From the Experimental/Amateur-Built category’s emergence in 1947 through the founding of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) in 1953, the classification grew slowly—in part because building on your own meant doing everything: welding, working with fabric, painting, upholstering, wiring, and plumbing. Once you’d found all the raw materials you needed, of course.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the idea of “kit” airplanes became a serious thing. Frank Christensen is often credited for kick-starting the industry as we know it, providing builders of his Christen Eagle virtually everything they needed to build the airframe. All carefully packaged. All accounted for and tested to work with his airplane. No more cut-and-try, no more scrounging for a set of brakes that might work—or only work with serious modification. For a large part of that project, the parts fit together, turning what had often been a lot of hand fabrication into much more of an assembly process. Then came Burt Rutan and his moldless-fiberglass machines, first the VariEze and then the Long-EZ—to be followed by dozens of similar airplanes that promised greatly reduced build times alongside their impressive performance credentials.

• READ MORE: Ultimate Issue: Are You the One for That First Flight?

By the 1980s, the speed race was on, with Glasair and Lancair battling it out to make the fastest sport airplanes available. They hewed to a simple idea: Put as much horsepower into as small an airframe as you could get away with. Impressive top speeds came, but the real impact was actually behind the scenes. As the designs got faster, they had to become much stronger. Early homebuilts pulled from a rich tapestry of Piper Cub-like airplanes (along with the Cub itself, naturally), where speeds were necessarily low, aerodynamics comparatively forgiving, and the horsepower count was mostly what you could afford.

When the engineering requirements increased for the “average” homebuilt, so did expectations of what the kit would encompass. Early designs anticipated that you’d be able to weld your own fuselage tubes, engine mount, and exhaust system, for example.

From the late 1970s and into the next two decades, builder expectations changed radically. Every new kit was designed to be easier to build, either because the design itself was simpler, or because more of the tedious work had been done at the factory. In time, every flight-critical component would come to be built by professionals, either at the factory proper or by trusted subcontractors. They, as pros, used the right tooling and had the expertise to ensure that the parts were accurately built, typically to a much higher standard than the typical builder could muster.

• READ MORE: Latest CubCrafters Design Looks Back and Ahead

Which brings us to the opening question: Why aren’t there new kit companies popping up left and right, like we had in the latter part of the ’70s and through the ’80s? It’s a simple question with a multipart answer.

Let’s start with builder expectations. For the last three decades, experimental aviation has been in its maturity phase. The best-run and -funded companies chose to incrementally develop their products while working to build better factories. Investment in new tooling technologies, including CNC (computer numerically controlled) machining and, especially, punch-press machines, helped drive almost unseen development. If you look at, say, an early Van’s RV-6 and then consider a recent-build RV-7, you might conclude they’re very similar airplanes.

They’re not. The early RV-6 required a lot more fabrication by the builder and had, by modern standards, fewer semi-finished components. Meaning, the builder was responsible for a great deal of both assembly and alignment because of the need to locate parts relative to one another and drill holes in exactly the right place. Moving on to the current version, which uses something called matched-hole construction, the job gets significantly easier because the parts become self-aligning. Each mating part has the rivet holes placed in such a way that they only go together one way. You’re either way off or right on.

Even with that, though, the earlier versions required the builder to partially assemble large parts of the airplane, drill those locating holes to final size, then disassemble to remove burrs from the drilling process, primer between skins, and commit a few other steps before the parts could be reassembled and then riveted. Today’s technology involves the factory making those holes to final size, meaning that no further drilling operations are required. Assemble the pieces, make sure the surfaces align properly and there are no burrs or defects with the holes, then begin riveting. Removing builder steps helps cut the assembly time and reduces the chances of a mistake. And while it’s true the factory can make mistakes, it’s far more likely any “oops” will come from the builder’s hand.

These time-saving steps cost money for the builder but especially for the company. And they’re really not optional in today’s kit world. Builders expect a high level of completion and that every effort be made to reduce  both build time and the chances for builder error.

I asked this question of a handful of kit companies: Let’s say a tornado came through on a weekend and leveled your plant, what would it take to start again? The answer: between $5 million and $15 million. And that’s assuming you have your design and other intellectual properties already in place. Start the whole effort from zero? Perhaps double, according to my sources.

There’s more keeping this industry in the mature phase than pure economics. In the early days, there was a lot more tolerance for building one-offs and taking risks with startup companies. But those heady days were punctuated by a few marginal companies taking deposits and going under before all the kits or aircraft components were delivered. Some of these companies, trying to elbow their way to the front, found themselves unable to commit the kind of arduous, expensive development process all really good airplanes require. Not that they were dangerous, necessarily, but in many cases the last few clicks of refinement didn’t happen, at least not right away.

As a result, builders became more conservative over time, favoring the established companies that seemed to perform the development work and proved to have the financial grounding to continue producing kit components in a reasonable amount of time. They were also trending toward being followers rather than pioneers, in the sense that choosing a popular make and model gave them a built-in support group at the airport. That’s how the most popular brands became the default choice, making it harder for new entrants to gain a foothold.

• READ MORE: Van’s Aircraft Announces Recovery Plan

Cost is also a factor. Established companies have the advantage of amortizing the cost of the factory, which puts less of a burden on today’s kit prices. In fact, most kits have gone up in price mainly due to increases in the cost of raw materials. And that’s before you look at powerplant and avionics price increases. The kit market has always been price sensitive, so a company that has a stable product line with moderate costs, plenty of happy builders, support groups, and numerous flying examples has an unfair advantage over the newcomers.

But change is coming with the expansion of 3D printing and other new manufacturing techniques. Not that airplanes will, in the near future, be 3D-printed appliances, but that the technology allows for faster prototyping and the possibility of better, more accurate, more easily changeable molds for composite aircraft. (Traditional molds are intensely time consuming to create, which is why companies try to get the most out of them by not changing or updating models any more often than they have to.) And we’re not even considering the possibility of electric aircraft or other powerplant alternatives.

We may look back on this period of homebuilt aircraft as a decades-long time of stability and conventionality, but it’s not for a lack of imagination or wonder. Today’s Experimentals are the product of mature, relatively conservative companies providing the market precisely what it wants.

Tomorrow? Good question.

This feature first appeared in the Summer 2024 Ultimate Issue print edition.

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Virgil Irwin, a Bearhawk 5 builder himself, has taken over for longtime owner Mark Goldberg. Generally speaking, it will be business as usual for the company, which has a manufacturing facility in Mexico. Irwin has moved other aspects of kit production from Texas to Fairview, Oklahoma, about 75 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.

Why the change? Goldberg said that “after turning 70 years old 20 months ago, I began to think it was time to let someone younger take charge of the company.”

Irwin, a builder, was no stranger to Goldberg and Bearhawk.

“At the time, I was in search of a utility airplane that could serve overseas in a remote environment,” Irwin said. “I needed true off-airport capability with great cross-country performance.”

He would be the first kit customer of the six-place Model 5. That airplane would eventually be shown at EAA AirVenture 2023 and then began some discussions about the company itself. Irwin, a serial entrepreneur since his late teens, wondered if Goldberg was ready to retire at about the same time Goldberg was thinking that very thing.

