The Obsession Takes Hold

   This is the story of my experience in Building an airplane.  As of December 98, I am still in the planning phase.  I have been since May 1997 when I ordered my first round of kit information packages.  I'm getting close to making the decision of which plane to build, but first a note on how I got started on the whole idea.  Like many people, I always thought it would be neat to get a pilot's license but was waiting until the right time.  That time came for me while I was in Pensacola going through Flight Surgery School.  A combination of disposable time and income along with a Military Flying Club with great prices and instructors made it too hard to resist.  Several of my other classmates decided to study for their civilian licenses as well, making the project all that much more fun.  So fun, in fact, that I had my private license in less than two months of part time study/flying (unfortunately, no one else in my class ended up finishing).  

   One day while sitting around the airport talking with my instructor, Gene, a UFO came flying over our heads at close to MACH 1, without making a sound.  Turns out that it was only a Lancair 320 coming in for a landing - but doing a tower fly-by and a break on the way in.  That plane was using the same engine as the Cessna 172 I had been flying but it flew almost twice as fast and made almost no noise.  Gene and I went over to take a closer look.  The pilot/owner had spent the last 6 years building her.  He was a retired F-4 Pilot for the Marines who claimed that his Lancair was the most fun and /most responsive plane he had ever flown, and he had flown a lot of fun planes.  His workmanship was incredible.  There was not a dimple or blemish over the silky smooth wings and empenage.  WOW!  Airplanes have come a long way.

How Lawyers Caused all the Problems

   Back in the 1970's when General aviation was much more popular than today, inexperienced guys like myself could buy a Cessna or Piper (or a Mooney if you were a Doctor, because those were the hay-day years for medicine as well).  A certain percentage of them managed to get themselves killed, and of course the Lawyers put the airplane manufacturers out of the business of making small planes.  This legal pressure also tightened the regulatory process of the FAA making innovation too costly.  This also removed free market influences which may have kept general aviation alive and vibrant.  So for the most part,  the only airplanes available are the 1960's and 70's vintage small planes.  They are mostly old, beaten up, remodeled, re-equipped as needed, and very very expensive because of supply and demand.  Almost any plane that is still in flying condition can sell for much more than it originally cost in 1968. They use 1950's technology and are falling apart.  Due to the extremely high cost of getting approval for new designs (thanks again to the Lawyers and Red tape people at the FAA), there have not been any new designs you could go out and buy for quite some time.  So if you want a modern plane, you have to build it yourself.

The Experimental Option

The FAA allows individual builders to do what the lawyers prevent the big aircraft manufacturers from doing - building modern, fast, responsive, economical, (insert your favorite quality here) aircraft.  The rules are that you have to build more than half of it yourself and you can't use it for any commercial purposes.  This is a huge project that originally started with me wanting to find a more economical and fun way to use my new pilots license. I tricked myself.  It is going to be fun, but it is not merely a means to an end - if so it just wouldn't make sense.  There is no possible way to justify the time, expense, and headache of building your own plane.  You will be much further ahead buying a certified or used plane and spending the extra time earning minimum wage.  Just think how much your car would cost if you had to buy it one piece at a time, and put it together yourself.  You would have to shop around for the best possible price on each part and make a separate trip to the store hundreds of times.  Now multiply the cost of each item by 4 and you can start building a plane.  

I have just started and the project itself has already become more consuming than flying, although I often catch myself thinking about flying the plane that I built - just the way I want it to be.  "It is good to have an end for the journey.  But it is the journey that matters, in the end."

Which Plane to Build?

   First, when choosing a design, choose the qualities you want in an airplane.  Of course, the ultimate plane would fly close to the speed of sound, seat several people and carry all their luggage, travel 3000mi on a few gallons of gas, be fully aerobatic, be silent except when you wanted it to sound like a P-51 for effect, it would be free and come ready to fly with all the modern gadgets and safety features.  In the real world, not many 4-seaters are aerobatic, and flying alone gets a little lonely.  I finally decided on a 2-seat which is capable of basic aerobatics and enough speed and range to make it a good cross-country plane as well.  Several designs fit this general scheme that I have been looking at.

The cream of the crop in my opinion is the Lancair 320/360, pictured above.  With cruse speeds as high as 250mph it looks sleek and could cost as much as $105,000 for the biggest engines and fancy cockpit.  Way out of my price range, but its possible to do it for as little as $60k.  (I am looking at this as a life-long investment).

At the other end of the spectrum is the Rans S-10.  Being probably the most acrobatically capable of all the planes I am looking at, it could be built for as little as $25k.

In between are the Composite designs of the Europa and Pulsar.  Both use a 80 hp Rotax engine and cruse about 145 mph and have similar sleek looks.  The Pulsar has fixed tri-gear while the Europa has a retractable monowheel.  The Rotax engines cost about half of the price of the larger traditional aircraft engines.  They are also easier and cheaper to repair and run on regular automobile gas.

For about the same price of the Pulsar or Europa it is possible to get slightly better performance by putting more horsepower in a mostly metal airframe.  The Rans S-16 is one example.  Using a 125hp engine it cruses at about 160 mph and costs the same as the Europa (perhaps even a little less) and comes with fully inverted fuel system.  Metal designs are not as elegant as composite designs.  Metal will corrode, has rivets on the wing surface making it less smooth, is more difficult to repair and has a limited life due to fatigue.  However, the all metal aircraft are probably a little easier to put together initially, and seem to cost less.  Also, building a composite plane in Hawaii will be difficult because of the high humidity there.  The Vans RV-6 is a very popular all metal plane and is second only to the Lancair in terms of speed (about 180 mph). Costing about the same as the Europa , Pulsar and S-16, the company is very straight forward and offers a stage purchasing program and a low cost airframe that can be built at whatever pace I choose.

The vision is another excellent choice.  This is a composite plane built entirely from plans, instead of an expensive kit.  Of course it will take considerably longer, but only about twice as long.  The design is almost identical to the RV-6, only it is composite.  Airframe materials would cost about $7-8k (11.5k for the RV-6) making it possible to complete for about $35k or less if an automobile engine is used.

This brings me to the next part my discussion, the engines.  The engine and its systems are usually 1/2 the overall cost of the plane, sometimes more.  The homebuilt industry has been using automobile engines with mixed success for quite a while.  Contrary to popular belief, automobile engines are just as reliable as aircraft engines, with a couple of caveats.  Car engines usually turn at too high of an RPM for an airplane and need to be geared down.  This is where much of the problem comes from.  Homemade gear boxes are unreliable, and add weight.  Car engines also weigh too much to begin with for the horsepower produced.  But because of mass production, they only cost about 1/4 that of an airplane engine.  The Vision was designed to accept the weight of a converted SAAB engine, or a more powerful airplane engine of the same weight.  The Rotax 912 used by the Europa, Pulsar, and Rans S-10 was originally designed for homebuilts but now also comes in a certified version.  This engine uses a built in reduction gear to make use of higher efficiency of a higher RPM.

I expect to make a final selection of airplane here in the near future.  Check out any of these aircraft companies websites through my favorite links.  Also, check back here occasionally for more updates.