Month: November 2014

Builders,

Five years ago today I wrote a story about a single hour that had passed the day before at our airport. Most hours go by in your life with little or no memory, others stay with you vividly. I would remember this hour well, even if I had not written it down in the story.

It was widely read at the time. I initially wrote it on Mark Langford’s discussion list, just as a set of notes in the middle of a long night of insomnia, but it was eventually circulated in email and printed in a magazine. It has an element in it that moves some aviators. At places like Oshkosh people will mention it to me, even years later. People ask sometimes if the characters in the story were ‘real’. I tell them they were not characters, they are people. I share stories, but I don’t write fiction. When you are immersed in aviation, you don’t need to, just recording observations on reality is enough.

Today, 5 years later, a handful of photos of the people from the story.  I consider myself lucky to know them.  I am 51 now, and have spent 26 years in aviation, literally half my life. It is enough experience to say that the humans you meet at airports can be a lot more alive than the people you meet on the street.

All my life I have been plagued by the feeling that time passes too quickly. Although we have done a lot in the last four years, it isn’t enough, and the thought that the hours and days got away bothers me. Yet, one hour, five years ago, will never slip from my grasp. I get to keep it, and herein lies the secret of my happiness: fill the hours with quality and they will not get away. I can not remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but I can remember that the tug boat captains shirt was blue and he waved a white hat as we passed 100 feet above the Tennessee river in our Pietenpol on the way to Oshkosh 2000.

The full story “Friday night” is reprinted below. It’s subject is somber on the surface , but the story in it really isn’t.  It is just about being alive and how you can really feel it some hours more than others. -ww

Above, Dan Weseman and Dave Dollarhide at Sun n Fun 2013. They are both in the story “Friday Night.” Dave is fairly well known in Naval Aviation circles because of a short film clip of a young pilot escaping from an A-4 in the USS Forrestal inferno. In one of those stories that only happens in aviation, Dave is now flying one of the very few remaining airworthy A-4′s… 45 years later.

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Above is Dave’s RV-4. I shot this photo from the RV-7 of Pat Lee, another person in “Friday Night”  when we departed St. Augustine airport. Off our other wing was the RV-4 of Bob Woolley (who is now building Panther #2). In the story he is “Bob from the north end.”

The buildings in the photo are Northrup-Grumman; the road is U.S. 1. St. Augustine is on the coast, about 20 miles east of our grass airstrip.

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Above, Dan Weseman flying “The Wicked Cleanex” in the foreground. This is the aircraft that Dan is flying in the story. Off his wing is Chris Smith in “The Son of Cleanex.” The location is a bend in the St John’s river a few miles from our airstrip. The site of the Glassair accident was on the far bank of the river, visible in the upper right as a peninsula. This photo was taken in 2007, a year before the accident.

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Friday Night, November 20, 2009

Just as I am getting used to Daylight Savings stealing an hour of the  evening, the days are getting noticeably shorter here. During the week, our  clock revolves around 4 p.m. This is last call to drive the ten miles into town to  the Post Office with the days mailings. In the summer there are hours after this  to eat dinner, mess around in the shop, and casually pre-flight the Taylorcraft  before going aloft for the last hour of light. But now the casual hours are  gone. I drove back to the airport with an eye on the low angle of the sun, maybe  only 50 minutes until it sank.

I pushed the plane out to the edge of the runway. I stood there for a  minute, not a single person was in sight. Just the sound of a circular saw from  somewhere up on the North end of the field. The visibility was poor, there would  be little to see, but I had been out the past 6 days in a row and today would  make a week. Kind of a pointless exercise, going up for 20 minutes to round out  a week, frivolous really.  These are the things you think of on the ground,  by the time I am running through the mag check the pros and cons of going  aloft are forgotten. I orbit the airport in big slow circles at 70  mph, engine at 1700 rpm, just licking over. It all looks gray and  colorless. Was it noticeably greener a week ago or is it just the  haze setting the mood?

When I touch down, the landing gives me the  same feeling as finishing a chapter in a captivating book: Looking up  from the last page with the powerful feeling that you have just been  somewhere else. Taxing up to the house and shutting off the engine I  have the same sensation.