Goldberg is clearly excited about this new challenge and hugely complementary of the work designer Bob Barrows and Goldberg did. In particular, Irwin has praise for the Mexico facility, saying it’s clean and efficient and, perhaps most important, has many longtime employees as well as a steady stream of those wanting to join. It’s located near a Volkswagen manufacturing facility but it’s not hard to compete for the workers.

“We pay them well and they have a real sense of belonging,” Irwin said.

For the short term, Irwin is concentrating on updating the kits surrounding the Model 5, the company’s largest offering and likely to be the most popular overall.

“We’re going to update the kits,” he said, “and begin providing the kind of support modern builders look for.”

In particular, the new Bearhawk will work on things simple (like a complete landing-light kit for the Model 5) and complex (like a comprehensive firewall-forward package). Irwin acknowledges that the airplane is terrific, but some aspects of the kitting are a bit behind the times, and it’s his intention to close that gap as quickly as possible.

The goal is to build 40 kits this year as well as building out subkits and increasing the standard content level for the Model 5, planning for in-shop builder assistance and even prefabricated avionics panels. Along with a new FWF package, Irwin said he’s looking into revised cowlings that may improve cooling and provide a bit more speed. Irwin also said kit prices are likely to increase with the new content, but he’ll honor existing purchase agreements on all kits.

Once he feels that the Model 5 kit is thoroughly updated, he’ll begin working through the rest of the catalog, which includes four other models from the LSA to the four-seat Model 4.

“I am especially appreciative of all the new friends made during these 23 years,” Goldberg said in a statement. “This includes customers all over the world who are now friends, and vendors and others who have become much more than just business associates. I learned a tremendous amount from working with design engineer Bob Barrows whose engineering talent is just off the scale. My involvement with the company will continue as long as is needed to make the transition smooth and easy.”

More information can be found at www.bearhawkaircraft.com.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on Kitplanes.

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Van’s current challenges result from “a combination of significant events over a relatively short period of time [that have] increased costs, doubled normal inventory levels, slowed deliveries, and strained our cash flow to the breaking point,” the company says. It cites increases in manufacturing still evident from the COVID slowdown, an issue with primer used by a subcontractor in quickbuild components and the most recent problems with laser-cut parts, which were a response to help increase production capacity at a time when Van’s was experiencing historically high demand. Builders discovered that the laser-cut parts tended to crack during the dimpling process. “Although our testing proved that laser-cut parts are functionally equivalent to punched parts, belief among many builders is that they are unsuitable for use,” the company says. “This has resulted in an unmanageable number of requests to replace laser-cut parts and cancel orders. More than 1800 customers are currently affected by this issue, some of whom have received more than one kit.”

As part of the announcement, Van’s said that “starting today through mid-November, Van’s will be focused on assessing the internal changes necessary to address these issues. This means some of the typical day-to-day operations at Van’s will be affected while our team develops plans to correct the problem.”

Those changes include streamlining the company’s efforts to focus on replacing laser-cut parts for existing builders and reassessing its manufacturing processes. “During this period, shipments will be delayed, kit orders will not be processed, and refunds will not be issued,” the company says. “We will be unable to conduct factory tours and demo flights. We are adjusting our daily operating hours. Starting Monday, October 30th we will be open from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time each business day. Our builder technical support hours will shift to 8:00 to 9:30 a.m. and 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. each business day. This is a permanent change.”

In the background, Van’s has “assembled a small team of experienced advisors to assist us” from Hamstreet & Associates, a Portland, Oregon-based firm that “leads troubled companies through financial and operational crises, and delivers results.” That team includes interim CEO, Mikael Via, who had served Glasair Aviation in the early 2000s and developed the Two Weeks to Taxi builder-assist program. Hamstreet is expected to provide financial expertise as well as other interim officers to help Van’s move forward.

Builders and potential Van’s customers are likely to wonder about pricing and availability in the future. “Van’s Aircraft faces several challenges that require us to take time between now and mid-November to perform an internal assessment of our inventory, production, and shipping capabilities as well as overall operating efficiencies,” Van’s says. “During this time, we will be evaluating all reasonable means of satisfying builder concerns regarding laser-cut parts. At the same time, we will be reviewing the costing of our parts and kits.”

Van’s is expected to issue updates via its website in the near future.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on KITPLANES.

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Lancair was a pioneer in composite construction and led the mainstreaming of the homebuilt movement through the latter part of the last century. It developed 14 designs and thousands of the speedy singles are flying all over the world. Founder Lance Niebauer sold the kit business in 2003 to build the certified Columbia line of aircraft, which was eventually bought by Cessna and ultimately dropped. Lancair become Evolution Aircraft in 2016 to concentrate on the pressurized turboprop model. It sold off older kit designs, and that business was purchased by JetEXE from Mark and Conrad Huffstatter, of Uvalde, Texas, who had hoped to revive the kit production but were concentrating on fleet support in recent years.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.com.

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I first ran into Stefan Coetzee and KFA at Aero Friedrichshafen, my favorite light aircraft show in Europe. I was caught by the clever name. Easy to say, “KFA” sticks in your mind like a catchy tune.

Kitplanes For Africa sounds like a company making aircraft that should have superior bush capabilities. It was a handsome aircraft and I felt readers would enjoy it but they had no American representation at the time so I filed the discovery away under: “Promising.”

The bigger and more accurate picture is that KFA is yet another light aviation success story for South Africa*.

Almost half-way around the world, South Africa fell out of many conversations once the apartheid struggle finally ended in the 1990s. Yet despite years of ugly headlines, the country’s interest in aviation has been strong and building. Companies are producing lots of aircraft. (The Aircraft Factory alone produces 20 Sling aircraft each month, and has plans to increase to 30, employing almost 500 personnel.)

KFA was begun roughly when apartheid ended, so it shares no history with that difficult period. However, this timeline also illustrates the 30 years in business this builder has been active. More than 300 of their Bushbaby designs were sold and Coetzee reports strong business today.

Welcome to America…via Canada

An early enthusiast in the Americas was Canadian Vince Scott, a six-foot-eight tower of a man… and yes, he fits. Even his entry looked straightforward. For someone of my average stature, Safari XL looks huge inside. Coetzee enjoyed referring to “Hamburgers,” hinting at Yankee pilots who enjoy a good meal or three every day. Those well-fed pilots will love this enlarged bird. In fact, I think most pilots would look admiringly upon the large interior volume of Safari XL.

The gray-over-black Explorer looks familiar to Oshkosh attendees. I overheard more than one person say it “looks like a Kitfox.” This comment is not original or accurate because even Kitfox started out as a modification of an Avid Flyer, the true original of this planform by designer Dean Wilson 40 years ago. Many other variations on the theme have been developed over the decades.

Coetzee maintains that while similarities exist, Explorer is different in almost every element, “I don’t believe any part on this airplane would work on a Kitfox,” he said. Over several iterations — Bushbaby to Explorer to Safari to Safari XL — the design evolved like many do when engineers find a way to improve.

