KITPLANES AN INSIDE LOOK AT HOW FLIGHT REVIEWS ARE DONE JULY 2012 RANS ® YOUR HOMEBUILT AIRCRAFT AUTHORITY S-7S Flight Review • Whirl Wind’s New RANS Scimitar Blades S-7S • How to Choose the Right Prop • Solar-Powered Refinements Aircraft Galore! • Working • Better Handling with • Greater Efficiency Aircraft • Stylish STOL Cables Performance • Flight Review JULY 2012 Primer THE PERFECT MARRIAGE H ow to Mate a Prop to Your Engine BELVOIR BASIC CABLE Some Like Sun: The Future of PUBLICATIONS R ig, Splice, Crimp and Inspect Solar-Powered Aircraft TALE OF A SCIMITAR Trying Out Whirl Wind’s New Blade July 2012 | Volume 29, Number 7 Flight Reports 8 RANS S-7S COURIER: Randy Schlitter and the gang continue to push and prod, tweak and improve this utility airplane; by Marc Cook. Builder Spotlight 18 SWITCH BLADE: There’s a lot to like about Whirl Wind’s new scimitar prop blade for the Rotax; by Tom Wilson. 24I F REWALL FORWARD: CHOOSING A PROP FOR YOUR PROJECT: In a discussion of aero engines, there’s always 56 time to talk prop; by Dave Prizio. 42 UNUSUAL ATTITUDE: Considerations when installing an alternative engine; by Patrick Panzera. 45 BUILD IT BETTER: Where’s your margin? By Paul Dye. 48 MAINTENANCE MATTERS: Cable classroom; by Steve Ells. 52 COmpLETIONS: Builders share their successes. 53 DW O N TO EarTH: Just about every kit aircraft is custom; by Amy Laboda. 65 FREE FLIGHT: Anatomy of a modification; by Paul Dye. 74 ASK THE DAR: Part 103, LSA and flight-test areas; by Mel Asberry. Shop Talk 78 AERO ’LECTRICS: The LED strip club, part 2; by Jim Weir. Designer’s Notebook 75 WIND TUNNEL: A look at ducted fans; by Barnaby Wainfan. Exploring 2 EDITOR’S LOG: Show season; by Mary Bernard. 5 WHAT’S NEW: MGL’s small V6 com radio and the HXr EFIS from Grand Rapids Technologies; edited by Suzanne B. Bopp. 6 VIEWFINDER: Clarity on airworthiness directives for homebuilts? By Marc Cook. 32 HOMEBUILDING TOOLS: A conceptual approach to 8 building looks beyond mere physical tools; by Terry Edwards. 36 Ins IDE KITPLANES®: FLIGHT REVIEW PROCEDURES It’s a lot more than kick the tires and light the fires; by Marc Cook. 56 ALTErnaTIVE ENERGIES: Solar-powered AC: big, slow and expensive; by Dean Sigler. 62 L IGHT STUFF: Leveraging your fun; by Roy Beisswenger. Kit Bits 4 LETTERS 68 LIST OF ADVERTISERS 69 BUILDERS’ MARKETPLACE 80 KIT STUFF: Drawing on experience; by cartoonist Robrucha. 18 On the cover: Richard VanderMeulen photographed the RANS S-7S in Lakeland, Florida. KITPLANES July 2012 1 EDITOR’S LOG Show season. And so it begins. It’s been just a week with 8.4- (AF-5500) or 10.4-inch (AF-5600) though the hangars were bustling in the and a half since we returned from a visit high-resolution LCD displays. Knobs that afternoon. Some major players such as to Florida for the Sun ’n Fun fly-in, where function as buttons help eliminate the Cirrus were noticeably absent. The LSA the weather cooperated gloriously. need for menus used in other EFISes. and ultralight areas were sparsely popu- During the week we watched Dick • JP Instruments showed its new lated, and there was talk that the LSA VanGrunsven studying the cockpit of his EDM-900 engine analyzer, whose small Mall, ultralight and rotorcraft areas might first homebuilt, the RV-1, to determine size and VGA display make it a nice choice be combined next year. Aerotrek’s Rob whether he would fit into it decades for panel-space-challenged homebuilts. Rollison had a wonderful idea about a after the plane was originally built. By the The full-featured single-engine primary “panther path” that would wind through time Friday rolled around, the Friends of instrument has a rectangular face but fits the RV-1 team were pretty certain they’d in a 3-inch round hole. come up with a way to make this hap- • Corbi Air’s Alto LSA out of the Czech pen. But seeing VanGrunsven ponder Republic was on display at the LSA the problem each day was a testament to Mall. The company claims it is the first his sustained interest in even the earliest LSA with air conditioning, which adds of his designs. about 22 pounds to the weight without I’ll offer a few other tidbits from the an alternator and 35 pounds with one. show that we hope to learn more about The AC unit will also be sold separately. in coming months: The Alto can be built from a kit, and the • The Progressive Aerodyne group anticipated price is $45,000 to $50,000. had a folding-wing version of its kitbuilt • Marc Ausman of Vertical Power SeaRey amphibian that was being road- exhibited his remarkable new VP-400 tested to see if it would hold up well backup EFIS that can fly the airplane to under the pressures of trailering. If it the best runway in an emergency situa- Dick VanGrunsven inspects