Three or four minutes later, our EAA chapter president returns from being away all afternoon. A 180 mph pass at 10 feet  signals the arrival of his RV-7. As he flies the landing pattern, I walk  the 400 feet up to his hangar. We arrive at the same time. He has an unexpected  passenger, Dave, our airpark president. Dave has his own RV-4, and I have never  seen him as a passenger in any plane. In his youth he flew an A-4 from the  USS Forestal into the most fiercely defended airspace on the planet. The black and  white photos of him in his hangar are of a much younger man in a flightsuit  with a helmet under his arm. He has the same grin today, but you get the  impression that big chunk of Dave’s youth, and a good number of his friends, only  exist in his memory after 1967. Either way, he looks really out of place in the  right seat, or in any side by side aircraft for that matter.

The moment fits the gray haze: Pat and Dave have just returned after  delivering the RV-9 of a fellow EAA member.  This man has also taken up  residence in Dave’s memory. He was killed this summer, along with another friend,  in an unexplained Glasair crash. One moment they were flying a low pass over our  airport, a little dog leg to say hello on their way home. The next day  Pat found the wreckage in the woods a few miles away. They delivered  the RV-9 to the man’s widow, who was very thankful. The plane was just  finished, and it is magnificent. She is keeping it in storage until next Oshkosh.  The man was an EAA member for 30 years, known in some circles. She would like it  judged posthumously. She had said some moving things to Pat and Dave, but at the  moment we were standing out on their ramp with the sun fading, neither of them  felt up to relating her exact words.

Dave started a sentence twice, but after  a pause he didn’t finish.  Pat spoke about a guy he knew in flight school,  lived 3 doors down, a Marine. Pat heard about his crash on the news, and walked  out his front door in disbelief. Seeing the black cars gathered down the block  took away the doubt and hope at the same time.

An engine starts at the far south end of the runway. It is Dan Weseman and  the Cleanex. After a minute of run up, he roars past us, 50 feet at midfield.  Dave looks at Pat and says “Let’s get him.” The RV-7 turned around and back on  the grass in seconds. Dave pushes out his RV-4. Their take off alerts the  airport, and several people drift out of their hangars to sit on the grass and  watch.

 If flying at most airports is an elegant ballet, flying at our airport is  Mixed Martial Arts. The furball is formed, broken and formed again over our  heads at 1500′. Between the sounds of wide open engines, the radio  chatter barks out from the base station in Alan’s hangar. In minutes they  are joined by Bob in an RV-4 from the North end, and then another  RV-7. In the sky they turn impossibly tight. You can’t always make out who is on  top, or even who is who, until a glint of the sunset differentiates a painted  wing from a polished one. It is hard to believe that the same airport was dead  silent 20 minutes ago.

One by one, they drop out and land. Pat is first, and has most of a beer  finished as Dave rolls up. Bob is the last to break off, leaving it where it  started, with Dan alone in the sky doing a few last slow rolls. The mood is transformed. It was 10 minutes of really being alive. Dan landed, rolled  out in front of us, turned a smooth 180 and taxied back towards his hangar, his  home, his family. He was close enough for us to see his expression, but he didn’t look  over. In the air, he had been far closer to the other pilots. The light is gone  now, and the day is over.

A few more words, and the hangar doors are shut, and people drift away.  Walking back to my place, I pause in the dark to watch Dave walk out to his  pickup. He had been the one to say “Let’s get him.”  This had been Dave’s  doing, perhaps his ritual. A little farewell to a man whose memory had just been  carefully and lovingly wrapped up for safe keeping. It was now stored beside the  others. A resident, final age 58, joining a group of younger men, some  of whom arrived 42 years ago. Although I’m sure he cherishes them all,  he probably doesn’t visit with them often. Dave is too full of life for much of  that. Besides, one day he will have all the time in the world to spend with  them.

William  Wynne, 2009

Builders:

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If you have not seen the Intro to this series, you can read it here: Understanding Flying Corvairs Pt. #1, Intro., It will explain the goals of the articles. Please take a moment to read it, including the comments section.

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In recent weeks I have written several stories about a builder who was trying to fly a Corvair powered Zenith 601XL on one of two SU carbs from a 60 hp British car. For the people who assumed that I was just making the whole thing up to illustrate a point, let me share this link to the man’s webpage:

http://www.zenith.aero/profiles/status/show?id=2606393%3AStatus%3A391095

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I wrote the story How I became a genius in 6 minutes about the man’s first flight, where the engine was severely damaged. Yesterday I commented on his choice to still try to use the same carb in: Thought for the Day: J.S. Mill – On Liberty. Today several people sent me a link to his page where he reports his carb still chronically leaning out.