Safari XL has a particularly interesting story, one that I think many Americans will appreciate.

The XL model, made to fit tall Vince is six inches wider, almost two inches taller inside and about 15 inches longer. People who know about these numbers realize that those few added inches make for a significantly larger interior. Climb inside and it feels spacious. Bowed-out doors help (many aircraft use this technique) but Safari would feel large even with flat doors. Then, consider the luggage area.

Loading luggage into many aircraft is often an awkward hassle but KFA created a luggage door large enough for a good size suitcase. A couple sets of golf clubs would fit, noted Coetzee, and you can see in the image KFA has also accommodated lengthy fishing poles (arrow).

While Explorer fits the LSA description closely at 1,320 pounds gross, Safari XL bumps that up another 100 kilos to 1,543 pounds. Until 2025 when Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certificates (MOSAIC) throws open the door, Safari XL will come to the USA as a kit. Explorer has met German standards and could likely qualify for special light sport aircraft (SLSA) status but this work remains in the future. The good news is that KFA has long been a kit supplier, so they see supporting builders as a normal duty.

When MOSAIC finally arrives, Safari XL will easily qualify, even if equipped with an in-flight adjustable propeller. An even larger model is well into development, Coetzee hinted, so his company—like many in the light aircraft space — is gearing up for the added capabilities we are getting with MOSAIC…assuming the final rule looks much like the NPRM proposal we have been studying in recent days.

Even though Safari XL must be Experimental Amateur Built, KFA is happy to support different skill sets with a variety of kit packages. Beside the basic kit that may consume 700 hours, the company offers at least two levels that are commonly called quick-build kits.

Coetzee’s humorous reference to “hamburgers” brings home the fact that even if you and your best flying buddy may not be large fellows or gals, extra space inside is almost always appreciated (except maybe by the go-as-fast-as-possible crowd). If you are built large, this airplane will fit. Six-eight Vince looked comfortable when I asked him to model his plane for me.

Safari XL — and its slightly smaller Explorer sibling model — offer another interesting choice for pilots and brings to the market a design refined over many years.

ARTICLE LINKS:

• Kitplanes For Africa, contact info and content on this website
• Website for North American distributor Drake Aviation Adventures (website remains under construction at publishing time)
  • Until their Drake website is available, contact info appears here
• Complete kit description of KFA kits in PDF form

* Just off the top of my head, I can recall these manufacturers… The Airplane Factory (Sling), SkyReach (Bushcat), Bathawk, Rainbow, and now KFA plus a business in South Africa worked closely with Jabiru to build those aircraft. I’ll bet I missed a few. Not bad for a country of 60 million located a great distance from other established aviation development centers.

The post Kitplanes For Africa Bush Planes Are Big. Really Big. appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“Belvoir Media Group’s aviation portfolio complements our content-rich brands and will expand what we offer to readers, subscribers, and advertisers. Last quarter, we acquired Plane & Pilot Magazine and the LSA-focused website, ByDanJohnson.com, all with the goal of creating the deepest resource of general aviation content and information.” Craig Fuller, CEO of FLYING Media Group stated.

The Belvoir Media Group brands include:

AVweb.com is the largest independent aviation news site in the world, providing breaking news and information. AVweb.com has a remarkable ability to break stories. The editorial team of AVweb have their pulse on the industry and is unmatched in covering aviation news. 

Aviation Consumer is built to be the Consumer Reports of general aviation, providing editorialized product reviews for general aviation, ranging from aircraft, accessories, avionics, maintenance, and safety products. There is also a very robust used aircraft guide, which provides reviews of aircraft ranging from vintage to modern, all with an effort to empower buyers with unbiased information before their next purchase. Aviation Consumer comes in monthly print, as well as a database of decades worth of reviews. Next time you are thinking of buying an aviation product, ask “What Does Aviation Consumer Say?”

Aviation Safety is the premier safety-only aviation monthly magazine, with up-to-date reporting from accident investigators and safety counselors on real-life scenarios from pilots. With 40 years of archives and new reports every month, focusing on best practices and accident reconstruction, there is a massive library of content covering nearly every potential scenario that a pilot may encounter and many more they hope to never have. So much of being a successful pilot is centered around safety and decision-making, making Aviation Safety a must-read. 

KITPLANES is the Homebuilt Aircraft Authority, covering topics relevant to anyone who has ever dreamed of building or owning an experimental aircraft. The depth and detail of its coverage is unmatched in the aviation industry.

FLYING Media Group plans to preserve the heritage and unique voice of each of these publications, along with significantly increasing investments in content, reader experience, and digital sites. The plan will be to continue to offer the print versions of the publications and hope to introduce a bundled solution, where readers of all the FLYING Media Group properties can take advantage of the great library of content, across brands. 

FLYING Media Group plans to retain Belvoir’s aviation brands’ editorial staff and contributors.

FLYING Media Group (FMG) is the leading media portfolio in aviation. FMG brands include FLYING Magazine, Plane and Pilot, ByDanJohnson, Aircraft for Sale, Business Air, AVweb.com, Aviation Consumer, Aviation Safety, IFR Magazine, and KITPLANES.

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Those challenges that impeded our progress toward the coveted pilot’s certificate might have seemed impenetrable, but when we look at what sport pilot Justin Falls of Lincolnton, North Carolina, has done to overcome his challenges in order to fly, just about anything we faced was, by comparison, absolutely nothing.

Falls was 18 years old when he broke his neck after falling off a fire escape, resulting in a spinal cord injury between his fourth and fifth vertebrae. Technically, he says this meant he was a quadriplegic due to motor and sensory deficits in all four of his extremities. Falls explains that the accident could have resulted in much more severe paralysis if his spine had been completely severed.

Today, he can move the fingers in his left hand, but his right hand is paralyzed, as well as his right triceps muscles and both his legs. A pharmacist at a hospital, Falls has used a wheelchair to get around for the past 15 years and drives a car with hand controls.

On the surface, this sort of major disability would appear to be a challenge that is too much to overcome for someone who wants to fly general aviation airplanes. But Falls had been interested in flying since he was very young, and he figured that if he could drive a car with only his hands, maybe he could fly airplanes as well.

“I lived about [a] half-mile from my local non-towered airport in Gastonia for most of my life,” Falls said, “and I especially enjoyed going to their airshows. I felt that aviation was a bit out-of-reach due to the expense, then after my injury, it was even further away. Since my car has hand controls, then I thought it should be possible to adapt a plane’s controls as well. Sure enough, there had been many people with disabilities like myself who have learned to fly in adapted planes. After I graduated from pharmacy school, one of the guys I played wheelchair rugby with was going to start training with Able Flight the next summer, and he is also quadriplegic. So I followed his progress and applied for an Able Flight scholarship about the same time I was applying for jobs as a new pharmacist.”

