In defense of plain speaking……
Builders,
Over the weekend, The stories I wrote on Risk Management pulled about 1,900 page reads. Give or take, that is 700-800 different people reading them, some visiting more than once. From this came a handful of letters, and I was somewhat concerned that several of these were critical of the presentation because it spoke of the deaths of a number of people I once knew. This was called ‘morbid ‘ and ‘not about planes.’ I disagree, and I don’t feel that way when I write such things. Let me explain by introducing a friend whom I have great respect for.
With me are Dave and Carmen, good friends to Grace and me, in a photo from SnF ’09. They have an extraordinary marriage. Their lives are an interesting juxtaposition. Dave has flown many of the aviation scenes in James Bond films, yet they choose to live deep in nature in a very rural part of Florida, in a primitive setting, like the novel The Yearling. These are people who really live in harmony with the world. They are deeply faithful, and in their view this includes drinking and dancing and happiness. They are the kind of people who went with Rodger Williams to Providence.
I do not believe in ghosts, aliens, luck nor magic. Yet I will tell you that stand within arms length of Carmen, you can feel that she is a profoundly spiritual person. I am not alone in this, it is also said in her circle of friends. I accept that there are things in the human world that do not have, nor do they need, a detailed explanation. They just are. If you have never been in the presence of such a person, it is understandable, in all my travels and 50 years, I have only met 2 or 3 such people.
The setting of Carmen’s life, and how she was raised could have come straight from a William Faulkner novel. She grew up with several very close sisters, one of whom died young. Several years ago she told me that every year, on the day that would have been her sister’s birthday, all of the sisters dress in their finest clothes, hand prepare an elegant picnic, and they spend the afternoon ‘with’ their sister in the cemetery. She said it is about remembrance and of the celebration of the life they had and still have. She speaks of still having her sister ‘with’ her. When I asked her how they came to do this, Carmen simply said that this was how she was raised and who her family is. When she looks you right in the eye and says this, you really understand that it is her family that is normal and healthy, and it is the rest of our society that is hiding and perpetuating its wounds.
My version of remembrance of friends is writing about them. As I said in the story, I rarely think about these people when it is sunny and there are things to do. The thoughts only come back in the quiet hours, they are not with me every day. Some people are afraid to visit their past, and seek any distraction to avoid it. I have long since made peace with mine, apologizing for my failings. The only somber part of thinking of lost friends now is just purely missing their company. These people taught me a lot, and to not acknowledge that when I can, robs something from their memory. Almost everything that is known in aviation cost someone dearly. If we only choose to speak of ‘nice’ knowledge gained in R&D labs, I think we would have very little to talk about.
People who have only spent a few months around my writing on Corvairs may have found the frank discussion disturbing, but in all fairness, our manuals and 14 years of webpage writing has never been far from this. I am not in the business of telling builders what they want to hear, I am just here to share what they need to know. As a courtesy to readers who would prefer just ‘engine company part numbers and build stuff’, I keep all of the human experience stories marked under the heading of “Philosophy”, and you will not hurt my feelings if you elect not to read them.-ww.
Corvair powered Dragonfly, Charlie Johnson, aka ‘One Sky Dog’
Builders,
One of the guys who has been around the Corvair movement for a long time is Charlie Johnson. He is a very unique guy, an aerospace engineer of great experience, and something of an actual rocket scientist. In aviation circles he is best known by the name “One Sky Dog.”
Charlie is well-known in the Dragonfly building and flying community, but he also has a lot of other flying experience from hang gliders to GA aircraft. We first met Charlie in 1999 at a small West Coast fly in. He had a long-term plan to eventually convert his VW powered Dragonfly to Corvair power.
The Brothers Johnson, straight out of Utah. Charlie on the left and Bob on the right are both Dragonfly builders and pilots. This photo with me in the middle was taken at CC#11 in CA in 2007.
Through the years we saw him at the tandem wing fly-ins and a number of Colleges. He is good company and an insightful guy. One of the things that demonstrated that he has good judgement is that he was immune to external pressure to change the pace or plan for his own project. There was a competitive spirit to see who would have the first Corvair powered Dragonfly. Charlie would have none of it. He was not competing with anyone, he was doing things for himself.
The first guy who flew the combination was in a big rush and did a poor job. He didn’t want to get an ignition from us because he wanted to build his own. He didn’t understand that “32 degrees of timing” is total advance, not a static setting. Flight #1 ended in a field. The guy also mutilated the Corvair to fit it in a VW cowl. If your neighbor had a Lycoming cowl for his RV-4 but wanted to put a Continental in it and his solution was to saw pieces off the Continental heads, you would think the same thing about him. Fortunately the man quit before too long and went back to VWs. There was also a second Corvair/Dragonfly, built in Minn. It worked much better, but the builder sold it to a guy who rarely flew it again. None of this affected Charlie, he just marched on to do it his way.
The Dragonfly is not an easy plane to mount a Corvair on. Just building the mount and finding strong points is an issue. Early on, Charlie decided to use all the things he could from our regular engine builds. He recognized that having the starter on the front like we do brought a lot more room at the back of the engine and allowed the engine to be moved further back. He also selected to build a fiberglass cowl that incorporated one of our nosebowls. This solved a lot of the most challenging packaging elements. He did an outstanding job fairing this into the Dragonfly’s aerodynamics. I actually like the way his plane looks a lot more than traditional VW cowls for the design. Charlie went through some teething issues, much of it centered on a trial Y-shaped intake manifold, as opposed to the T-shaped ones we use. Slow and steady, he has advanced the plane to where it is now in flight testing. Unlike previous attempts at the combination, I think everything about Charlie’s plane is well thought out. Although he did the work for himself, I also think that he has pioneered a very good path for any other Dragonfly builder to follow.
Below is a letter from Charlie. Make sure you check out the two video links in it. Utah is a very beautiful area to fly in. Hats off to Charlie Johnson, for a job well done and setting a great example of the golden rule of homebuilding, persistence pays. -ww.
“William, Thanks for all of your help. Many years have come and gone since I first met you at Bullhead City.
Phase one test flying is proceeding with about 20 hrs on the plane. This last video is from Ogden to Wendover. I have my choice to go through class B over dense urban environment or avoid class B and follow Antelope Is. to the south shore of the Great Salt Lake. I think it is safer over the lake.
Below, prototype of my spinner, not so pointy as Van’s, I think it goes with the nosebowl.
Weseman baffling, not to say mine would not work, the intake “Y” seems to have been most of the problem.
(Charlie’s engine is a 2,700 cc with a Weseman bearing. -ww)
Dragonfly/Corvair 8000 MSL over Utah.
Two Video Links:
http://contour.com/stories/dragonfly-test-flight-4-climbout-ogd-to-bmc-to-ogd
http://contour.com/stories/flying-my-dragonfly-across-the-great-salt-lake-ogd-to-env
“Regards, Charlie Johnson, Ogden, Utah”
Risk Management, Experience vs Judgement.