the restored does, this option may make an appealing tion. It is being included in the panels of RV-1 with great intensity. design even more so. some Lancair Evolutions, among others. • Garmin had announced its new • World Aircraft Company displayed the trees (providing shade) and link the navaid Pilot app for tablets and smart its new Vision/Sentinel aircraft, which main show grounds with the outlying phones just before the show, and offered are one and the same except the exhibits, offering a variety of vendor a demo of its crisp and straightforward Vision is intended for the kit market, wares and refreshments along the way. trip planning, weather and e-flight bag and the Sentinel will be outfitted for Still, it’s quality not quantity that ven- capabilities. Company reps said they are government/law enforcement work. dors heed, and we heard from more than working on a number of new things for WAC also plans to introduce a low- one kit manufacturer that they had sold Oshkosh, but would not elaborate. wing design at Oshkosh. airplanes at the show. The feeling among • Glasair Aviation’s Mikael Via said the • Velocity’s intriguing V-Twin was on some we spoke with was that despite the company is now using the Advanced hand, having accumulated a few hours competition in our arena, we’re all in this Flight Systems 5000-series EFIS in its before arriving. One of its more visible together, and the goal should be to grow Sportsman panels, and the new units features, beyond the twin engines, is a the homebuilt community so that the ris- were displayed at AFS’s booth. The design large and distinctive tail. ing tide will…well, you know. Sounds like combines high-speed microprocessing Overall, SNF seemed lightly attended, a good idea to me. J The product of two parents with Lockheed Aerospace careers, Mary grew up with aviation, prompting her to pursue pilot training as an adult. Her father, a talented tool-and-die maker and planner, instilled in her an abiding interest in how things are built. For more than a decade, Mary Bernard she has been a contributing writer and Managing Editor for KITPLANES®. 2 KITPLANES July 2012 Photo: Mary Bernard It does more than you’d ever imagine, for less than you might expect. Yes, there are other glass options out there. But the fact is, only Garmin G3X™ can give you this much capability, redundancy and cockpit integration for anything close to its new lower price. With single-display systems priced as low as $5,995, G3X now fits comfortably into even more experimental/ kitplane and light sport (LSA) avionics budgets. The package features Garmin’s SVX™ synthetic vision – now enhanced with standard 3-D “pathways” flight route guidance. Up to three of the 7-inch G3X glass displays can be combined to create a full reversionary PFD/MFD suite with built-in GPS receiver, ADAHRS reference, terrain/obstacles alerting, advanced autopilot integration1, and pre-loaded FliteCharts® and SafeTaxi® that come with built-in geo-referencing capability. There’s also support for optional TIS traffic alerting, engine instrument system (EIS) monitoring, and built-in XM WX™ satellite weather2 with NEXRAD. Compare and you’ll see: Anybody can put glass in your panel. But for the clearest view of the future, look to the Garmin G3X. Follow the leader. NASDAQ GRMN ©2012 Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries 1 Optional autopilot sold separately 2 XM available with GDU 375. Subscription required (sold separately). Garmin.com 13870 G3X Dual Display Ad-Kitplanes.indd 1 4/11/12 12:59 PM EDITORIAL Editor Mary Bernard [email protected] Perils of PIO those of a single-seat aircraft, then it Associate Editor Suzanne B. Bopp is not surprising that a PIO can be set Editor at Large Marc Cook I must take exception to the statement, Senior Editor Paul Dye “The BD-5 suffered from a PIO prob- up, especially when he retracts the Art Direction Dan Maher landing gear for the first time. Again, Contributing Editors Chuck Berthe, Roy Beisswenger, lem, potentially worsened by sensitive Stein Bruch, Paul Dye, controls” in the March 2012 Wind not a design fault, but rather the pilot Steve Ells, Ed Kolano, Tunnel article “Failure to launch.” This not being aware that when he pulls the Amy Laboda, Rick Lindstrom Dave Martin, Paul Nafziger, is one of the myths and misconceptions landing-gear handle toward him, the Dave Prizio, Dick Starks, about the BD-5 and is simply not true. natural tendency is to counter the force Barnaby Wainfan, Jim Weir of the left hand by bracing and pushing Webmaster Omar Filipovic Dave Martin, past editor of Cartoonist Robrucha KITPLANES® magazine, said in the forward with the right hand on the article “The BD-5 Lives” in January control stick.