Flight Training for Student Pilots With Disabilities

Falls learned to fly through a scholarship provided by Able Flight, a non-profit organization that provides flight training and aviation career scholarships for people with disabilities. “Able Flight is funded by generous donors, philanthropists, and companies like Shell Aviation, Lockheed Martin, Tempest Aero Group, and many others,” Falls said. “I was able to learn to fly at no cost in the Sky Arrow, an Italian LSA. It is one of the few aircraft with a certified hand control design that can be flown using only your hands. The main limitation of the Sky Arrow is that it’s very difficult to transfer into it from a wheelchair, and it sits pilot and passenger tandem, with no extra room to stow a wheelchair.”

An Airplane of His Own

“I learned of Zenith when I was rolling around Oshkosh looking at all the different LSA kitplanes after I got my wings from the Able Flight awards ceremony,” Falls explains. “Sebastien, the owner of Zenith Aircraft, has been a supporter of Able Flight, and he is very inspired by their mission. I managed to talk him into selling me his CH 750 STOL and helping to design hand controls for it from scratch! His son Calvin was the lead designer, and the goal was to create a hand control setup for the Zenith that could also be used to train future Able Flight students.”

Falls added that the main reason he selected this make/model was that the high-wing design made it easier to transfer from a wheelchair into the cockpit and that the manufacturer was willing to help him with designing hand controls to fit his needs.

How Falls Flies His Zenith

The STOL CH 750 Falls flies has been modified so that the rudder, throttle, brakes, and push-to-talk are controlled from the left seat using a stick between his legs. Pushing forward on the rudder stick is right rudder, pulling back is left rudder. 

The electronic hat switch at the top of the stick is connected to a servo motor that controls the throttle. In the event of an electrical failure, he can still use the manual throttle on the panel as a backup. 

“The hand brake is like a motorcycle brake that replaces the toe brakes used during taxiing. I use my right hand to control the yoke in the center of the plane, and this controls the pitch and roll of the aircraft. It takes a lot of coordination and muscle memory to use these controls, but they are fairly intuitive once you’ve been doing it for a while,” Falls said.

Future Flights

Falls is planning a solo cross-country flight from the East Coast to the West Coast soon, and once completed, he’ll be the first quadriplegic to fly from the Atlantic to the Pacific solo. He plans to do it in his current airplane and will be having an autopilot installed to make the trip a bit easier. He, however, has even loftier goals.

“I would love to someday become the first quadriplegic to fly solo around the world, but that will require me to get my private pilot certificate,” Falls said. “I have thought about possibly modifying my plane with an extra fuel tank to make the journey around the world, if Zenith would be interested in helping to modify the plane. But ideally, it would be easier if I could cruise two to three times faster than I currently can. I sincerely hope that things will change to make it easier for people like me to fly bigger, faster aircraft. Getting a third-class medical will be an extra challenge, and if I fail, I would potentially lose my sport pilot privileges. There are so many limitations with LSAs that make it difficult to find planes that can accommodate a wheelchair.”

He would also like to become the first quadriplegic to go to space and asked if anyone has connections to Richard Branson, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos. “Tell them I need a ride!” Falls said.

For Justin Falls, flying gives him a sense of satisfaction, unlike any other activity he has done. 

“When I take off from the runway, I am no longer defined by anything else other than as a pilot. I have instant freedom to see the world from a vantage point that so few people get to enjoy, and I feel so privileged and lucky to be able to do it. And I rarely ever use the word ‘lucky’ to describe myself, because living with paralysis is hard, and I often feel very unlucky. But with flying, it’s different. I really am lucky to live in a time when humans can fly,” he said.

Videos and other content about Falls flying with his disability can be found on his social media channels by searching: “WheelieGoodPilot.” His Youtube channel, in particular, has videos showing exactly how Falls’ STOL Zenith CH 750 has been modified and how he flies it with hand controls.

The post A Major Disability Could Not Stop This Determined Sport Pilot appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

That was then, and this is now.

Today, while there are a few models priced to fly away for under a hundred grand, because of “feature creep” demanded by buyers that added full glass panels with autopilot, composite airframes, larger engines, ballistic parachute systems, and upgraded automobile-like interiors, prices for new light-sport airplanes can easily demand the low six figures.

There is—and has always been—hope for those new sport pilots who still want capable LSA models for pure recreational flying, without the price tag most modern LSAs carry. There is only one catch.

You need to build the airplane yourself.

If that last sentence scares the headset off of you because you question your mechanical aptitude to build an airplane, you are not alone. Many of us consider ourselves “good with tools” but run the other way when someone suggests assembling an experimental/amateur-built (E/AB) kit airplane.

Let’s take a look into the world of kit-built airplanes that qualify to be flown with a sport pilot certificate, and learn about the process from the biggest name in that market, Zenith Aircraft Company.

Focus on One Thing and Do It Very Well

When Sebastien Heintz, owner, and president of Zenith Aircraft decided to manufacture and market airplane kits in the U.S. in 1992, his family had already been designing and producing aircraft kits in Canada as Zenair Ltd. since 1974. Today, Zenith is the number one U.S. maker of sport-pilot-eligible E/AB kits, based on data from actual FAA registrations and information from Dan Johnson’s LSA database.

Once the FAA released its LSA regulations, Heintz saw an opening and made the decision to optimize their kits for recreational sport pilots and inexperienced first-time builders who had never built an airplane themselves. 

“Rather than developing fast, high-performance designs that required higher skills to build and safely operate,” Heintz said, “we instead focused on easy-to-fly slower designs better suited for lower-time weekend flyers. They needed airplanes with good slow flight handling characteristics, great visibility for both pilot and passenger, tricycle gear for better ground and crosswind handling, and lower insurance costs.”

With that in mind, Zenith developed E/AB kits that were both easy and quick to build, suitable for building in a garage or basement workshop and requiring just simple skills and tools. As a result of that focus, a “quick-build kit” is not required, although one is available which includes the fuselage section mainly assembled, ready for installation of the engine, avionics, and interior.

Cost Savings of Building Your Airplane

There is no question that building an airplane is a process that in some cases (and with some models) can take years. The cost can be spread out over this time, especially for more expensive components that are only needed toward the end of the project, such as the engine, avionics, and paint. Most E/AB builders buy component kits as they build, and Zenith builders can get the process started with the rudder starter kit for around $400. This allows builders to learn about the tools and skills needed to build a kit, while at the same time getting started on their kit project. 

As to cost, Heintz uses a “rule of thumb” that the kit cost is about one-third of the total project cost. 

“For example, a $20,000 kit will typically end up costing about $60,000 once the aircraft is completed and finished with a new engine, propeller, firewall-forward components, modern avionics, paint, and upholstery. Of course, this is just an indicator, and builders have a lot of control over the costs, which is one of the major advantages to building an E/AB airplane,” he said. 

Heintz added that decisions like the type of engine and avionics will have a major impact on the overall project cost, but that they give a builder a lot of control and the ability to truly custom-build their aircraft. In the end, he says, building your airplane offers potential cost savings typically about 50 percent over buying a factory-built new S-LSA.