Friends,
Before I leave this topic and go back to speaking of Corvair hardware and airframe components, I would like to put down one more story on the subject. As the title indicates, part of this story looks at how Judgement is more important that experience. At the center of this story is Ken Terry, a friend of mine. I wrote the last part of this story 18 months ago. The risk management part of this is tangential. On the surface I bring up Ken’s story because I want to show people that when I am writing a simple sentence like “two personal friends of mine with more than 25,000 hours each” I am not kidding, and the point I am making isn’t some abstract Flying magazine platitude, it is something directly taught to me by a man I knew well. You read about people with 40,000 hours, but do you know one? Was he your instructor? Did he lead a life that Hayden or Hemingway would have understood? Ken Terry was this and more. He was tremendously influential in Grace’s flying, an incredible instructor on many fronts. Although I was angry with him at times, I want to publicly say I was very lucky to have known him.
Most people go through their life with the detachment of a grazing cow. They are insulated in the little cocoon, mesmerized by their smart phone, unaware of humanity around them. If asked to engage, they most often camouflage their insecurity in some feigned cool cynicism, always safely indifferent on every topic. Ken was the anthesis of this, he was 100% alive, and he felt that Everything Mattered, and he was willing to fight for these things at the drop of a hat. If you wanted to live in a cocoon, he was threatening. If you needed to act to save someones life, you would treasure him.
Below the surface, There is a different story that matters to me. Ken is the last member of a trilogy of friends I once had. They did not all know each other, but they are directly connected in my life. It’s about brotherhood, how far you would go for another human in trouble, and what it might cost you, but it isn’t a happy story. They are all dead now.
Ken was the only person with my compulsive need to save Mike; I thought Mike was fate serving me a second chance, possible redemption for failing to save Ben. Deep inside I want to tell you why they were great people, how much richer my life would have been had they lived. But I can’t find the words to make anyone understand that, so all I am left with is a tangential story about risk management and some note typed last year at 3 am, thinking of people who still seem alive.
Looking at the risk management part of the story, you can read the link below to Ken’s accident. Get a good look at the destroyed T-34. Grace flew that plane many times, she did most of her aerobatic training in it. It would be very hard to express to you how skilled a pilot Ken was. He was not a former airline guy with a T-34 for putting around in retirement. He was a master of competitive aerobatics, and I saw him fly a number of planes, T-34, Eagle, Skybolt, J-3, C-152, and many others with a degree of control on the limit of the envelope you didn’t believe existed. He didn’t run out of skill the day he died. What he ran out of was options, and getting to that point is about making decisions headed into an ever narrower position. I find it very hard to say this, but it was probably an error on his part to get to an optionless position. That isn’t condemning the man, it’s me really asking you to learn something from him.
http://kathrynaviationnews.com/?p=21318
The 3 am story from 2011:
I just spent the last hour and a half out in the shop doing small stuff like deburing fly wheels and bending mounting tabs for oil pickups. I have done these tasks so many times that it is the kind of task that I can do without thinking about it. I just spent a lot of this time thinking
about a guy named Ken Terry.
Ken has lived at Spruce Creek, our old airport as long as I have known him. A cantankerous guy, I met him back in 1991 or so, the way that most people met him, by having an argument with him. Ken was a difficult guy to like right off the bat. He had an anger management issue that makes me look like I’m ready to guest host “Mr Rodgers Neighborhood.” He was always an in your face, tell it like it is, kind of guy. He didn’t need you to like him.
Twelve years ago Ken, who was a regional aerobatic champion and a life long pilot taught Grace how to fly fundamental aerobatic maneuvers in his T-34 and Christan Eagle. She used the second plane to get her IAC patch. It was a milestone in her flying, and Ken treated her like a daughter he never had. To Grace, he was a very nice guy, but to others he was gruff.
I was thinking about Ken tonight because he was killed in the crash of his T-34 on Saturday. Arnold called me up to say that he was dead. We live 100 miles north, and news travels the gap slowly. Here is the most important thing Ken taught me; People who are hard to like at first are often easy to respect later, and vice versa. It makes a lot of sense it you think about the qualities that make many people popular, and then think about how these are not an asset it a moral dilemma.
When I was president of EAA-288 I had a big argument with Ken that almost came to blows because he pulled a snap roll on take off in a 290HP Skybolt at an EAA picnic we were having, where I was trying to show people in the community how civilized aviators are. I was fed up with him, and I couldn’t think of anything good about him that was worth the other costs. About a month later he pulled up in front of my old hangar at midnight. He got out and said that a very good mutual friend named Mike Holey had fallen off the wagon for the thousandth time, and was out driving around drunk, and we should go find him. Ken explained that he was still not speaking to me, he just wanted a one night truce. I explained that I had done this for Mike many times before, and it never did any good. Ken asked if I was OK hearing tomorrow that Mike was dead, and I told him I didn’t think I could stop that it if was going to happen. Getting angry, Ken said what if he runs over someone’s little kid, was I OK with doing nothing and finding that out in the morning?
I got in Kens truck, and it only took an hour to find Mike, drive him back to his place at the Ra-Mar trailer park, put him to bed and remove two tires from his truck. Ken drove me back to my hangar. When we got there I tried to say something about how he was right about doing it for some strangers kid. Ken got mad and asked me how dumb I was. He got in my face and said we didn’t do it for Mike, or some stranger or his stupid kid, we did it for ourselves, so we could wake up in the morning without having to add anything new to our lists of reasons for hating ourselves. He said that every honest intelligent man who has done something with his life already has a full list of things he has done that he now finds contemptible. No further explanation, he drove off. I watched his Suburban drive down Cessna Blvd. I realized that Ken was very hard to like, but he was easy to respect.
I was sitting at the work bench two hours ago thinking about that night and trying to remember what year it was. I was tired and couldn’t come up with the answer right away, but it was at least 10 or 11 years ago. For about 10 solid seconds I thought about calling up Mike Holey in the morning and asking him. I have known Mike since 1989 and I didn’t think he would be offended if I brought up a bad night in his life from long ago. Then I remembered that Mike shot himself and has been dead since 2003. Ten seconds is a long time to forget that, even when your real tired.
I like working alone in the shop late at night. Our airport is out in the woods and it is very quiet here late at night. Long after anyone would call, long after Grace went in, it is a good time to think about stuff you never do during the day. In another month I will be 49. Ken was right, if you live long enough, and your honest with yourself, you will have plenty to regret in the quiet hours. Mostly things you should have said or done, and a handful of things you wish you had not.
Tonight, I add Ken Terry to my group of friends that never get older. During the day I almost never think of them, but late at night, when I am alone in the hangar, they don’t seem nearly as dead. When I think about them I subconsciously let them get older, it’s a way of pretending they have been with me all along. It not all regrets, there are plenty of good memories.
At Oshkosh this year I had a guy told me that he liked home builts, but he really didn’t get into having to spend all the hours in the workshop, largely alone. I listened, and shrugged, didn’t say anything, couldn’t really. It was broad daylight, and far from my shop, and besides, if you tell people you don’t mind working in your shop alone because it gives you time to think about people you have lost, they will just think your mentally ill. -ww, 11/2011.
Mail Sack, 4/21/13, Risk management.
Builders,
Here is a sample of the mail on this topic:
Zenith 601 Builder Ken Pavlou writes:
“William, I’m glad you write stories like these. It’s easy and nice to read about success stories, operational techniques, and product announcements, but I would argue that stories about judgment and consequences are far more important and valuable.