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If you care to read the man’s description, you can see he suspects that his joyous British carb can’t take forward air pressure. If he had cared to read the stories I have written on Corvair Carb choices, he would have come across this personal story about Bing carbs, which work on a nearly identical principle as the SU:

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“A personal example of why I don’t like Bing carbs; Steve Rahm, our neighbor at Spruce Creek, designed and built the ‘Vision’. It had a Stratus EA-81  Subaru with two Bings on it. Since they basically ran full time carb heat,  he wanted to try cool ram air in search of more power. He went as far as testing the set up with a gas leaf blower on the ground. He did this because some people said Bings don’t like ram air. On take off it worked great, until the plane hit 70mph over the trees at Spruce Creek. Then the carbs  shut off all by themselves.

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Plane slowed to 65, power comes back a little. Very  skilled flight at tree top level is executed. Several minutes of listening to  the rough engine clawing its way around the pattern.

He appears on final gliding  in. Steve was a new dad, and his own father had been killed in a plane when  Steve was a young man. I could not believe that I was about to witness a  horrific repeat of a family tragedy. He barely made it, touching down at 75  mph. People on hand thank God aloud.

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As the plane rolls out in the three point  attitude, the airspeed drops below 60, engine comes back to full power and tries  to take off on its own. Steve later tells me he almost had a heart attack at that  moment. He switches to a Lycoming with an MA3-SPA. which operates on the stone  age concept of the throttle opening and
closing when the pilot wants. (the throttle on a Bing is controlled by a vacuum diaphragm) Steve is a  master skydive instructor with
4,000 jumps, he can keep his cool under pressure.  I figure most other pilots in a plane with a five mile per hour  wide speed envelope and 100′ altitude would have bought the farm. -ww

From the story :A question of Carb location…..

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I have no idea why someone wishing to do something different with carbs would not read all the available information. The mans website notes says that if his tests don’t work, he may later use an aircraft carb like I recommend.

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 I sit here and type this less than 15 miles from the spot in Florida where Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd is buried. On the subject of people who like to experiment with substances known to be harmful, he sang the song “That Smell”, which included the bit of wisdom  “Say you’ll be alright come tomorrow, but tomorrow might not be here for you.”*

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Above, three aircraft parked in our front yard. L to R, Louis Cantor’s 601XL – MA3-spa, Grace’s Taylorcraft –  NAS-3 and Dan Weseman’s Cleanex, MA3-SPA. This was taken on the day we flew a flawless test flight in Louis’s 601, the same plane as the man in question is trying to fly on the British car carb. I ask, why not have the sucess that Louis had?

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 Most of the people who are looking at a cheap carb don’t think I know what I am talking about. I find the concept that a guy who has tested either zero or one carb on Corvair flight engines assuming that his guess is more valid that my 20 years of testing, annoying. On the subject of low-cost, it isn’t a stretch to say that I know more people building a Corvair engine for a  plane than any other person on Earth. While cost may be an initial attraction, the reason why people stick with it is to learn something, be proud of what they  have done, and experience this in the company of other like-minded aviators. If you want to fly cheap, rent  a Cessna 150. If you want to do something rewarding, fly something you built  with your own hands that is reliable and works well.

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While I advocate the use of aircraft carbs, I have also tested Dyno many things from 1 barrels to tuned port EFI. If someone wants to use a cheap carb, there are many better options than a British car carb. Above, a 1 barrel down draft ford carb. If you would like to read more on our testing of this,  In Search Of … The Economical Carburetor

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From Wikipedia:

* On Labor Day weekend in 1976, Gary Rossington and fellow Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins were both involved in separate auto accidents in their hometown of Jacksonville. Rossington had just bought a new Ford Torino, and hit an oak tree while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.  Van Zant and Collins wrote the song “That Smell” based on the wreck, and Rossington’s state of influence from drugs and alcohol at the time. It starts with the lines:”Whiskey bottles and brand new cars, oak tree you’re in my way.”

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You can see a live 1977 performance of the song at this you tube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hib4n9RmFrQ

Playing in it are Ronnie Van Zant, Allen Collins, Billy Powell, Steve Gaines, Leon Wilkeson, Artimus Pyle and Garry Rossington. Ironically, today only Pyle and Rossington are left alive. The others died at ages 29, 37, 56, 28 and 49 respectively.