When you use Heintz’s rule of thumb, this means that Zenith’s most expensive kit, the STOL CH 750 (kit price of $24,950), could end up costing about $74,840. Sure, your costs will vary if you choose steam gauges over a fancy glass panel, or spend big bucks on a premium custom paint scheme. But using the “three times kit cost” calculator gives an interested builder a pretty good idea of what their new E/AB airplane is going to cost once the FAA signs it off to go play in the sky.

Resources to Finish the Project

It’s no secret that with many kit airplane builds, life can get in the way and sideline a builder for any number of reasons. Zenith considers this by focusing heavily on manufacturing processes that result in quicker build times so a builder can stay motivated as they see their projects quickly come together. When a builder sees continuous forward progress, it increases the likelihood that the project will be completed.

With Zenith kits or any of the many other popular E/AB kits on the market such as the Van’s Aircraft RV-12, a builder is never alone. Zenith offers workshop classes before a builder gets started, allowing them to gain hands-on building experience at the Zenith factory to learn about the required skills, tools, and workshop space needed. This gives the builder a head start.

But once the project is off and running, there are many resources available to help a builder finish their aircraft. Each brand has active online builder communities ready to help each other with their projects, and by joining their local Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) chapter, builders can gain valuable information from those who have built and are currently flying kit airplanes.

One of the best resources for anyone interested in building an E/AB kit airplane is to attend EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The 2022 show will be July 25 through 31 and will give attendees access to all the major kitplane makers, along with numerous seminars, forums, and workshops on building an airplane.

MOSAIC May Open Up the Kit Airplane Market

Every manufacturer of E/AB airplane kits is maintaining an intense focus on the FAA’s coming Modernization Of Special Airworthiness Certification, a.k.a the MOSAIC rewrite. 

“We look forward to the MOSAIC rewrite as we believe it will indeed open up light sport to larger aircraft, as well as provide some needed updates for certification of E/AB aircraft rules,” said Heintz. “Zenith developed and introduced the larger STOL CH 750 Super Duty model partly in anticipation of the new rules.

“Also, Zenith has in the past produced larger four-seat aircraft kits, such as the STOL CH 801 sport utility airplane. Our larger non-LSA designs were put on the back burner with the advent of light sport/sport pilot, yet these can easily be put back into production as warranted by the MOSAIC rewrite. I anticipate that the current high fuel costs—as well as rising interest rates—will continue to make lighter and more fuel-efficient aircraft appealing to many builders and flyers in the foreseeable future,” Heintz concluded.

The post E/AB Kits Put the ‘Affordable’ in Affordable Sport Flying appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Work crews finished hauling away the largest of the rocks and muddy stumps only a few days ago, turning what had been a leafy hill behind the Just Aircraft factory in tiny Walhalla, South Carolina, into a rutted, scarred clearing barely the size of a football field. Even my host, company co-founder Troy Woodland, doesn’t condescend to calling this a runway. He banks steeply, turning short final in his lime-green and silver SuperSTOL kitplane, diving for the red-hued earth with what suddenly seems like questionable sanity.

“If this doesn’t make you a little nervous your first time out,” Woodland tells me over the intercom, “there’s probably something wrong with you.”

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I’m slightly nervous as the ground begins to rush all around us.

“But really,” he says, “you shouldn’t be nervous.”

He pours in a burst of power and smoothly pulls back on the stick. The SuperSTOL rises to follow the contour of the hill until Woodland abruptly chops the power. The world goes eerily quiet as the SuperSTOL announces it is finished flying—from a height of several feet and at a discomfortingly fast rate of descent we are falling. I brace for impact, but there is no bone-crushing arrival. Instead, the SuperSTOL’s nitrogen-charged shock absorbers and 29-inch tundra tires cushion the brunt of the abuse from our unorthodox landing. Woodland immediately gets on the brakes, glancing at me as we trundle over rocks and tree branches.

I am sitting in the left seat, grinning like an idiot.

This basic sequence is repeated perhaps two dozen times throughout the day as we drop into impossibly small parcels of land in and around Walhalla. Once firmly planted on the ground, Woodland wastes no time in putting his foot into the rudder to spin us back toward whence we’d come, applying full power and with effortless motions jabbing the stick forward for a brief instant and then wrenching it back while grasping the flap handle on the floor and raising it one notch. The combination of sudden forward momentum and additional lift from the flaps propels us into the air. We climb sharply. The airspeed indicator shows 35 miles per hour. The sensation is similar to being in a helicopter.

No other airplane I’ve flown can do what the SuperSTOL can. STOL, as you know, stands for “short takeoff and landing.” SuperSTOL, then, implies really short takeoffs and landings, made possible by the airplane’s huge 45-degree fowler flaps and self-deploying leading-edge slats, designs borrowed from the Helio Courier bush plane and scaled to fit this diminutive two-seat experimental amateur-built kitplane. The only vehicle I would confidently take on the mess of a surface we first landed on would be a farm tractor or a backhoe, I think to myself. Yet here we are in a rag-and-tube taildragger, lumbering over deep grooves, muddy furrows and jagged rocks as though it’s all perfectly normal.

Somehow, in this airplane, it is normal. By the end of the day I feel comfortable with everything we are doing. The nervousness has faded—and the reason is simple. The SuperSTOL lands at such slow speeds and has such a sturdy structure that, with each takeoff and landing, my confidence in the airplane’s incredible capabilities grows. What would have seemed unusual, in fact, would have been landing on an actual paved runway. Instead, Woodland and I drop into farm pastures, neighbors’ yards and steeply graded grass and mud fields bordered by trees, lakes and rivers underneath a 2,000-foot overcast lording over the smoky foothills of the Appalachians. What a way to spend a day.

Birth of the SuperSTOL

What’s truly amazing about this kitplane is that, if you have a few hundred feet of space in your yard and an extra $75,000 on hand [in 2014 dollars], you too can own this incredible airplane.

The world got its first glimpse of Just Aircraft’s SuperSTOL at Oshkosh in 2012, where it was an instant hit when Woodland and his business partner, Gary Schmitt, demonstrated the airplane in public for the first time. The SuperSTOL had actually been on the drawing board for close to 10 years. Woodland knew it was only a matter of time before he would build it. Just Aircraft had been selling a kitplane called the Highlander that offered many of the attributes Woodland saw as desirable for a personal bush plane, such as light weight, decent power, slow landing speed and available tundra tires. But to create the ultimate budget bush plane, changes were needed—radical changes.

The first modification Woodland designed for the SuperSTOL was its unique A-frame landing gear, a setup borrowed from the Pilatus Porter and further modified to incorporate shocks similar to those found on off-road trucks and ATVs. Next Woodland whipped up the engineering drawings for the SuperSTOL’s slats, which are designed to extend automatically any time the airspeed drops below 55 knots. As on other slat-equipped airplanes, they allow the wing to continue flying at a higher angle of attack and, in turn, a slower airspeed. In normal operations, Woodland says, the SuperSTOL’s tail actually stalls before the wing does—and it happens at an indicated airspeed of just 28 knots.