You would think that preservation of one’s life is more than enough motivation to do things right and practice good judgment. In the bigger picture though its more than just our own life that we are preserving. When we decide to learn to fly or build an airplane we become stewards of our hobby and aviation as a whole. We assume the responsibility of preserving our life, that of our passengers, and those on the ground.
We are also preserving our privilege to build and fly. Safety is absolute, it’s not an option. One can not and should not try to rationally talk themselves out of doing what is best for safety. If we stray too far from this we will see our privilege of flight regulated to the point of extinction. Thank you, Ken Pavlou”
On the topic of VE airframes, CC#17 &25 Host Arnold Holmes writes:
“Having read all of WW’s post on risk management, I can tell you that he is EXACTLY correct about the Varieze. I love flying my VE but I can honestly tell you that of all the airplanes I have flown I give the VE the widest margins. I find myself more alert and more attentive while flying it than any other airframe. It is not an unsafe design and it handles nicely but it is much less forgiving when you loose your engine on take off or need to land off field. In fact it is at least as bad at those things as it is good at others. That little canard up front has to work really hard and MUST have adequate airspeed to work. 50 feet in air in a climb configuration is no place to loose your engine or have a major power reduction in these airplanes.WW is giving everyone who takes time to read his post good, valid, experienced recommendations and you are foolish not to listen to what he has to say. He and I have known far too many that have died tragic horrible deaths simply because they refused to exercise good judgement, don’t be one of them!”
Builder Matthew Lockwood writes:
“There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots” In this case, ‘bold’ means ‘lacking judgement’
Builder/DAR Jon Ross writes:
“William, Your interest in philosophy is appealing. That said, your comments about risk management and judgment are opinionated, yet correct.
Like you, I express many of the same sentiments to those that will listen. The problem is, most people will not listen. I am often disappointed by people who seemingly seek sound advice when I later learn that they are simply trolling for someone to tell them what they want to hear. With the Internet being what it is, there are many so-called experts who will provide just about any opinion needed to satisfy almost anyone. It would seem that decisions based upon little or no sound reasoning or factual engineering basis would not be commonplace; yet they are.
In my travels as a an amateur built DAR, I am often queried by many builders about their projects. Many of the questions I am asked are related to advice that these builders have been given. You see some very interesting things in the field; and I often fly home with the thought of impending disaster after what I have seen.
With the cost of aircraft engines being what it is, I often am told that the power plant of choice will be the Corvair. I politely ask if they have seen your engine builders manual and recommend that they buy a copy and consider attending one of your workshops. Being around like-minded people (I am talking about a culture of safety) can have a very positive effect; it can be contagious. Unfortunately, the reverse is true as well.
My own current project is a Breezy, and the engine I am using is the Continental O-200B. I am often told (it is always an unsolicited comment) that I should use a Corvair power plant. While I believe that this could be safely done, the O-200 is in my opinion, a better choice for my intended application. While I am interested in the Corvair, I will likely never build one up for flight. But I find this suggestion to use a Corvair to be common; and the person making the suggestion is almost always someone with no credentials to be making such a recommendation. (With one exception; and that person is a mutual friend of us both). The point I am making is that builders are often bombarded by what may sound like seemingly good advice. When that advice is coupled with saving money, the advice given moves closer to being regarded as sound in the mind of the listener, that’s just human nature.
I admire your efforts to counsel builders on evaluating their decision-making process; but I have learned in my life that sound judgement comes from the heart. Like you I will keep trying, but I often take heat for doing so.”
Builder Rhett Ashton writes:
“I don’t usually comment on internet articles or blogs, but I feel compelled to make a comment here. Well said William. Rhett, Royal Oak, MI”
Builder Bruce Culver writes:
“This is all really quite sad, people paying you for your experience with the Corvair and the custom quality parts, and then not following your advice, but then I am reminded of what an old flight instructor told me years ago, “Remember, the pilot is always the first one to arrive at the scene of the accident.” Would that more people remembered that”
Bruce, 100% of people are never going to listen, but the goal is to make it 1% more than it was yesterday. In homebuilding, we have time to get people to listen and think. A flight instructor has but a few hours over a few weeks. I have many hours, often over several years. It is very hard to get people to change their ways on most subjects, but people do listen when things are said directly. I think too many aviation messages are blurred in with the rest of the ignored warnings in life because for the sake of family presentation and marketing, the warnings are ‘cleaned up’, Without frank discussion between thinking adults, the warning gets ignored just like the ones that came with every consumer appliance.ww
Cleanex Builder and flyer Dale Williams writes:
Hi William, This story reminds me of a choice I had to make on my Cleanex when building it. I had bought a brand new Aerocarb from another builder at a fair price. It was the size recommended for the Corvair. I had read your manual and seen stories where others were getting good results although some were having difficulty getting them to set correctly. I had even flown one before on an Aerovee powered Sonex that I used to own. But then something happened.
Dan Weseman had agreed, early on, to do the first flight of my Cleanex when it was finished as I didn’t have a tail wheel endorsement and Dan had built the engine and was confident in the building abilities of Dick Fisher who was my building mentor and is currently a beta builder for the tri-gear Panther.
But when Dan learned that I was considering using an Aerocarb he flatly stated, “I will not fly it with an Aerocarb on it.” I asked why and he plainly told me that he did not believe them to be airworthy. I mentioned that you had seen them used and they were a choice given in your manual. He told me that he believed that your view of the carb may have changed but nevertheless, he would not fly behind an Aerocarb. I respect Dan Weseman and yourself greatly and took those words to heart.
I earned my tail wheel endorsement and performed the first flight last year. BTW … she performs very well with a Marvel Schebler MA3-SPA Carburetor. Thank you for your brutal honesty. Dale N319WF”
PS: If you want to share this story and decide to “change the names to protect the innocent” I understand. If you decide not to protect the innocent, I understand that too.
Dale, Between thinking people having an important discussion, there is no need to shield anyones identity. I only do that when a builder makes a mistake and I want people to learn from it without having them focus on the ‘who’, as much as the ‘why.’ In this case, we are only covering builders perspectives on decision making. Not everyone comes to the same conclusion, but how they get there, the evaluation process is what we want to develop.
Notice, I don’t tell people ‘never do this’ without a reason. I am far more likely to say ‘I choose not to, and here is why.’ The first is only about controlling others actions. May work for a moment, but does not help the guy at the next decision. The second approach is a building process where the guy starts evaluating things for himself. Neither me, his airframe designer nor his flight instructor will be with the guy when he goes to fly. At that point, he is far better prepared if he has developed judgement than a list of do’s and don’ts.
The Aerocarb is a mixed bag. On a Corvair, it should never be used in an application with a fuel pump. Gravity feed, it has flown a long time. I would not use one personally. If I tell people simply not to use them, or if I ignored their existence, builders would rapidly find out that Joe Horton has flown on for 800 hours on a Corvair, and then many people would just skip to ‘it must be fine’ without a thoughtful evaluation of its qualities, limitations and their specific needs.
