Year: 2017

Builders,

With Corvair Colleges #39, #40 and #41 in the books, we have completed the 2017 College season. We use the period of time between thanksgiving and Christmas to consider, evaluate and plan for the next years season. It is a refining process, and we also decide what areas of the country to serve in a season.

.

Above, learning how to install ignition systems and time them at Corvair College #41, Barnwell South Carolina , November 2017. The picture contains builders of all experience levels. At Colleges, we rapidly break builders into sub groups of similar experience, and teach each group to its own level. At first glance, Colleges do not appear to have a set format, but in reality, I have a highly refined process which is very flexible, which allows for great variations in experience and rate of learning. This process adjusts to builders, we don’t make individuals conform to a program.

.

Many factors go into College planning. Scheduling of the season means that we can’t hold them in the North in cooler months. In the summer, we must place them around events we always attend like Oshkosh and The Zenith Open house. In recent years I have preferred small private airports to public ones, and I have to have the full compliance of the airport manager.

.

We also know from experience what the requirements are to successfully host a College. This include previously attending a College, Having your own Corvair project, and being an outstanding organizer.  Merely being part of a local EAA chapter that thinks hosting a college would be neat is not nearly enough.

.

Additionally, the venue has to have space for a minimum of 35 builders (this is a 50 x 50 hangar) and it must have good lighting, air, basic tools , restrooms and available camping.  Colleges are free to builders, but the time ways from the shop, travel and expenses, make them very costly to myself and the Weseman’s at SPA, who cover nearly all the events with me. Don’t get me wrong, they are well worth giving our time to, but it must be done wisely.

.

When you look at all all the factors, we are effectively constricted to running 3 – 4 Colleges a year, and they are mostly going to be in southern locations. I have held Colleges in Oregon, Ohio, Michigan and Massachusetts, and they were good events, but had to be summer events, the busiest time of the year. I have held colleges that were hosted by EAA chapters, but unless we have an individual you is an active builder in that chapter, it’s not a good idea. I have had offers to host from Arizona and North Dakota, but due to low density of builders in those states, I just encourage those builders to plan on going to a California or a Zenith based college respectively. I have traveled many long miles to colleges , I expect motivated builders will meet me half way on travel.

.

Please use the Comments section to cast a vote for a location, share a Corvair College memory, or suggest an idea for the 2018 season. If you are planning on making this comping flying season count for you, let your ideas be heard.

.

Wewjr.

.

 

Builders;

A little while back, a builder with a flying plane equipped with an original 2400 series starter (Ones we shipped from 2001-2014, before the lightweight 2400L series) asked about getting a replacement for the one which had been on his plane for 12 years. I suggested that he just go down to the auto parts store and buy a Subaru EA-81 starter and switch the noses and brackets from his aircraft starter with the new electrical parts from the car starter. A simple one hour operation, and less expensive than upgrading to the 2400L.

.

I am not sure how challenged the auto parts store people in his area are, but evidently this was some type of insurmountable problem, with the usual claims of “they never made that”, ” You can’t get those anymore” and “I can only look it up if you know the color of the car”. This lead to a lot of back and forth, but in the interest of me maintaining my sanity, below is a picture of the exact starter, sitting on the shelf in my local Napa store. Note they only have three of them. This part number can be crossed to any other brand and it will also work, but I hesitate to mention that because crossing a part number is probably beyond what passes for a counterman in the modern world.

.

We have on the shelf at SPA about 20 of the modified gears for these starters, and in all my years of working with them, I only saw one starter and two gears wear out. So this isn’t an issue most builders need to be concerned about. I bring it up to point out that I would never have selected a starter to work with that would become extinct in our lifetimes. I make more intelligent choices about parts than that. I go out of my way to support people who have older series products from me. There are plenty of companies both big and small in our branch of aviation who make a nice living forcing people to “upgrade” from their now unavailable proprietary parts. I am not, and have never been, one of those companies.

.

.

Above, at our local NAPA store, same location where this took place:

Thought for the Day: Feminism in Rural Florida

.

wewjr.

Builders:

.

In 1937 my father was 11, and he was presented the book below by a gentleman named Frankie Walsh. He was a WWI infantryman who served with my grandfather in the 78th Division in savage combat in France.

Walsh worked both for the CAB and CAA, and ultimately was head of production for Vought. His visits to my fathers childhood home in Passaic NJ gave my dad a close connection to aviation.

Walsh came home married to a French war bride named Gerrie , who became my grandmothers closest friend. She left for her new home in America leaving little behind. All four of her brothers were killed in WWI. Frankie only made it to the 1940s, but Gerrie, his widow lived until the 1980s and was a close part of my own childhood.

