Homebuilders' Workshop: February 2015
People
By Ed Wischmeyer
EAA founder, Paul Poberezny, said that people come to EAA for the airplanes and stay for the people. For whatever reason, that seems an appropriate reminiscence on this clear, brisk Georgia winter afternoon.
The current issue of EAA Sport Aviation has a marvelous summary of the U.S. homebuilding movement, written by Richard VanGrunsven, the “RV” in the RV series of airplanes. In addition to being perhaps the preeminent homebuilt kit vendor, Van knew some of the very earliest homebuilders who coincidentally lived nearby in Oregon.
I first met Van at Oshkosh one year, about the time that the RV-4 came out. I had sent him three dollars or so for an information packet, and it came in the mail. Then I noticed an ad that said that the information packet was four dollars, but he had sent me the information packet anyway. At Oshkosh, I gave him the extra buck, and we had maybe a brief conversation.
As my writing career took off, I had the pleasure of talking to Van a number of times, and at this point, I’ve flown all of the RV series, except for the RV-3, and most of those were factory demo planes. Van was always pleasant, always knowledgeable, and always careful not to venture from the known facts into the speculative. One story I heard was that Van had bought a 55-gallon drum of something required for homebuilts that wasn’t sold in quarts, and he filled quart containers to sell to his builders.
It’s a little repeated truism that when you buy a homebuilt airplane, you’re not really buying the machinery; you’re buying confidence in the kit manufacturer and in the end user who built the kit. Van has certainly set the standard for kit manufacturers.
When I bought my RV-4, already flying, two of my buddies, older than I, helped me debug it (it took years, for virtually everything on the airplane had hidden faults) and keep it in the air. These two were also active in aviation politics, working to keep airports open in California. (The Young Eagles program was the best thing that ever happened to general aviation, changing overnight the politicians’ perception of pilots from rich noisemakers to the people who gave free airplane rides to kids).
One of those men had to quit flying 10 or 20 years ago because his lungs, never good, continued to fail. Another is expecting to be diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, and that will slow him down considerably for perhaps a year.
A third friend had built half-dozen RVs, and gave me tons of advice as I was looking for my first airplane. He got an infection in his hand that was resistant to antibiotics, and that, plus age, has slowed down his lifestyle considerably.
One of the reasons that I enjoyed teaching grad school so much was that I got to be on the other end of the cross-generational information sharing, interacting with the students, especially the good students. One of those students has just completed his initial training with Delta Airlines and will be going back in a few weeks to learn his first airplane(s), the Boeing 757/767. (They share a common type rating).
Back to the present, my garage has in it a number of parts for a Belite ultralight. (The rest of the parts are currently in the hangar). I got to know the Belite, and James Wiebe, the company owner, when I did a pilot report for another publication. Wiebe bought the tooling for the Kitfox Lite and started selling it as the Belite, as he had not purchased the name. Then he evolved the design–the aluminum tubular wing spars were optionally replaced with carbon fiber; the wood ribs optionally replaced with stamped aluminum; the welded steel fuselage replaced with aluminum for greater (and demonstrated) crashworthiness; and the latest version has foam wing ribs with no spacing between them for even greater ease of building, along with cool stuff in the fuselage of which I know little.
Since the spinal fusion surgery three and a half months ago, my strength and energies have been consistently but very slowly rebounding from the debilitating “surgical insult,” as the medicos refer to it. However, the local EAA chapter has some energetic guys looking for things to do, so we are going to build the Belite wings in my garage.
Last night was our first meeting, and we reviewed blueprints, assembly manuals, and parts. The assembly manual is for aluminum ribs (I’ve got wood), so there are a few questions to be answered. Each of the team members has an assigned specialty (spars, wood parts, anti/sail struts [anti/drag bracing], alignment, and assembly). We are working really hard to come up with all the questions before we start assembly.
And again, it’s the people.