Reducing Dan’s perspective on Aerocarbs to ‘not airworthy’ is an over simplification of his evaluation of wether he would choose to use the carb on a Corvair powered plane he was going to fly. Neither Dan nor myself would pick an Aerocarb for our own planes. That doesn’t mean they have not worked for others, but it is an important judgement call. No one should take this as a knock at the Monnetts; Look at it in reverse, they would not choose to put a Corvair on their Sonex, even though it has long been shown to function. I am not offended by this, it is a judgment choice of theirs, just like the carb evaluation is mine.
The underlying theme in your story from successful builder to successful flyer is about developing your own judgement, but being willing to alter it when you are presented with more information. The number one reason why people resist altering perspective is they find out that they have to spend more money. Even 25 years after starting this, I still have never grown thick skin about people being cheap around planes. There is a very different perspective to working on a budget or looking for value. Cheap is a guy who lives in a $400K house, just drove to the airport in a $40K car, telling me that aviation is the most important thing in his life, and then complaining that an MA3 costs $400 more than an Aerocarb. Cheap will hem and haw and ask things like “well what if I” and point to examples, often on other airframes and engines, ones he has never seen in person. I have no tolerance for that. He isn’t looking for ‘why’ or even ‘how’, he is just being cheap, and people like that have harmed a lot of people in aviation, not just themselves.
Mentoring is important in this field. If you experience doesn’t cover the topic you need to exercise judgement on, then find someone who’s perspective you respect, a person with a proven track record that you wish to emulate. This is just what you did with Dan. You have plenty of opportunity when following his path to ask ‘why’ and understand the logic of his judgement, and in the process expand your own. -ww.
Risk Management, Wrong airframe, Wrong experience level.
Builders,
Continuing on the theme, let’s look at a different risk management topic. It is often the first decision a builder makes. Stop and think about that: when a guy is new, he makes a critical decision, before he has much experience or good advice to base it on. This choice is which airframe to build.
What brings this topic up is related to a previous story. A few days ago I mentioned that a builder was pursuing having a very long prop hub made for a plane that I thought was a poor choice for new idea testing, especially if the guy had little experience in building, flying and testing. The airframe in question is a Rutan Vari-eze.
Before anyone gets up in arms, I am not attacking the design, Burt Rutan or anything else. The point here is that it is not a good airframe to test new ideas on, and many of the people who like this airframe have little direct personal experience with them, and often the same people have not previously re-worked or modified other engines installations, they just like the idea of the plane, and often view the Corvair as a cheap alternative to the approved O-200. This isn’t a radical nor blasphemous thing to say. Would you like to guess who would agree with me the most on this statement? I will bet Burt Rutan himself. I have met the man in person more than once, read a lot of what he has written, and I really doubt that anyone who has done the same is going to disagree with my assessment of Rutan’s position.
On our main website for the last 10 years, unchanged, is the following quote:
“A VariEze is not one of my favorite aircraft, due to its fairly high landing speed and comparatively poor pilot protection in an accident. If you gave me my choice of aircraft to have an off-field landing in, a VariEze would be near the bottom of the list. Most VEs are overweight, and the Corvair motor is slightly heavier than the recommended hand prop Continental. This is a weight sensitive airframe, where a few pounds are not to be taken lightly.”
Vari-eze fans often tout this as a very ‘safe’ aircraft. The statistics do not bear this out. Taken directly from the 1981 Canard Pusher, Rutan’s in-house newsletter, the following note, written by Burt:
“Homebuilt accident record statistics were reported for a three year period by The Aviation Consumer last year. They show an overall accident rate for VariEze of 2.59 (1.55 fatal) per 100 aircraft during the 3 years. Average for all homebuilt aircraft was 3.93 (1.07 fatal). We are not happy with this result, as we had expected the VariEze to be significantly better than the average homebuilt due to it’s strong structure and good stall characteristics.”
I am not saying it is a ‘bad’ plane, I am just pointing out that it had a higher than average fatality rate, and that is flying with the recommended engine, in an era where pilots flew more, when the design had active support and virtually all the pilots were original builders of the airframes. Change this to a non recommended engine, with a 8″ prop extension that I am sure will overload the crank, add in a second owner who had little or no Varieze experience and you are now speaking of a very high risk aircraft. I know pilots of great skill with ice water in their veins under pressure who would not fly that combination, even if I built the engine, far less a guy on a really tight budget building his first Corvair.
I have looked at this combination before. CC#17 and #25 host Arnold Holmes, a 20 year close friend of mine, owns and flies a 1,000 hour VE. He had it at Oshkosh two years ago. He and I have very carefully looked at putting a very powerful Corvair on his airframe. One of the motivators for the joint project was we were pretty sure that we could edge the Corvair speed record to 230-235 mph. Arnold has a lot of flight time in the airframe, knows more about composites than anyone most people have ever met, is an A&P/IA of outstanding record, and above all else, he has incredibly good judgement around aircraft. Guess what conclusion we came to: It wasn’t worth doing. A speed record is a dumb goal to risk much on. I am sure we could have done it at moderate risk, but to what end? After a lot of conversation, Arnold decided that he can’t bring the VE to our little grass strip, His son can’t begin to learn to fly the VE from the back, and his girlfriend likes Side by side seating much better. His solution? Simple, he bought my Tailwind project and is putting a Corvair on it and probably selling his VE. Steel tubing, 170mph and grass strip friendly, and a straight forward tractor installation appeals a lot more.
We have four builders who are planning on putting their Corvair on a VE. Let me directly say that I think people have a right to do high risk things in life. My goal isn’t to talk them out of it, but I will openly discuss what I think the risk is. If they are going to do it, logic says they are better off with my input. But I am also free to say that I am not going to assist them if I think that they are making poor decisions or are ignoring risks rather than minimizing them. That isn’t a policy that just applies to VE’s. I have refused to help some people who were building Pietenpols and 601’s with poor attitudes. A guy with no credible experience in test flying and engine development trying to have an 8″ prop extension made because he thinks he needs it for stream lining is not exercising valid judgement. I spent some time with him at a recent College, and he is a nice guy, but as I have pointed out, Gravity Physics and Chemistry don’t care about that. Today, I am sure he thinks I am an A-hole who is pissing on his rights and dreams. I am ok with him thinking that for a long time. It is a far better alternative to him thinking of me supporter right up through a first flight that ends poorly.
Think that was a little too dramatic? Fear mongering on my part? Just old WW pontificating and verbally being mean to a guy that has different ideas? Don’t answer until you read about my friend Steve Parkman. Great human being, very clever, family guy, friend to many people; Gravity Physics and Chemistry didn’t give a damn about any of that. You can read the link directly below on how he was killed on the very first flight of his VE with a 4 cylinder Geo engine. You put him in a steel tube aircraft that was a tractor with a 50 mph stall speed, a much better test platform, and he would have lived through that landing. Anyone who wants to have some sort of ‘composites are safe’ comment, spare it, it doesn’t apply to the VE configuration on an off airport landing.
http://aircrashed.com/cause/cLAX99FA052.shtml
Just in case that was a little too dry and technical for you to think about it being about a human being that many people loved, look at the link to the newspaper below. If is an interview with Steve’s widow just after the accident where she is now unsure how she is going to house and feed her kids. Note that it was two days before Christmas 1998:
http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue2/1998/12/23/97325-widow-at-a-loss-without-husband/
A few years ago when I was on a three-day insomnia run, I wrote a story in the middle of the night for the Corvaircraft discussion group about being friends with Steve. I often called him during the day, but in the afternoon he would always break off the conversation to get his kid in person at school. When I heard he was killed, the first thing I wanted to know was what time it happened. For a while I had nightmares about a kid waiting alone in a school yard for a parent that was not going to arrive.