 

“When I was little, I wanted to be Jacques Cousteau. It hasn’t worked out that way.  Sad but true, the lasting portion of my working life boils down to what I have done with the Corvair. In reality, I am neither overly proud of it nor ashamed of it, just OK with it.

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This said, none of my work is to show cheap people what they can get  away with. My work is to show people willing to make a serious investment of  themselves (mostly time), that there are great rewards awaiting the individual  who perseveres on his own terms.

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In 30 years I will likely be dead and  forgotten. Between now and then I plan on spending as much of my time as  possible in the company on people who want to learn build, fly and have a good  time. If I ever seem short with some ideas, it is because my experience allows me to see something that many people miss: This vital finite resource isn’t money, it’s time.

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Not in the free time sense, but in the years left sense. If you’re not young, nor a millionaire, then you have to make your shot count, you’re not going to get a do-over on this. Let my experience work to your advantage. Build as simple as a plane as you can, work on it every day you can, and understand that some components on it, like the carb, are going to cost money.

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There is a combination of simplicity/effort/money that can get a great number of people flying. You can be one of them, and the odds that you will be go up dramatically if you use my experience to avoid every mistake I made and paid for.” -ww-2o12.

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Jacques Cousteau, 1910-1997. His first love was flying, and he graduated from the French Naval Academy in 1933 to be a pilot, but was prevented by a near fatal car accident. He fought for the resistance in WWII. He went on to be a great scientist, explorer, inventor, writer and the best kind of environmentalist. No popular figure today can hold a candle to the richness of this man’s life.

Builders:

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If you have not seen the Intro to this series, you can read it here: Understanding Flying Corvairs Pt. #1, Intro., It will explain the goals of the articles. Please take a moment to read it, including the comments section.

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In 2011 the feds concluded an intensive study of homebuilts, and published a report that stated Experimental amateur built aircraft (Homebuilts) had an unacceptably high accident rate. They carefully pointed out where serious improvements could be made, and recommended that unless the rate got better voluntarily, they would seek some type of restrictions on hombuilt operations.

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Below is a summary of major points of the report, provided by Corvair builder/pilot Dale Williams: (New 3,000 cc Cleanex, Dale Williams, SC )

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1 )The largest proportion of E-AB aircraft accidents involved loss of control in flight
and power plant failures, and loss of control in flight has been the greatest contributor
to fatal E-AB aircraft accidents.

2) More than one-half of the E-AB aircraft accidents investigated in 2011 were aircraft
that had been purchased used, rather than built by the current owner.

3) A large proportion of accidents occurs early in the operating life of a new E-AB
aircraft, or shortly after being purchased by a new owner.

4) During 2011, more E-AB aircraft accidents occurred during the first flight by a new
 owner of a used E-AB aircraft than during the first flight of a newly-built aircraft.

5) The most common accident occurrence for first flights of both newly-built and newly
purchased aircraft was loss of control in flight.

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One of the really starting things in the report was that the accident rate for second owners with 2,500 or more hours as PIC in LSA legal homebuilts  is actually higher than 60 hour brand new light sport pilots in the same planes. A great part of this is Light Sport pilots are required to get specific transition instruction to fly a new type, and traditional pilots are not, and frequently don’t. The real culprit is that many pilots who have accumulated hours don’t feel they have anything to learn about their new homebuilt, especially if they perceive it to be simpler than what they were flying……many of his people have been dead wrong about this.

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Last month, I received an email from a pilot with a lot of ratings who had just become the second owner of a Corvair powered 601XL. In the email, and in a phone conversation he stated that he didn’t find a single word in the flight operations manual worth reading, and specifically stated that he was against transition training. Below, a verbatim excerpt from one of his emails:

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“I’m sure my flight might be of interest to your customers. And I intend to share my flight with the 601xl crowd. I have found little if any use in the corvair flight manual ( I am a professional pilot ATP-ME, Comm  A+I, CFI-IAME, AGI,  and A&P). “

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This is the exact attitude that produces a higher accident rate than 60 hr pilots. I will never teach one of these guys anything, and it isn’t my goal to do so. My goal is to teach people who want to learn. In you are new to flying, please read this story: Concerned about your potential?. Never believe the myth that pilots with 4 or 5 digits worth of hours are “safer” than you. Actual risk management lies not with hours, but with attitude, and the willingness to exercise good judgment. The accumulation of hours and ratings are not synonymous with possession of attitude and judgment. You don’t have to take my word for this, or even the evidence of the email above. This has now been statistically proven in the 2011 report.