 

“Flying for 1937”

 

 

.

The Billy in the inscription is my father.

 

.

 

.

The book covers all aspects of flying including air racing. Wittman’s picture is on the right. I flew with him in the Olds Tailwind 56 years after my father received the book.

.

Wewjr

.

Builders,

In 1910, TR delivered the the words below on a European tour. The audience in France received them with great vigor.

.

.

In the last century, it became commonplace for presidents to use speech writers, reducing themselves to mere actors. TR was a real writer, and he needed no one to find words for him. He was the real thing.

.

schelessger wrote for JFK and Noonan wrote for Regan. It went down hill from there, in 2000 after GWB invented words and Gore slowly said the words ‘lock box’ in every speech, Jeff Greenfield observed that “we have a candidate who speaks to us as is English is HIS second language and another who speaks to us as if English is OUR second language. Today the vocabulary is reduced to phases like ‘very bad’ and ‘low ratings’ and I find myself becoming nostalgic for Bush and Gore.

.

I protect my mind by going to the books and reading the words of TR and Lincoln. These and beer sipped in a lawn chair beside the grass runway provides a mental refuge.

.

If it doesn’t work you can always resort to harder stuff and books by Jeff Cooper.

.

Wewjr.

.

Builders;

.

I don’t want to create the impression that all good illustrations in manuals stopped in 1958, below is a little impulse coupling manual from the 1980s that a lot of A&P mechanics have tucked away on a shelf.

.

.

If you look very close the sad statement is followed by the words “my name is Adam”, a reference to an annoying character our housemate Francis dated.

.

Wewjr

.

Builders;

.

Below are pictures from a 1958 Evinrude 35 hp owners manual, an engine I engines for a number of years in the 1990s. I always liked the art, and the fact it was written without the input of lawyers nor the assumption that Americans were idiots. Different manual from a different time.

.

.

I like the way the engine has a pillow and is sleeping.

.

.

When was the last time you saw this kind of a technical drawing in a manual? This is from the age of machines, not disposable appliances. The only assumptions were that the owner had common sense, interest in well made things and how they work, and a sense of personal responsibility.

.

.

A simple explanation of how the carb worked, including two mixture controls, written so a 13 year old could follow it. Today in aviation we tell adults they are too stupid to learn how to operate a carb with one mixture control, and tell them they should make themselves subservient to a computer because they are too dumb to learn what every teenager could learn in the 1950s

.

.

I like how happy spark plugs in the 1950s were.

.

Wewjr

.

Builders:

.

.

.

Two views of a little ‘travelair mystery’ a little cast plane which my father received when he was seven years old in 1933. The wingspan is about 6″, it appears to be and has the feel of cast iron.

.

Wewjr

.

Builders:

.

.

.

In traditional rural Thailand, the man with an elephant is important in a village, because he owns the ‘Crane’, ‘ forklift ‘ , ‘excavator’ and if it comes down to it ‘ armored personnel carrier.’

.

At our airport Corvair/Panther builder Paul Salter is that man because his tractor is the modern equivalent of the elephant. It does countless tasks, one of which is to remove my welder, aka “Mr. Lincoln ” from my hangar when free swimming lessons are in the forecast.

.

Evacuated before Irma put two feet of water in my hangar, it had an extended stay at Paul’s dry hangar while I was away at Zeniths open house and CC #40. Good choice because a strong nor’easter nearly flooded my shop again.

.

Paul’s ‘elephant’ brought the welder back yesterday. The brush pile behind it is a 75′ long wall of chopped up downed trees from the hurricane and storm. It will be put to the torch when the weather is cooler and friends and beer are available. In Florida there is little worry of starting a blaze, it is a very watery state.

.

Wewjr

.

Builders;

.

.

Perhaps every vehicle has a socio-geographic location where it is a symbol of taste and good values…….

.

While washing camping gear at our local 24 hour laundromat, in our tiny town in rural Florida, several of the establishments patrons complimented my truck , referred to as a “Square Body” colloquial parlance.

.

Perhaps someone is driving a new Prius in Seattle traffic hoping that when they get to Starbucks the barista tells them it the nicest Prius she has seen in 10 minutes.

.

Wewjr

.

Builders,

.

I’ve been napping through William’s stories my whole life, and I’m OK with that. Napping beats reading any day, and William takes a long time to explain stuff.

.

.

Sometimes, if I have to stay awake for a long story, I just wedge my muzz in the back of a chair. If you jam your snout in tight enough, it keeps your eyes open, so it looks like your interested.

.

I don’t have to read the stories, I fly behind the engines, I don’t build them. If you decide you are never going to finish your plane you don’t have to read them either.

.

Have fun and do good.

.

ScoobE

.