Lest anyone get off track and think that I am saying homebuilding in general is too high risk, lets bring this back in focus for a moment: This is about risk management through good decision-making. Right now, Dan Weseman has three kids who are roughly the same age span as Steve Parkman’s kids were then. Why am I not down at Dan’s telling him to re think about flying? For one simple reason; Dan has excellent judgement, is running a low risk test series, and he has made good choices all the way. If he saw any issue, he would stop and fix it correctly before the next flight. He leaves nothing to chance. In contrast, Steve didn’t always do these things. He might have gotten away with it, except for his choice of airframes as a test mule. That single choice, and it was a bad one, made all the difference. Simply put, it was the wrong airframe, and he was the wrong guy for a completely unforgiving test plane. He was a great guy, but that never counts. All that mattered was having the judgement to pick a better test plane, and on that point he came up short.-ww
If anyone wants to write me debating that pusher aircraft with composite or wood fuselages are not good test planes, please read the Vari-Viggen/O-320 accident report below first. I was on hand for the crash 10 years ago. I had spent the previous day admiring the man’s craftsmanship and personal style. He was a stand out in a group of 1,000 people at Frasca. The soy bean field he had a forced landing in was big and flat enough that I am pretty sure I could have landed at DC-3 in it. His fuselage did not protect him. It had poured rain the day before and it was later thought he had water in the fuel. With many planes this would have been an non-accident, but the man’s airframe choice did not work for him on that day. His wife had driven there and previously left for a 6 hour trip home. Some one was going to call her, but a pilot with 50+ years of experience stopped them so the woman could get all the way home and back to family before finding out she was a widow.
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20020617X00903&ntsbno=CHI02LA166&akey=1
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy……
Builders
Since we are working the risk management topic, let’s take a look at a different story; in the last one we examined ‘when bad things happen to good people.’ In this one we can get a look at a different corner of the outcome matrix, namely ‘when bad things happen to bad people.’
Without this story, people new to aviation might falsely conclude that accidents disproportionately happen to good people. Just to emphasize my point that Physics, Gravity and Chemistry don’t play favorites, here we have an example that they are just as willing to eliminate bad people. These impartial referees are indifferent to most character traits with one exception: Judgement, which they always respect. If you develop and exercise Judgement, the three referees with be the most reliable friends anyone ever had. They have never ‘turned’ on anyone, ever. In every case, it is the operator who changed and stopped respecting them. At that point they just remorselessly went about their business.
At the center of this story is one of the least likeable humans I ever met. Let me start by saying that I am an optimist by nature and something of a romantic about aviation. I truly believe in the essential message of The Great Waldo Pepper, that aviation is a brotherhood that spans many differences. Here is an exception. The man’s name was Ray Blondin. For many months he posed as a regular Corvair builder. At the start, he knew nothing about engines, and little about planes. He was a lawyer. He bought almost every part we sold, and asked many questions. Getting his plane done was just his first goal. He was going to use every thing we knew to form a LLC and make cheap copies of everything thing we had developed. I know this to be true because the week after he was done he launched a company with a big website named Ventureray LLC, incorporated in his home state of DE, and it said directly on his webpage that had been the goal all along.
Blondin was a sociopath, and let me assure you that one didn’t need a medical licence to make a conclusive diagnosis. Our attorney, who is a Zenith 750 builder who lives in CT, sent Blondin a cease and desist letter, based on the fact that I had Blondin signature on our product rights agreement. Blondin immediately called the Delaware State police and said he was being physically stalked by my attorney, a very serious charge. My attorney happened to be in Manhattan Federal Court at the moment Blondin claimed he was in Dover DE, 200 miles away. The Delaware State police told my attorney not to be concerned, as Blondin had made this same type of call dozens of times before. It would later turn out that both he and his wife, who was also in the plane with Blondin, were lawyers who had made their livelyhood by suing most of the people and organizations they came across.
I would like to say that I have a very loyal fan club who wouldn’t but cheap copies of our parts, and I would be mostly right. But truth be told, a number of people were attracted to saving $50 on a motor mount, even if it meant not knowing who welded it or what it was made of. Blondin also had a lot of support on discussion groups on the net, chiefly among vocal people whose feelings I had perviously hurt by taking the position that their three-week school on changing oil at Jiffy Lube didn’t make them an A&P. Blondin wrote his whole website in third person and spoke of great engineering developments he had done and teams of technicians he had. In reality is was just him and some borrowed space in a hangar. He had tried to have all the copies farmed out, as he could make nothing himself.
A day or two before Blondin’s accident, a got a letter from a guy who was disgusted by the internet response of some people. The guy wasn’t very subtile, and the last line said that he wanted to live in just country, a place where “scum like Blondin would be publicly executed.” As it turns out, this is just what happened, and Blondin handled the task all on his own.
In short, he took off into a 10 mph headwind, and still needed 2,500′ of runway to get airborne. That is five or eight times the distance it should have taken. Here is poor judgement at work: that take off roll was more than one minute long, and if he pulled the throttle back at any time, he would have lived. He never gained much altitude, apparently stalled crashed and burned. His wife, beside him died also. The longer report is below, but keep in mind that nearly everything Blondin said was a lie, so I don’t think he really had 250 hours nor do I think the plane flew 100 hours either. I spoke with people at the airport later, and no one wanted to back those claims. The local paper painted a picture of both Blondin and his wife as great humanitarians. Public records indicated that Blondin has actually sued the organization the paper had credited him with supporting.
By starting his LLC, Blondin cut himself off from reasonable assistance. Even if he didn’t go that route, nearly everything we later found out about him indicated that he had no judgement. His website kept going for one and a half years after Blondin was dead. It reminded me of the ghost radio signals being sent by the window shade in the doomsday film On The Beach. About once a month, some new guy would crop up on an internet discussion group, raving about the great products available on a website called VentureRayLLC.com, and saying he had just placed an order with their Paypal system.
When I first started in 1989 I had a lot of dreams about things I would do to play a positive role in the greater story of homebuilding. Today, through time and hard work, many of these things have come to pass. But I will honestly say that I had no idea that things like Blondin lay in my path. I have many other stories much like this one. If I ever come across as short-tempered, consider that you don’t know all of things that went into providing what we have today. The next time someone asks you “why are there not more products for working people in aviation?”, guide them to this story and point out that the more affordable the product is, the simpler it is, and the easier to copy it is. (My prop hub is a much easier target that a moulded composite fuselage) I still believe that the vast majority of homebuilders are good people, but Blondin proved something that plenty of entrepreneurs bypassing the affordable product market know: That many working class people who should have high loyalty to people working to help them, actually don’t, their primary loyalty is to save a dollar, even if it is bad judgement.-ww
Very important Note: Blondin is the rare case where a vermin from our industry harmed himself, not his builders. This is not usually the case. I know far more stories from our industry where the casualties are all customers and builders. Stay far away from people like this, very few of these stories end in this way.