Woodland says he’s tried to get the airplane to spin but hasn’t succeeded yet. For the wing to stall, the SuperSTOL has to be at such a wild nose-up deck angle that he doesn’t try that very often either. The normal procedure for landing is to chop the power, hold the stick full aft and let the airplane drop, at 500 to 1,000 feet per minute, all the way to impact with the ground. There is no flare. There is no float. It’s the sort of abuse that would break most other airplanes. For the SuperSTOL, it’s routine.

Another key piece of the development effort was convincing Sensenich to develop a new 82-inch climb prop to pair with the SuperSTOL’s Rotax 912ULS engine. Woodland’s personal airplane, a self-described test mule, has a Kiev climb prop built in Ukraine and a big-bore kit for the engine that bumps horsepower from 100 to 110. The combination allowed us to get off the ground in about 100 feet on the shortest runs, though Woodland says he generally likes to use every foot of available takeoff space before hauling the SuperSTOL into the air. Some early SuperSTOL kit builders have opted for much larger engines, up to 200 hp, which should provide mind-blowing short-field performance, especially with the new Sensenich prop.

Even a SuperSTOL with the stock Rotax 912ULS engine has a published takeoff ground roll of just 275 feet at the airplane’s max gross weight of 1,320 pounds, the typical limit for LSAs. Another thoughtful design element is the airplane’s folding wing, which allows easy storage in a garage or shed. With the wings folded back, the SuperSTOL measures 21 feet, 8 inches long and just 8 feet, 6 inches wide. Landing ground roll is about 100 feet with help from the SuperSTOL’s big Matco disc brakes, meaning this truly can be a backyard airplane for a good number of people.

Still, it’s not the ideal choice for long-haul travel—or even medium-haul travel. Typical cruise speed with those big tires hanging in the breeze is a leisurely 87 knots. But with its 24-gallon gas tank and the Rotax’s economical fuel burn, endurance is exceptional. And in the air the SuperSTOL feels like a lot of LSAs we’ve flown. The controls demand a light touch, especially the ailerons. To keep the ball centered, it’s best to lead turns with the rudder, applying almost imperceptible input in the direction of the turn with the stick. I noted the airplane we flew rode a little nose-high in cruise, something Woodland said he’s working to tweak through adjustment of the horizontal stabilizer’s angle of incidence.

Carolina Bush Flying

Where the SuperSTOL shines brightest, of course, is during takeoff and landing. My introduction to the airplane came at Sun ‘n Fun in Lakeland, Florida, this past spring. Woodland and I flew a customer’s airplane from Paradise City, the small grass runway reserved for ultralights, LSAs and small helicopters. We couldn’t leave the area due to a TFR blanketing the airport during the afternoon airshow, so we were stuck in the pattern, where the breezy crosswind had swung around to become a 10-knot tailwind. Even so, Woodland had the SuperSTOL down and stopped in about 100 feet. Even though the conditions weren’t ideal, the airplane intrigued me. I agreed to come to Walhalla for some real bush flying.

When I showed up at his door a couple of weeks later, Woodland delivered on his promise to show off the SuperSTOL’s unrivaled capabilities in its true elements. After we’d made several takeoffs and landings on the newly cleared strip behind the factory and on another grass runway running from a lake in a ravine to the top of the hill in front of the one-story concrete-block factory, we headed for the Tugaloo River on the border with Georgia, the site of our next improbable landing.

“I’d like to drop in and say hello to a friend,” Woodland said, setting up for final toward another hill with a thin cutout in the trees, atop which sat a white plantation-style mansion. The handsome home had black shutters and a grand entryway flanked by four tall columns. As we slowed for final, the slats deployed with a subtle clunk—it wasn’t really jarring, but no matter how many times it happened throughout the day, it was always a surprise to me.

Descending below the tree line, Woodland pulled the power and eased the stick back. The SuperSTOL dropped onto the lawn and rolled to a stop in the shadow of two enormous oak trees. He shut the engine down and we climbed out to greet the home’s owner, Chip Angel, who offered us handshakes and fresh-brewed coffee. As we chatted and began looking over the airplane, Troy and I noticed that we’d been flying around with a 5-foot-long tree branch entwined in the tailwheel. From the reddish color of the dried mud there was no doubt that we’d picked it up on a previous landing back at the Just Aircraft factory. Woodland gave the branch a good tug and tossed it aside — to the delight of Angel’s golden retriever, who joyfully snatched it with his teeth and bounded up onto the porch.

With the offending stick removed and our coffee cups emptied, we bid farewell to our host and climbed aboard the airplane, rocketing back into the sky and banking sharply for home. After several more takeoffs and landings on the muddy hill, we shut down and headed inside the 32,000-square-foot factory for a closer look at the Just Aircraft operation. It was a surprisingly busy place, with dozens of workers and customers cranking wrenches.

Woodland and Schmitt founded Just Aircraft in 2002, starting out with a kitplane called the Escapade that’s reminiscent of a Kitfox. That airplane evolved into the Highlander, which quickly earned a reputation as a decent STOL performer. Still, Woodland knew that he and Schmitt could do better. Working from a pile of engineering drawings at home on his kitchen table, he started with the basic pre-welded steel frame from the Highlander and began incorporating all the touches that turned a fine STOL airplane into a SuperSTOL. The prototype was completed just days before the start of Oshkosh 2012.

After seeing the airplane in action, would-be customers began lining up asking when they could buy one. That set into motion plans for full-scale production of a kit, demand for which is exploding. Woodland said nearly 100 SuperSTOL kits have been shipped so far, and production is nearly sold out for the rest of this year. About 90 percent of all new orders are for the SuperSTOL versus the Highlander, Woodland said, despite the Highlander’s lower price.

Building the SuperSTOL

Only a handful of SuperSTOLs have been completed so far, but more are taking to the sky all the time. Build times are expected to average between 500 and 1,000 hours, which is typical of several other homebuilt models. The basic kit [in 2014 dollars] costs $36,650 and includes everything from the firewall back, save for the cockpit instruments. The base engine, prop and cowl add $27,000 to the total price, while the instrument panel can set a builder back anywhere from $5,000 to perhaps $15,000. To save money, Woodland said he pieced together his lime-green SuperSTOL using a rebuilt engine and used tires.

As for the true performance of the airplane, early SuperSTOL pilots are still in test-pilot territory. Woodland said it took him hours of flying the airplane with the flaps and slats extended before he truly began to appreciate just what the SuperSTOL can do in the air. With around 800 hours under his belt, he has a pretty good feel for its capabilities. Still, he said Just Aircraft plans to hire an independent flight-test company soon to really wring out the airplane and define the full performance envelope.

One thing is for certain: The SuperSTOL couldn’t achieve its performance goals without the clever technology Woodland has incorporated into the design, especially the slat design. What was a little unnerving about the slats to me is that they often deploy asymmetrically, with only one slat popping out initially followed a moment later by the other. It doesn’t really affect controllability, however, and when the slats are deployed for landing they stay out. Unlike the design of the Helio Courier, which has slats that slide out on tubes, the SuperSTOL’s slats pop in and out on short arms that fold flush against the wing at higher airspeeds. It’s an ingeniously simple setup that saves on weight, cost and complexity.

