 LIGHT STUFF Builders share their successes with our readers. A transitioning segment: How the powered parachute 53 BUILD YOUR SKILLS: METAL, PART 4 industry is adjusting to LSA; by Dan Johnson. Deburring and dimpling...time consuming, repetitive, you bet. But absolutely essential; by Dan Checkoway. Kit Bits Shop Talk 3 LETTERS 64 LIST OF ADVERTISERS 32 SEE CLEARLY NOW 69 BUILDERS’ MARKETPLACE Aircraft windows are like your eyes—it’s not vanity to take care of them; by Cory Emberson. 74 THE CLASSIFIED BUILDER 41 BUILD YOUR OWN INSTRUMENT PANEL, PART 3 80 KIT STUFF You’re hot for an all-glass cockpit. What do you need to Drawing on experience; by cartoonist Robrucha. consider while you’re still building? By Ed Wischmeyer. 48 37 4 17 65 24 KITPLANES November 2005 1 Around the Patch BY MARC COOK Recovery from Oshkosh. Good thing we do that just once a year! have to confess that the annual Oshkosh extravaganza—sorry, I do realize that it’s Old Friends properly called AirVenture, but everyone I know just describes it by the name of It was a true pleasure to see old friend I the town we take over for a week and a half—leaves me in something of a tizzy. Rich Gritter at the show. You may Having worked on the production-aircraft side of the business and now fi nding myself remember his name from the Questair truly back home among the innovators and big-thinkers, I can gloat even more expan- Venture days. Back then, he and I fl ew sively about the opportunities presented to those who roll their own. the egg-shaped aircraft often, and I The tizzy? It’s just that there’s so much new, so many extremely cool products, I have always appreciated his laconic hardly know where to start. From this year’s show—the coverage of which starts on demeanor. (There is nothing worse Page 24—the highlights are almost too many to mention here. But being what my than a jumpy demo pilot.) friend Dennis Wolter (owner of Air Mod in Batavia, Ohio, and an old-motorcycle Today, Rich is involved with the prom- nut) calls a “chip head,” an electronics fanatic, I’d have to say that the rapid pro- ising HondaJet project based in Greens- gression of EFIS, electronic fl ight instrumentation, is perhaps the most appealing. boro, North Carolina. He described This technology is genuinely groundbreaking, and I’m heartened to see that it’s fl ying the twinjet with a rare twinkle of fi lling in at both the top and bottom of the market. There’s no question that so- the eye, which tells me it’s not just a called glass panels have revitalized production aircraft, if you call that revitalized. good performer but also a pleasure to Yet there will be challenges aplenty for us as electronic fl ight instruments fl y. It’s always a delight to see the good become ever more commonplace in homebuilts. Our Technical Editor, Ed Wisch- guys—smart, experienced, still enthusi- meyer, asked around at the show for the best advice in planning and executing astic—land great gigs. Well done, Rich. EFIS-based panels and got an earful. Clearly, we’ve moved away from the simplistic point-to-point wiring and comparatively noncritical systems designs of the past One Close To Home into sophisticated collections of electronics and computers that need to be care- Oshkosh brought a bit of tragedy as fully installed and thoughtfully designed to provide a high level of safety. well. One of Glasair Aviation’s Sports- One of the highlights of the show was spending time with the principals of man 2+2 demonstrators—in fact, the Xerion, a company ready to delivery a new engine monitor to the market. (What, same airplane you see on this month’s another one?) Called the AuRACLE, the instrument packs a lot of features and cover and in Brian Clark’s superb some very bright thinking into one or two compact boxes. (What’s with the crazy story about fl ying in the backcountry— names? I can see why you wouldn’t call it Ted’s Pretty Good Gizmo Box, but...) crashed. Sadly, the pilot, Mission Avia- The AuRACLE’s color LCD shows all the major engine and system parameters in an tion Training Academy founder Mike intuitive way, partly by use of long, curved bar graphs. The reason I like this design Crowell, was killed. After considerable is that it largely mimics the movement of the related controls—full forward for the debate, we’ve decided to push ahead with maximum values—and that the scaling of the bar graph is such that you should be a story featuring that airplane—a story able to gauge small variations without having to scan the digital numeric display. that was months in the making, sure, but As you’d expect, the AuRACLE contains pickups for all EGTs and CHTs, along also one that celebrates much of what with oil temperature and pressure, manifold pressure and rpm, volts and amps, got us into fl ying and keeps us there. fuel fl ow and instrument vacuum. It also has a horsepower computer that is the This is particularly hard because I fi rst I’ve seen that actually does it right. When you’re on the rich side of peak EGT, met Mike late last year as he was hard the AuRACLE calculates horsepower from mass fl ow; that is, by a combination of at work fi tting a small-block Chevy manifold pressure and rpm. Because the power curve relative to mixture is fairly to an Express airframe. His good fl at out there, it’s a good scheme; in fact, the one most monitors use to calculate humor and intelligence was immedi- power. But when you take the engine lean of peak, the AuRACLE changes over ately evident, and he was more than to a fuel-fl ow based calculation, which is surprisingly accurate for a range of en- generous with his time. MATA trains gines. (And, in any case, you will have uploaded your engine’s specifi cs through pilots and takes on special projects like the front-panel USB port, which also exports unencripted data, taken once every this to further the cause of missionary two seconds, to a “pen” device for transfer to your PC or Mac.) There are many aviation—as worthy an endeavour as other clever touches in the design, including a confi guration with a remote box you’re likely to fi nd. I can’t know what that can be mounted ahead of the fi rewall! Imagine not stringing dozens of wires Mike’s family is going through, but wish through the fi rewall... to offer my sincerest condolences. 2 KITPLANES November 2005 www.kitplanes.com Letters November 2005 Volume 22, Number 11 You Did What With Your Medical? April 2005 Volume 22, Number 4 I think you guys misspoke when you said, in the September LSA story, that EDITORIAL “...you don’t necessarily have to go out and buy a new airplane if you lose Editor-in-Chief Marc Cook your medical...” As I understand it, if you lose your medical—fail the exam [email protected] or have it revoked—you are not eligible to fl y as a Sport Pilot. Did I miss Editor Brian E. Clark Technical Editor Ed Wischmeyer something here? Art Director Suzanne Stackle J.T. Romer Contributing Editors Ken Armstrong, You’re right, J.T., and it was poor phrasing on our part. Guidance on the rule says Mary Bernard, Dan Checkoway, Cory Emberson, Dave Higdon, Dan Johnson, Gary R. Jones, Geoffrey P. Jones, John M. Larsen, that “you must have either an FAA airman medical certifi cate or a current and valid Howard Levy, Rick Lindstrom, Dick Starks, U.S.