Above, Blondin’s plane at Dover DE. Get a good look at the terrain and ask yourself why an off runway landing there would be difficult.
From our website in 2007:
“Ray Blondin of Delaware is the ninth pilot to fly a Corvair powered 601. Ray took to the air recently in his primer clad HDS, pictured above. Ray kept a steady pace going in recent months to see his project through to completion. He picked up a number of Installation Components from us, but built his own unique installation. Ray’s aircraft utilizes our Motor Mount, specified 66″ Warp Drive prop, Prop Hub, and Distributor. He chose to make his own cowling.”
| Tail number | N27S |
|---|---|
| Accident date | November 4, 2007 |
| Aircraft type | Blondin 601HDS |
| Location | Farmington, DE |
NTSB description
On November 4, 2007, at 1011 eastern standard time, an amateur-built Blondin 601HDS, N27S, was destroyed when it collided with terrain after takeoff from runway 34 at Chorman Airport (D74), Farmington, Delaware. The certificated private pilot/owner and the passenger were fatally injured. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed, and no flight plan was filed for the personal flight conducted under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 91.
In written statements, several witnesses described the accident flight, and their statements were consistent throughout. They stated that the engine sound during the takeoff roll and initial climb was “normal,” “strong,” and continuous with no interruption. The takeoff roll was “much longer than usual” and the airplane used about two thirds of the 3,588 feet of paved runway.
The witnesses described a very shallow climb after the airplane lifted from runway 34. The airplane drifted right of the runway centerline, and flew around the east side of a grove of trees off the departure end. The airplane then banked to its left “in an apparent attempt to return to the airport,” turned to the west, then disappeared from view behind the trees.
The airplane then reappeared above the trees in a steep left bank. According to one witness, “[The airplane] popped up in a very steep left bank (both wings were vertical like a knife edge).” The airplane then disappeared from view, the sounds of impact were heard, and a large smoke plume appeared.
The airplane was examined at the scene by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aviation safety inspectors, and all major components were accounted for at the scene. The airplane was consumed by a postcrash fire. Therefore, control continuity could not be established; and neither could any information be gathered from the cockpit.
Examination of the propeller revealed one propeller blade separated from the hub, and the other delaminated during impact.
According to FAA records, the pilot held a private pilot certificate with a rating for airplane single engine land. He was issued a third-class medical certificate in March 2007, and he reported 250 hours of flight experience at that time.
The airplane was manufactured by the pilot/owner, was issued an airworthiness certificate in February 2007, and had accrued approximately 100 total aircraft hours since that date. The estimate was based on reports from witnesses who were familiar with the airplane and the pilot/owner. A member of the pilot’s family reported to the FAA that he would conduct a search of the pilot’s home for airplane and pilot records, but no records were ever produced.
Examination of satellite images revealed that the airport and the grove of trees were surrounded by flat, open, cultivated fields.
At 0954, the weather reported at Georgetown Airport (GED), Georgetown, Delaware, about 10 miles southeast, included clear skies with 10 miles visibility. The winds were from 310 degrees at 9 knots. The temperature was 13 degrees Celsius, and the dew point was 4 degrees Celsius.
Risk Management, Judgement Error, money in the wrong place.
Builders,
Below is a five-year old photo of a 601XL built by a great guy named Ken Lien in WA. Paint job on the plane is super detailed, and it easily could have been a champion at Oshkosh. The major impediment to that happening is that Ken is dead and the plane was destroyed on the very first flight.
Although I spoke with him many times, I met Ken in person just once, at the Arlington airshow. By coincidence, one of his life long best friends has a hangar 700′ from mine and is in my EAA chapter. He told me many times what a great human being Ken was. I don’t doubt him at all; after 25 years in aviation I fully know that when builders make a serious error, physics, gravity and chemistry kill them without taking any consideration of what kind of life they led on the ground. It isn’t fair, but they are ‘inhuman’ like that.
I will share the highlights: Ken spent 18 months and thousands of dollars painting the plane. When I saw him at the Arlington show, he told me that the plane did not run well. We went over a lot of points, but I was pretty sure is was his MA3-SPA carb. To eliminate any possibility it was ignition, I handed him a brand new distributor. When he got home he confirmed that it ran exactly the same with new ignition. From this point he had the carb on and off the plane many times. What he did not do was send it into D&G fuel systems like I suggested for a $500 overhaul. He ran the plane up and down the runway several times, but did not run a ‘two minute’ full power test.
On the day of the first flight, he may not have intended to go, He had not flown in years, had no biannual and had no transition training. He took off and flew away from the airport. The engine quit a short time later. He crashed in a school yard, running into a brick wall inverted. Fortunately it was a Sunday and the place was empty. There was no fire. The airframe was destroyed, but in the news photos you could clearly see the flowing checkerboard paint job, with all it’s detail.
It is later found that he reassembled the carb incorrectly. It had floated over to idle cut off on its own. If he had run a two-minute test it would have done this on the ground; if he had spent the $500 for the overhaul it would have been correct; if he had stayed over the airport, he very likely could have glided back. But those are all things someone exercising good judgement would have done, along with getting back into flying in a controlled way. Again, I am sure he was a great guy. There are many people who are great people who don’t make good decisions around planes. There are also people who are first class A-holes who exercise good judgement. Like it or not, the later live a lot longer.
You can read more about the accident on-line, but I want everyone to know I am not slandering the dead here. I have a hand written 4 page letter from a friend in Ken’s EAA chapter describing how people there tried to get Ken to have a professional look at the carb. Long after the accident report, I heard from the guy who covered it, and he confirmed the probable cause.
It is well worth pointing out that this accident has absolutely nothing to do with Corvairs;The carb was the exact same model that a Continental O-200 uses. Had Ken selected an O-200 instead, he would have had the same carb, and there is no reason to believe he would have done anything different, and he would have ended up dead in the same spot, just the same. And before anyone goes there, it isn’t the carbs fault either, because any other person with good judgement would have just put it together correctly or had a pro do it. This accident had absolutely nothing to do with machinery at all. It was a 100% judgement error.
Ken’s story is not unique, I can think of dozens of builders who I have counseled that a 5th bearing and a good carb are a lot more important than a fancy paint job, a great interior, or any avionics. Think people listen to me? Less than 50% do. In many cases I resort to sharing the Ken Lien story, but it doesn’t change many minds. When a guy who I have worked with is about ready to go flying and he has a Dynon panel, a $2,000 interior and a paint job, but a poor carb, and no 5th bearing, and didn’t set the timing with a light, he may tell people he learned a lot from me, but in my book he didn’t learn a damn thing. If after several years of working together he still makes decisions like that, he missed everything important.