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Use this understanding to choose who you fly with carefully. In our own EAA chapter we have several airline pilots with more than 25,000 hours who went out and bought RV’s as second owners. Some of them did it the right way, but a number of them never had a tail wheel rating, no transition training, and lacked any kind of basic information on the plane before flying it.

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One of them fly his new plane at 140 mph for many hours back home because he thought 2,300 rpm was the redline of a Lycoming (It’s 2,700) He never leaned it out even though he went above 10,000′, and arrived after dark and ran over three runway lights because he of course had no tailwheel experience. This man flew in the Navy, and then earned his living as an airline pilot. He has all the posturing one associates with the phrase ‘highly experienced pilot’. Meaningless to me, I would never fly in a light plane with him because he has no judgment. If you are new to flying, consider yourself un poisoned by that man’s disease, stay away from him, after prolonged exposure it is contagious. Set your goal today to be better than him. It may take time, but statistically speaking by the time you have 60 hours, you will be at lower risk. -ww.

 

“The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right…The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” – On Liberty, 1859

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A very long time ago, before I came to aviation, I earned a degree in Political Science and Philosophy from St. Leo University. I had a number of really outstanding professors, and the program was very heavy on reading classics. In the decades since, I have continued extensively reading on the topics.

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No other man had greater effect on my personal perspective than John Stuart Mill. He was arguably the most brilliant English philosopher who ever lived, and his personal master work, On Liberty is the last word on defining the values and rights of individuals, particularly when they are in conflict with the desires of conformist society. These were not abstract points to Mill. Although he was fluent in Greek and Latin by age 7, and may have had an IQ north of 180, he was denied entrance to Oxford and Cambridge because he would not pledge allegiance to the dogma of the Church of England. This has direct relation to homebuilding today, take a minute to read this link: Thought for the day: Building as an individual.

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A required corollary to my belief in individuals is that I must also respect their right to kill themselves. Mill’s quote above states this. Today we have the “nanny state” attempting to make everything “safe” which can’t be done. They always fall back on trying to remove tools and opportunity from the individual, all allegedly for the individual’s good. If you follow Mill’s argument in depth, he explains why this ends up degrading the value of all lives, not just the ones belonging to self destructive people, morons and people yet unacquainted with the finality of death.

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My personal oath as an Aircraft Mechanic requires me to take action on behalf of unwitting passengers, not foolish airmen. (read below) As a human being, my code requires me to speak up and alert the person who may be doing something foolish out of ignorance. (read Effective Risk Management – 2,903 words) in the end, when someone has heard me out, and still wants to go ahead, my personal philosophy, patterned on Mill’s,  requires me to not to impede their trek to the cemetery. 

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A few weeks ago I wrote this story: How I became a genius in 6 minutes. It is about a builder who tried using an MGA carb from the British car on his Zenith, destroying the engine on the first climb out. Today came word that the same guy is back on the Zenith builders sight saying he is going to try essentially the same experiment again, but he is expecting a different result. I am at peace with the eventual outcome, I only ask that when we hear of it, a friendly builder post a link to this story. Tonight before I sleep I will take my copies of On Liberty and Origin of the Species off the shelf and thumb through their dog eared pages, and Consider how Mill and Darwin, men who lived and passed before the Wright brothers flew, understood so much about the animals that would later inhabit the world of flight. -ww.

 

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I earned my A&P license from Embry-Riddle in 1991. It was in an era when the department was run by men who were former military, who had come of age in WWII,  Korea, the Cold War and Vietnam. They took aviation very seriously, they all had seen its potential costs. They were tough.  I am biased, but I do think the program was without peer.  At the end of training, a handful of select students, I among them, elected to take a solemn oath in a private ceremony  to swear our unwavering allegiance to aviation safety.

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We did not swear to protect our employers, nor to defend the FAA or their rules, nor did we swear to defend our friends, careers or egos. We didn’t even take an oath to protect pilots. The only people we were taking an oath to protect was unwitting passengers who would fly in planes, people who had supreme trust and the belief that their fellow man, an aviation professional, was trustworthy with their very life.  The critical element of the oath is that we might be the passengers last line of defense, and if it was so, we were to “forsake every other consideration to protect them.”