The SuperSTOL’s shock absorbers, meanwhile, are built in California by a company called Fox Factory Inc., a name well known to ATV and off-road enthusiasts. Woodland says the shocks, with 6 inches of suspension travel, were carefully tuned through trial and error to dampen them and allow for drop-in landings. The design works perfectly, with no chance of a bounced landing and little danger of a nose-over even with maximum braking. Proper transition training, of course, is an absolute must for pilots new to the SuperSTOL.

Visibility from the cockpit is superb, with all-Plexiglas doors and even a Plexiglas ceiling that lets in lots of natural light. The interior is roomy for an LSA, with plenty of elbow room and a large baggage area just behind the seats. Woodland said there’s no worrying about how much weight is loaded into the rear cargo area (as long as you stay under max gross, of course) and that the airplane flies better with some weight in the back.

The Verdict

As I toured the factory, finishing touches were being put on the first of two SuperSTOLs preparing to compete this year at the Valdez STOL competition in Alaska. While the SuperSTOL wasn’t intentionally designed for Valdez, it may as well have been. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future this airplane dominates the competition there — especially as Just Aircraft and clever builders incorporate further enhancements and refinements into the design.

The SuperSTOL isn’t for every pilot, but if what you crave is a go-anywhere bush plane that’s built like a tank — and you have the patience and mechanical aptitude to build your own airplane — there’s probably no better choice. The price is reasonable compared with most production LSAs, and there’s not another airplane out there that can do what the SuperSTOL can. Woodland said he likes to think of it as an aerial ATV. And really, that’s the perfect description. You can fly a SuperSTOL from your yard and head off on excursions and adventures that will introduce you to a side of aviation unlike what most other pilots will ever get to experience. Best of all, you’ll be having so much fun you won’t be able to wipe the grin off your face.

The post We Fly: Just Aircraft SuperSTOL appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Let’s get this straight from the beginning: The Van’s Aircraft RV-14A is not an off-the-shelf airplane. Every one of them out in the wild is custom-built.

Even its recommended 210 hp Lycoming Thunderbolt XIO-390 engine is hand-assembled, polished and ported by a select team of Lycoming employees. And the “A” denotes a nosewheel version, with the tailwheel model being the RV-14.

Every airplane that has ever been graced by the Van’s moniker is essentially a one-off, again by design.

These aircraft are delivered to buyers as sophisticated kits with an elaborate set of detailed assembly instructions—generally, five shipments of aluminum and fiberglass composite parts, pre-drilled, pre-welded and mostly pre-formed, and all machined to exacting standards by CNC machines. Since 1973, Aurora, Oregon-based Van’s has delivered more than 18,000 complete kits, beginning with the RV-3. Of all the kit aircraft delivered, there are more than 10,000 Van’s aircraft flying, more than any other aircraft kit manufacturer.

Why go with a kit aircraft if you are looking to own a general aviation airplane? Ask yourself: Are you looking for the adventure of building an aircraft? Not feeling rushed? Need an aircraft you can afford? Many kit buyers look purely at the economics of building and owning an amateur-built aircraft. They need to understand that you can only take full advantage of the economic advantages if you build the airplane yourself. Why?

FAA rules state that homebuilders must construct a minimum of 51 percent of the aircraft. Those who do can apply for and receive the Holy Grail of homebuilding, a repairman’s certificate entitling them to perform all the necessary maintenance on their own machine. Any aircraft owners who have paid labor costs for an annual inspection know the value of that certificate.

A New Kind of Kit

Putting together a modern homebuilt kit airplane such as the RV-14A is not a quixotic journey for your average, everyday pilot. It’s not Peter Garrison planning and then hand-fabricating every part of his Melmoth fliers. Richard VanGrunsven, founder and chief designer of Van’s Aircraft, notes the RV-14A takes roughly 1,000 to 3,000 labor-hours to build. Most humans translate that into one to five years of construction.

Who are the successful RV-14A builder-pilots in 2020? A lot of different people, it turns out. They include Punta Gorda, Florida-based retired educator Dr. Allan Stern, who sees himself as more builder than pilot, having tackled and completed an RV-6A, RV-8 and RV-12 before his RV-14A.

“It took me six years to build the RV-6A, which really had a lot of detail work left for the builder,” remembers Stern, who fully admits the build was also interrupted by travel. “I certainly wasn’t at it every day,” he continues. The RV-8 build went faster, and he held onto the airplane for about 10 years, enjoying its maneuverability and tandem seating configuration. He bought the light-sport RV-12 Experimental-LSA kit when he thought he might lose his FAA medical; it was another two-year build. And when Basic Med came in? He decided to go for a roomier airplane with the ability to fly longer cross-country legs than the RV-12.

“This [RV-14A] was the fastest build time, just 15 months, because I was retired,” Stern explains. “I came out to the airport at least five or six days a week to work on the project.”

After dedicating all that concentrated time to building, Stern couldn’t fly his project right after a designated airworthiness representative (DAR) certified it. He needed an extensive flight review before he was ready to do the test flying. In his case, the delay was minimal. He’s now chewing through the 40-hour test-flight time, and discovering, troubleshooting and eliminating glitches with each flight.

Semi-retired entrepreneur Alvin Fox, also of Florida, calls himself more pilot than builder. Fox spent much of his career flying Part 91 business and Part 135 charter, and concluded flying Part 121 for an airline—flying all sorts of business owners, employees and celebrities cross-country in the rarefied air of the flight levels. He owned a 2003 Cirrus SR22 long enough to go through a parachute repacking (mandatory every 10 years) and realized, upon doing the math, that his $100 hamburger outings were really costing him more like $300.

“That’s when I started looking at experimental, amateur-built airplanes,” he says. “I had a few friends who were working on composite airplanes, and my time with them showed me that experimental airplanes could really perform comparably to that Cirrus I had.” Fox stands 6 feet, 4 inches, so whatever he built had to have room. “I do love speed, but I also wanted an airplane I could comfortably meander up and down the coastline for 45 minutes and go real slow, sightseeing at an affordable operating cost.”

He saw the Van’s Aircraft booth at an airshow and decided to see what the airplanes were all about. The RV-6 and RV-7 were just too small, he remembers. “I had already thought about maybe doing a Lancair Legacy or something of that capacity, then I got to looking at the RV-14A. It was being coined as a clean-sheet designed for two 6-foot-4, 200-pound guys or gals, and it was very new. At that point, they didn’t have the entire kit complete. But the performance looked like it was on par with what I was after, and all with a four-cylinder engine, meaning the economy would be there too.”

The RV-14A’s semi-monocoque aluminum airframe is held together with rivets, just like its big sister, the -10. A rugged roll bar that spans the cockpit just behind the seats protects the pilot and passenger. The large, forward-tip-up canopy relies on a hinge that allows it to open wide for stand-up entry and loading baggage into the airplane’s 12-cubic-foot baggage area. (There’s no external baggage door.) That canopy also allows the aircraft’s maintainer complete access to the back side of the instrument panel and avionics connections, even while standing next to the airplane. The RV-14A is designed for the wide, tall, 200-pound individuals that are more realistic than the FAA’s 170-pound standard occupant used by certified aircraft.