Go to any other website you like and I really doubt that you will find stories like the ones I write. Search for words like ‘Dead’ and ‘Killed’ words that I have used in dozens of stories; smart people never write about this stuff because they know it is bad for buisness…..besides, most people are not listening anyway. But I never learn, I still talk about these themes with the hope of getting people to think. If you are one of the people I am giving a hard time over poor decisions, it is your right to think of me as an A-hole. I’ll live with it. I don’t need to be liked, I am not in this to hold the hand of people without judgement and listen to their rationalizations while they walk straight to the graveyard. -ww
From 2007:
“We’ve recently received a number of photos from 601 builders nearing the finish line. Check out the progress of Ken Lien of Washington, Ken sent us a half dozen photos of his very sharply painted XL. “
Risk Management, Factor #1, Judgement.
Builders,
I was at the airport yesterday and spoke with Dan Weseman just after he completed test flight #4 on the Panther prototype. You can read the story of these flights on the Panther blog at:
http://flypanther.net/
Just like the first three flights, the fourth was mechanically flawless. Dan has inspected the aircraft carefully after every flight, but he has not had to make a single change nor adjustment. This is how every test flight program should go. Theoretically, Dan is flying a new design on a just built conversion engine, and this is thought to be dangerous. But I contend that he is actually at very low risk, because of one single outstanding factor: He has, and exercises, good judgement.
For comparison, let me point out that a number of people are killed in proven homebuilts with certified engines on their very first flight every year. In my 25 years of experience working with homebuilts and homebuilders every day, it is very clear that the number one cause of such accidents is poor judgement.
Ask a 5,000 hour pilot what is the most important risk management factor, and he is sure to tell you it is experience, yet I will tell you that I have had 2 personal friends with more than 25,000 hours each die in a plane because they chose to do something unnecessary and foolish. Ask a PhD engineer what is important, and he is sure to tell you that education is the number one factor. I have had several friends with engineering degrees that had been educated to know better, but still willfully did their last act in aviation against better judgement. Ask a guy who has been getting away with doing stupid things for years and he will tell you it is just luck or fate. Only idiots speak that way. Ask the man of great faith, and he will tell you that God protects. I will tell you that I have never met a man of greater faith than my friend Bob Bean, but when a poor decision and serious weather came together, Bob’s God protected his soul, but not his mortal life.
Judgement is the vital element, and without it, the other factors, experience, education and all the rest, don’t add up to any protection. Are you new to aviation and concerned because your flight instruction didn’t cover judgement? If the instruction was good it did. Quality instruction spends a lot of time on the subject of “Decision Making,” and this is the topic of Judgement. If your instructor spent more time teaching you radio procedures, then go find a real instructor and correct this error, now, before you fly again.
Here is very simple advice for the new: Don’t spend any time hanging around people with bad judgement. Here is some easy ways to ID them. If they ever use the phrase “It should be alright”; If the person speaks of luck; If they preflight planes while speaking on cell phones; If they are in a rush; If they planned on being home by dark, but then decide night flight is ok because they ran late; If they are poor listeners and finish your sentence for you with the phrase “yeah, yeah, I got it.”; If they brag about things they got away with, pencil whipped annuals or biannual flight reviews where they didn’t actually fly; If they are inherently cheap or complain about the cost of maintenance that is half what their car dealer charges; Any pilot who can’t tell you the Va speed of a plane he is about to fly; If they have the slightest tendency to show off in front of people; If you see any of these things, have nothing to do with such people. All of these are signs of poor judgement, and ignoring them and flying with these people is the equivalent of continuing to play Russian roulette.
The past 36 hours brought several examples of poor judgement. An email from a builder who is now taking the advice of his local Corvair car expert over how I teach people to torque flight heads, complete with a follow on email from the expert on how I do things absolutely backwards; A phone call from a builder who admitted to me that he ordered weak stainless head nuts by mistake, but was in a rush so he bolted the heads on with them anyway. In this process several of the nuts galled, but his solution was to just put more lube on them and put them back on (same man also used uncalibrated Chinese torque wrench to kill most of the studs in his engine on assembly); Third guy is trying to have an 8″ prop extension made for his Corvair, to be used on an airframe with a very high stall speed and little chance of survival in an off airport landing.
Now, back to my point about experience and education being no defense. One of the above people has a PhD in engineering and thousands of flight hours; another comes from a flying family and has attended two Corvair Colleges; another actually considers himself an aircraft mechanic. One of these people has been a paid expert witness at a civil trial over the mechanical judgement of others. I would not fly in any of the planes that these people are working on, and unless these people change what they are doing, neither should anyone else. I have seen about 50 Corvair projects seriously compromised by people who followed car mechanics over me, including 3 destroyed planes; I have seen countless people use substandard or incorrect parts because they were cheap or in a hurry, this was the direct cause of a fatality on a first flight, and about a dozen destroyed engines; a 7″ prop extension broke a non-5th bearing crank a few hours after I said it would, aircraft destroyed, pilot seriously injured.
Do you want your first flight to go like Dan’s Panther flights, or do you want me to be typing a story about your judgement in a few years? Is saving $10 that important? Want to “show” people something? Are you going to follow the advice of a car guy because he stops by your shop and pressures you? Think no one would do these things? They already have many times, and there is a long history of these things not working, at times with tragic results. I write about it all the time, but in one way or the other, 1/3 of builders make the same judgement errors. One out of five people flying today have never timed their engine with a light. Right now I could type in 100 stories of poor judgement off the top of my head; Flying 65 hours on break in oil, taking off for the first flight without a working charging system. Flying 4 flights without 1 spark plug connected, a take off and 90 mile cross-country with a completely blown head gasket. First flight with a car distributor with 45 degrees on mechanical advance. Static timing set to 32 degrees. etc, etc, etc.
Who can you trust? Yourself, that’s who. Every single one of the above things was unnecessary. In 75% of the above cases, people knew what they were doing was wrong, but they did it anyway, willfully. That is the definition of poor judgement. Let’s make up a number and say 1 out of 1,000 people who builds a plane gets killed flying it. The first thing to understand is that it isn’t a random drawing. This is not a lottery, it is almost completely under the control of the people in it. By my estimation, people who are chronically cheap, always in a rush, don’t do their homework, are show offs, or demonstrate any form of “get-ther-itis” are 50 times more likely to buy the farm. Having 5,000 flight hours is no defense compared to exercising good judgement.
I am not clairvoyant, but after 25 years of studying builders and having the time pass to see how their story works out, I have come to posses a disturbing ability to accurately predict people coming to harm. Every airport has a guy who predicts every single person will come to trouble, and when 1 out of his 10,000 predictions comes true, he wants to gloat over it. He would likely have a much more somber perspective, like I do if he had my track record of 1 out of 3. If I ever have a detailed conversation with you about rethinking your judgement, take it seriously. I don’t do it often, but I now need two hands to count the names of the people who thought I was kidding or not worth listening to.
