KITPLANES March 2025

WE HAVE A FEW CHANGES around here that are worthy of mention. First of all, I’m excited to start a different kind of build series that Paul Dye, our esteemed editor at large and former editor in chief, and I have been talking about for some time. As a multiple builder—the F1 Rocket he’s constructing is his fifth—he has a very experienced and highly nuanced view of homebuilding aircraft. He has, as the cliché goes, been there and done that. The series, which starts on Page 52, is called Eating the Elephant. In typical Paul fashion, it is what it sounds like: an explanation of ways to reduce the longterm and marvelously complex task of building an airplane into digestible bits, a way of putting one foot in front of…

WARBIRDS ARE EXPENSIVE. Expensive to buy, expensive to restore and expensive to fly. For all that, you join a privileged cadre of pilots/owners who can walk with a particular swagger—not unearned in most cases—and you get premium parking spots at most airports and events. But for most, those expenses make owning and flying a warbird a fantasy. For this reason, kits and plans for warbird replicas have been part of the homebuilding landscape for almost as long as homebuilding has been around. Varying in scale, weight and power, some mimic their progenitors better than others. What is generally true about all of them, however, is that they are homages to the classic fighters of the two world wars—Sopwith Camels and Fokker Triplanes from the first and Mustangs and Spitfires from…

RV BUILDERS HAVE long known about James Aircraft’s custom fiberglass parts for their projects. The company’s products can make an RV fly faster, run cooler, look better and even speed up a build. Sam James, the creator of the Holy Cowl, founded the company. He sold it in 2019 when he retired and the company was moved from Florida to Maryland. The company then changed hands and states again in 2021. It’s now owned by a Texas couple who hope to continue the James Aircraft legacy. “I helped repair a boat hull when I was in the sixth grade, and that got me hooked on working with fiberglass,” explains new owner Jimmy Cox. “Fiberglass is fun to work with…once you get past the learning curve,” he says with a knowing…

A plenum on a piston engine aircraft is an enclosure around the engine that helps air circulate for the purpose of cooling. They are typically made of aluminum or fiberglass and are designed in conjunction with air inlets and baffles to hold the air around the engine at a higher pressure than the surrounding air. This pressure difference allows the air taken in from the inlet(s) in the cowl to move evenly past the engine’s cooling fins at a speed and volume that keeps the engine at an appropriate operating temperature. • The cowl’s air intake(s) must be sized to allow enough air for sufficient cooling but not so large as to unnecessarily disrupt the airflow over the cowl and increase drag. The overall shape of the inlet can also…

One reason James Aircraft’s cowls are so popular is the company’s use of Parabeam fiberglass. Parabeam invented woven sandwich fiberglass and, in addition to its aviation uses, you can find it in mass transit floors, ceilings and doors, watercraft decks, panels and bulkheads, and in building and architectural elements. • Unlike conventional cross-weave fiberglass cloth, Parabeam consists of two bidirectionally woven deck layers that are joined vertically with braided pillars. (See illustration.) The pillars act like springs and push the deck layers apart to a predefined height. • When you apply resin to Parabeam, the pillars’ capillary function saturates the glass yarn without filling the empty space between the deck layers. This avoids wasteful resin oversaturation and creates a permanent hollow space between the layers. (This space can even be filled…

If you think building an aircraft is fun, Jimmy Cox says help some teenagers learn to put one together for an even more enjoyable and satisfying experience. “I look forward to every Saturday when I get together with my Rockdale Tiger Flight,” said Cox, the owner of James Aircraft. The group is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit he started about a decade ago to introduce kids to aviation and aircraft construction. “We’re in a small Texas county of only 25,000 people, so very few of our kids have a chance to learn about planes firsthand,” says Cox. “I started doing this because I read accounts about how much of a difference it can make in a child’s life to give them hands-on opportunities. And, I’ve seen some results with the kids we’ve…