– From the story Pietenpol Weight and Balance project

 

“Mechanical instruments are Bad-Ass. On my workshop shelf I have a manifold pressure gauge that reads to seventy five inches of manifold pressure. (22 pounds of boost) It is from a Lockheed P2V-7 Neptune which had 3,700 hp turbo compound radials. It glows in the dark because the numbers are painted on with radioactive paint. There is a pretty good chance that this gauge flew in the cuban missile crisis or attacked the Ho Chi Minh trail. If it could talk, it would tell you that the cold war wasn’t always cold, and it would remind you to think about the people who fought it, but it can’t say anything. It just sits out there, night after night, its faint green glow quietly remembering thousands of hours aloft, in the company of men, men now mostly gone…. In another 15 years, many  of the glass cockpits of today, almost all the MGL stuff from South Africa, all the I-Pads built by virtual slave labor in China, all the garbage like Blue Mountain and Archangel will all be lining the bottoms of landfills accompanying used diapers and copies of People magazine featuring the Kardashians. 15 years from today, my MAP gauge will still be quietly glowing, trying to remind people that there was a time when being an aviator was about skill, reliability under pressure and courage.”-ww-2012

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Stories like the previous one of Ken Pavlou’s flight to CC#31 highlight the capability of really well thought out glass cockpits in planes, matched with advanced pilot training and skills. His flight would have been much a more difficult pilot workload with traditional instrumentation.

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Instrumentation is a personal choice and is situational. I wrote the stories: Inexpensive Panel……..part one. and Inexpensive panel…….part two. because I am partial to very simple instrumentation. I like to fly away from congested areas, not towards them. We live in a rural setting that requires no instrumentation to arrive nor depart from. Other people with the same plane may have different plans and needs. They should be carefully evaluated. Give some thought to my comments here: Thought for the Day: Obsession with electronics when coming to your own conclusion.

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I have seen two KR2’s set up with 50-60 pound panels for hard IFR by pilots who have never even flown in IMC  in a light plane and have no idea of how demanding a skill set is required to do this safely, nor any understanding of what makes an airframe a good instrument platform. I have also seen many planes with very complex panels, who’s builders lacked the kind of basic flying skills described in the  Greatest Book on Flying Ever Written, (Is your life worth $16?) Many people are good at buying things but poor at learning new skills. In aviation this has proven the undoing of many flyers who mistook having the instrumentation for having an instrument rating. This is not just confined to experimentals, Bonanza’s, Malibu’s and Mooney’s have all had plenty of fatal accidents caused by VFR pilots with the hubris to think an auto pilot was just as good as an instrument rating.

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If  a builder wants a glass panel, then I highly suggest building a clone of an existing trouble free panel. This means Dynon or Grand Rapids. Dynon’s have been behind Corvairs since Dr Ray flew one in his 601XL eight years ago, and many pilots have used them all the way through Ken Pavlou.  Today Grand Rapids newest panels are also popular because  Dan Weseman has one in the Panther, and he is a dealer for them and can advise Corvair builders how to set them up down to the last sending unit.  Read more about them at this link: https://flywithspa.com/product-category/accessories/avionics/. You can also buy very compact panel mount flight line radios directly from them. I just bought one from them for our Wagabond. I am a hardliner about simplicity, but not a zealot.

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While there are a number of Corvair powered planes flying with MGL avionics or I-pads, I would like to strongly discourage anyone one new from considering this. Please read: MGL vs Corvair ignition issue. Also note than we have had a person crash a plane because his I-pad misread his fuel sending units and he ran out of gas. There have been more than a dozen sending unit failures on Corvairs where the builders were fed false information. Note that Dan Weseman started out with a MGL panel in the Panther, but removed it after having issues with it. It should go without saying that instrumentation from start ups and things from defunct outfits like Blue Mountain should not even be considered, even if they were free.

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Above, a 1963 photo of three famous maritime patrol planes. A P2V-7 with two 3,700 HP radials and two J-34 turbojets is in the foreground. Behind it is a Martin Marlin and in the back is a Short Sunderland. They are flying over Corregidor Island at the mouth of Manila bay in the Philippines. This was the location of the last stand of US forces in the western Pacific in 1942. Spend a few minutes reading about it at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corregidor_Island