If I ever seem short-tempered and cranky at times, much of it can be traced to a very ironic reality that I must live with. For 25 years I have worked to teach people they can participate in the best part of aviation, a path where they can learn to count on themselves, to really know what taking control of their life means. The Corvair itself is just good hardware, the real project is yourself. I have seen this work out for many, many people, and I find this very rewarding. But it remains very ironic that when I am done, the experimental aircraft community will judge the value of our efforts not on the track record of the builders with good judgement who achieved the most, but on the trouble caused by the ones who had poor judgement, people who would have had issues no matter what type of engine they chose. I have almost no control over this. This irony is true for most people who work in this field, they also know they have little control, so they wisely don’t ever bring up the subject. I’m not that smart, and every now and then, when I have a day with several examples of poor judgement, I try one more time to convince a few more people to exercise better judgement, just as if their life depended on it. -ww
Sun N Fun 2013
Warning: This story contains a four letter word in bold print, it is a direct and exact quote, it is here for a reason. The story also makes literary reference to an imaginary day with Richard Branson. If you can’t or shouldn’t read such things, skip this story and read the next one.-ww
Builders,
Here is a photo review of Sun ‘N Fun 2013. It was my 25th consecutive year at the airshow. The modern era of the Corvair movement actually began right in Lakeland in 1989. That year was my first Sun ‘N Fun, and I was new to aviation. I stopped in front of the Teledyne Continental Motors booth and directly asked them why they no longer made engines like the C-85 or the O-200. (For a long time Continental focused only on very expensive engines like the TSIO-550 and the Tiara, both over $50K even back then.) I pointed out that as an A&P mechanic, I was something of an unpaid field rep for Continental’s products. I was expected to stay up to date on all of their ADs and service letters, techniques and models, all while being compensated at the then A&P wage of $8/hour. Was it too much to ask that Continental produce an engine that mechanics might save for several years for? Were we relegated to being spectators and errand boys for wealthy people who could afford engines that had price tags of many years’ gross income for an A&P? What was Continental’s position on this?
.
After checking to make sure his boss was out of earshot, the sales guy leaned forward and slowly said “We could make C-85s again tomorrow, but we won’t, because Teledyne Continental Motors Inc. does not give a shit about you or anyone else who works for a living anymore.”
.
To put it mildly, I was stunned. A flash of anger passed as I realized that this man had just said the most honest thing I would hear from corporate management of aviation. I actually thanked him, and as I walked away I determined that I would proceed to develop something out of the two old Corvair engines that were in my workshop. Whoever the man was, he was the spark that lit the flame.
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In the 25 years since, I have often thought of that day. Countless times I have spoken with good people who harbored a terrible mistaken belief that big corporations in the aviation marketplace would eventually produce something affordable for them, the working class guy. For the past 25 years, I have known that this was never going to happen. It works just the opposite: Businesses that once had affordable products phase them out to chase the easy dollars of the wealthy. Need two quick examples? Lancair was founded to make aircraft that used an O-200, and sold for $10K in 1984, with a remanufactured engine. In a few years this was all abandoned to focus on pressurized four-place aircraft and certificated models. Rotax used to make some affordable engines, the 277, 377, 447 and the 503. All gone now, in favor of 912s that start at $20K, injected models for another $8K, and the turbo 914 in the $34K range. Go back to what the Continental rep said; I spelled out the four letter word, not just because he said it with great emphasis, but because I want you, the builder to wake up and know this in your heart.
You are the only person looking out for you in aviation. Don’t wait around for a white knight, he isn’t going to show up. The inventors who are working on new engines like diesels are all aiming for wealthy people’s budgets, not yours; you will never stumble over a good engine for $4K in the fly mart no matter how many times you look. (If it were good they would have sold it at their home airport rather than dragging it 1,000 miles to sell anonymously.) You can wait for something that will never happen, or you can choose to take the path that will always work: You decide to count on yourself, get your hands dirty, learn some stuff, and build your own engine.
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Even if this takes time, it will pay off. In the past 25 years I have watched hundreds of people who could have been builders fritter away their remaining years because they held on to their daydream that there was a solution around the corner that would allow them access to flight. It never happened for them. It only materialized for the people who understood that working people were only going to get the things out of aviation that they were willing to take with their own hands. If you have persistence, time and experience will teach you that you, the real homebuilder, the person who struggled, will actually know the real rewards of homebuilding. The people who did nothing more than write a check only ended up owning the hardware; they robbed themselves of the experience of becoming an aviator.
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In December of 1903, when Wilbur and Orville got to the bottom of the sand dune at Kitty Hawk, they did not turn to each other and proclaim “I think we have made something for Vanderbilts and Rockefellers!” They had solved the first stage of flight for all people, not just wealthy ones. You own the sky just as much as any other human being. For the past 100 years there has been a lot of talk about “affordable flying,” but virtually all of the commercial effort has been aimed at providing a wealth of products for the wealthy. It is a lot easier than making something practical and affordable for working people.
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Few designers like Chris Heintz and John Monnett devoted their work to affordable planes, they have my highest respect. I was once a fan of Rutan’s, but I slowly woke up to the fact that he abandoned working class homebuilders decades ago. Today he still enjoys broad admiration among EAA members, people he wouldn’t stoop to designing a homebuilt for in the past 25 years. Only a person who has resigned themselves to spectator status still takes close interest in his work. I save my praise for designers who still work in this industry, not those who elected to leave decades ago.
(I type the last sentences with bad conscience; If Richard Branson called and invited Grace and myself to his villa on Bora-Bora to be fed martinis on the beach by mostly bare Tahitian women, I would be pulling up a chair on the beach right beside Burt.)
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Below are photos of builders who have long since decided that they are going to be their own white knights, look after themselves, and make their own adventures happen, instead of sitting down and waiting for a ride that isn’t coming. Take your pick, it’s your life. If you are willing to accept the challenge your seat at the table awaits. You will be in good company, and we will be glad to have you aboard.
Above, many of the 60 people we had at the FlyCorvair/SPA Panther cookout.
Dan flew the Panther the Sunday before the show. It attracted crowds all week.
Richard VanGrunsven, designer of the RV series aircraft, leans on the Panther and speaks with Dan.
Lynn Dingfelder flew his Zenith 601XLB down from Pennsylvania. Sebastien Heintz warmly welcomed the plane in the Zenith factory booth because it was an excellent example of economic building. Lynn started with a regular kit, but finished the plane with a full paint job, panel, 100hp Corvair, Weseman 5th bearing, and interior for a total of $24K, including the kit.
CC#23 grads Mark and Sandrine stopped by. Mark is an ATP who flys for a major airline, but is working on something more fun to do with planes.
Longtime Corvair builders Bob and Pat Pustell, down from New Hampshire. Bob has had adventures around the globe in flight, but he is still working to add building and flying a 601XL to his list. No matter what else you have done in flight, homebuilding is still a very special facet of flight.
Many old friends stopped by for the cookout. In this photo, Skycoupe pilot Gary (with wife Vicki) Coppen, my ERAU roommate Chris Welsh, 1,000 hour Corvair pilot Mark Langford, and editor Pat Panzera. 
Skip and Dan Kelley at the cookout. Both were also at CC#25.
Because rain threatened (but didn’t happen) we served the food buffet style by having friends walk through the Panther trailer. Off the wing tip walks Son of Cleanex builder/pilot Chris Smith. Flybaby/Corvair builder/pilot Glenn Goode speaks with CC#24 grad Irv Russell. Dan and Rachel stand on the tailgate.