Whenever possible, Van’s likes to keep its airplane designs simple, making the kits so buildable. The RV-14A can just about keep up with its larger sibling, the RV-10, despite the differences in horsepower—the RV-10 is pulled along by a 260 hp IO-540 Lycoming. The differences in gross weight—2,800 pounds max for the -10 versus 2,050 pounds max for the -14A—play a large part in the two-place airplane’s ability to keep up with its four-seat big sister.

Sharing the same wing planform, slotted flaps, and tapered steel-leaf-spring landing gear means the airplanes handle similarly, both in the air and throughout ground phases. The RV-14 models, however, appeal to those who might like a tailwheel configuration or the opportunity to fly some light aerobatics, with +6/-3 G stress tolerance built in when flown at the aerobatic gross weight of 1,900 pounds.

First Flight

Fox was patient, and by March 2017, he was pulling the first rivets on his kit. A little more than three years later, the DAR inspected the completed airplane and found no discrepancies. Just three days later, it flew.

Fox credits moving to an airport community and joining the local EAA Chapter 565 with his success. “Early on, I had EAA tech counselors Vic Babyak and Barry Marz give me great advice on pitfalls to avoid—and terrific technical expertise connecting and configuring the Garmin electronics,” he says. He installed dual Garmin 3X touchscreens with three-axis autopilot capability and G5 backup instrumentation to create an excellent IFR cruising machine. And that it is.

After checking out as a “qualified pilot” as per FAA rules, I flew with Fox to see how those avionics worked. On climb-out, Fox selected the GPS approach for Runway 14 at La Belle Municipal Airport (X14), engaged the autopilot, and then managed his airspeed with throttle by hand. The airplane leveled at the selected altitude and smoothly began the approach. Fox worked the throttle as the airplane flew both the vertical and horizontal profile, and the 3X screens displayed the flight-path marker flying through the boxes. At the decision height, Fox brought the throttle forward and hit his “TO-GA” button, precisely located fingertip distance from the throttle, initiating the missed approach. The airplane then flew the missed approach as prescribed and entered the holding pattern at the designated fix, waiting for new direction.

The excellence of his avionics configuration would mean little for long-distance travel if the aircraft’s interior wasn’t comfortable enough to sit in for hours. Fox included custom-stitched leather seats from Classic Aero, seat heaters, and matching aerobatic five-point harnesses. The glint of the orange on his SteinAir-designed and -built panel matches the sparkly atomic orange on his custom Thunderbolt XIO-390 210 hp four-cylinder piston engine with roller camshaft technology, complete with E-Mag’s electronic ignition. Scheme Designers is crafting the paint scheme, but Fox preferred to build and test-fly first, then paint.

The EAA’s Flight Test Manual protocol has been Fox’s guiding light through his 40-hour test-flight regime. The manual, first released in 2018, provides guidance based on AC 90-116 for Phase 1 testing of experimental aircraft, including 18 flight-test cards that cover testing of the first taxi, takeoff and landing, climb speeds, stalling characteristics, and everything in between. Fox applied for and received approval to fly with two pilots through his DAR (two-pilot operations must be specified in the flight-test limitations approved by the DAR).

“As an ATP career pilot, I know how valuable that second pilot can be. There’s no better safety margin than having a crew that is equally trained and on the same page,” he says. Flights are carefully choreographed and coordinated through a preflight briefing, followed by extensive data recording. Every mission is followed by an extensive debrief.

“I’m just so happy the experimental world exists,” Fox says. He’s received his repairman’s certificate for the airplane, and looks forward to the many years ahead of flying it on long cross-countries with his wife and son. “Honestly, this has been a very doable project—you just need a little bit of planning, and of course, you’ve got to give it the time,” he says.

So, how do you get in line for an RV-14A of your own? Van’s Aircraft’s Oregon plant offers test flights to interested individuals. Though the airplane can and has been built in basements and garages, a dedicated hangar with a prescribed minimum of tooling is recommended. There are more than a dozen builder-assist centers listed on vansairforce.net for those who are willing to invest in having experts help them assemble their aircraft, and who are loath to purchase the tools required for one aircraft’s assembly. DARs can tell quickly if you didn’t actually contribute the lion’s share of sweat equity to your build.

Not quite ready to build, but still interested in the perks of owning an experimental amateur-built aircraft? There’s a used aircraft market for amateur-built kit airplanes, but caveat emptor. Don’t let anyone sell you a kit airplane represented as being factory-built. There are no Van’s Aircraft sanctioned factories for building up the company’s kits. If you want a factory-built Part 23-certified airplane, you need to look elsewhere.

You’ll discover firsthand if you do build your RV-14A how wonderfully fulfilling it is to fly an airplane you know intimately. Every kit builder is astonished on that first flight, and that grin they sport when they pop open the canopy at the end of a successful test run? It’s for real.

And How Does It Fly?

Very fine, indeed!

Bradenton, Florida-based Dennis Sutton was ready to get back into aviation, and retired physician M. Turner Billingsley had a newly minted, hand-built RV-14A for sale. It was a match, and Billingsley delivered N14VB to Sutton on a balmy spring day. There was only one catch: Sutton had not logged a flight in 20 years.

Enter Brett Williamson. A late bloomer in aviation, Williamson helped with a teen-built RV-12 that he owns a part of and learned to fly—and he decided to become a professional pilot.

“This specimen flies perfectly!” Williamson said when asked about the quality of Billingsley’s build. It is a good thing too, since Williamson has taken on not just an extensive flight review for Sutton, but also primary flight training for Sutton’s son, Jody, in the airplane. “Even with the relatively complex Garmin 3X touchscreen avionics and a constant speed propeller, the RV-14A’s efficiency and honest flying make it a good trainer,” Williamson says.

I flew N14VB with Williamson out of Sarasota, Florida’s airport (KSRQ) on a breezy afternoon and verified his claims. With two souls on board and full fuel, we were near gross weight for the aircraft (2,050 pounds). Using takeoff flaps, ground roll was about 250 to 300 feet. The airplane required only a slight pull to bring the nosewheel up; liftoff with the flaps was around 55 kias, and climb-out at 88 kias and full power approached 1,400 fpm (flaps up). Cruise climb is at 120 kias, 2,500 rpm and 25 inches manifold pressure, and produced a 1,000 to 1,200 fpm climb.

At altitude, I performed steep turns, which showed off the airplane’s excellent roll rate for a cross-country cruiser, feeling much lighter than the pull required for my RV-10, which has the same, slightly longer wing. The airplane stalled clean at 61 kias, and with full flaps at 53 kias. Both stalls broke with gentle buffeting, straight ahead. The flap application elicited a noted nose-down moment, which was easily correctable with the electric pitch trim, a hat switch on the stick. Again, the RV-10 behaves the same way.

Landing into a 15-knot headwind with full flaps and idle power at flare produced a measly 300-foot rollout—making the turn off was easy with minimal braking. This airplane could win spot-landing contests for the pilot.

This story appeared in the September 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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