KITPLANES November/December 2024

I PROBABLY SHOULDN’T admit this, but some features that come with the latest electronic flight instruments have left me a little, um, disinterested. Until I try them, that is. A good example is the concept of “safe glide” or even autoland. Garmin introduced both concepts a few years ago, though the full-autoland idea is more recent and limited to high-end aircraft where the system can control the engine directly. Not at my pay grade. The more common version is what Garmin calls Smart Glide and, more recently, Dynon rolled out what it calls Emergency Glide. They work similarly: When commanded, they set up a controlled descent to the nearest viable airport and let the pilot concentrate on other things. To be honest, I was a bit meh about them as safety…

ALL AIRPLANES ARE a compromise of one sort or another. Models that fly slowly with great confidence aren’t usually fast. Fast airplanes are usually fond of runway. We love aircraft with generously sized cabins, but that aspect also takes a cut into performance and the result is likely to weigh more. Is any given design too slow? Just add horsepower, except that involves yet more weight just to do that plus you’d better plan to carry that extra fuel your more powerful engine desires. Depending on where you dine, lunch may be reasonably priced but it’s never free. The trick, of course, is to find the balance. For Kitfox, the solution, while still keeping a sharp eye on that everelusive sweet spot of performance and intended function, is simply three different…

IT IS CALLED THE GOLD LINDY, a 7-pound statue of Charles Lindbergh that is awarded to the absolute best kitbuilt aircraft at AirVenture every year. Every Gold Lindy is inscribed with a quote from Charles Lindbergh: “Progress and quality are inseparable.” Those are not just inspiring words on a gold plate. Every judge at AirVenture uses them as a guide star, searching for aircraft that are not only beautifully built but are also innovative, pushing the boundaries of design and performance. Darryl Hudec, the man who was awarded the AirVenture 2023 Gold Lindy for his stunning and beautiful F1 Rocket, did not set out to win that award when he began construction in 2018. Looking at his impending retirement from a career as a Southwest Airlines 737 captain, Darryl concluded that…

I ORIGINALLY DESIGNED my SR-1 race plane with a single wing tank. I subsequently decided to add a header tank for several reasons. First and foremost, the wing tank is wide and flat; the wing has almost no dihedral and a very shallow sump. Although I incorporated flapper doors between the outer left/right bays and the inner bay, I was concerned that uncoordinated flight at low fuel levels might unport the pickup and result in the engine quitting. (It would be nice to preserve slipping as a landing maneuver option for the pilot, but this is also exactly when you don’t want an engine out, especially in a plane with a poor glide ratio and high landing speed.) I also realized that adding a header tank would provide enough fuel to…

IT SAYS SOMETHING that the last time we rounded up the big-screen electronic flight instruments it was in late 2021 and billed as a “Big Screen EFIS 2022 Buyer’s Guide.” Why haven’t we updated it since? Simple. Because the segment hasn’t changed a lot. Sure there are a few new products and some general tweaks here and there but it’s nothing like the seismic changes we saw starting in the early 2000s, as new companies with fancy new products arrived almost daily. (And some left just as quickly.) As before, the mainstream EFIS offerings come from familiar companies, including Advanced Flight Systems, Dynon Avionics, Garmin, GRT (who you may think of as Grand Rapids) and MGL Avionics. Most of these are fully formed suites of avionics that are more than…

THE FOCUS IN my previous article came to a screeching halt with the tire/wheel/brake assembly progress as I decided to use 29-inch Desser tires that were backordered. It was also decided that the best way to mount the Beringer axles to the Zenith main gear is to swap the predrilled main gear for an undrilled gear so I can make it match the Beringer bolt pattern. Sometime in the near future, I plan to make a trip to the Zenith factory to swap the main gear and pick up some customized parts along the way. While waiting on several other manufacturers for quite a few pieces of this elaborate puzzle—things like suspension parts, axle parts, hardware and even tires—I have been keeping myself involved with the build by tackling other…