Author: William Wynne

Builders;

Below are 4 ‘tools’ that every builder must have and know how to use. If someone does not have them, they can not do an annual condition inspection, or even the initial set up on the motor. 

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OK, a Doctor has a Stethoscope , X-rays, CAT scans and Blood work. the four tools above are their equivalent.  If you went to a doctor and he said he was not going to use any of the above tools, because they cost more money than he liked to spend, you would thank him, and leave, because without them, he is down to leaches and other less pleasant remedies. Likewise, if you are not in possession of the tools above, you are not in a position to keep your engine healthy. 

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Oil Sample Kit: 

Read: Corvair Oil Analysis

Watch:

 

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Timing Light:

Innova #5568. Has built in tach, volt meter and digital delay. Look at Summit Racing or Jeg’s. 

Read: YOU MUST SET THE TIMING ON YOUR ENGINE

       and:     “Corvair Fast Burn” Ignition timing settings

Watch: 

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Volt meter:

They are $10 at the auto parts store. 

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Differential Compression Tester:

Part # 12-00829 & 12-01283 from aircraft spruce.

Read: Yearly Condition Inspection on Corvair Engine

Watch:

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Builders:

In 2013 I woke this short read on the life of CAL: The cost of being Charles Lindbergh I spent a long time writing it. It is well worth the 5 minute read. It is something of a precursor this video:

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If you have not yet done so, please remember to subscribe to my YouTube Channel, thanks.  PS, YouTube comments are open on this video.

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William.

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Builders;

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What you are looking at is the bottom of a Corvair/Zenith Cowl. It is upside down, the rounded part is where the nose gear strut exits the cowl.  The right side is the part closest to the firewall where the air exits.  The orange level and square is there to visually show what 45 degrees looks like. To the right of the end of the level is the 2″ exit lip of the bottom of the cowl. This forms a fixed cowl flap, which makes the low pressure zone on the bottom of the cowl.  I have relentlessly specified that this must be at least 2″, and it absolutely must be 45 degrees to the bottom of the cowl.

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Look at the picture and see the builder set it to 20 or 25 degrees at most. The effect? His 601HDS ran hot, he overheated the motor more than once, he publicly complained about the cooling and implied that other builders like Larry Nelson, flying the exact same combination in Yuma AZ was lying about his cooling success. He questioned if any Corvair ran cool, he was willing to search for any excuse, except the obvious one: the part of my advice he was unwilling to follow was the exact cause of his hot motor. This is a Cooling failure caused by ego. 

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I spoke to this builder many times on the phone and pointed him to cooling articles I had written, and asked him just to copy it exactly instead of questioning every bit of it and treating the information as if it was all a big conspiracy theory to some how keep him from using his plane. In the end, he flew about 100 hours, and then took his plane apart and sold it in pieces. The wounded engine? he sold it to another builder, without clearly saying that he had overheated it badly. 

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This isn’t a case of a kindly old guy who wasn’t good on the internet and missed a detail and we let him down. No, not that at all. Try this, He was an A&P mechanic in his 30’s who had attended a big Corvair College and seen plenty of working planes. His issue was simply not being willing to listen to my experience when it conflicted with his perception of what should be happening. That is not a failure of engine nor materials, it is a failure caused by ego.

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The stupid move above was not the only thing he needed to do differently. he tried running his engine on the ground with no cooling ducts for 30 minutes and never thought to shut it off as the rpm decided. That was $3,000 for new heads and pistons. The is the same individual who made his cabin heat muff right up against the bottom of the head impending airflow. He used a blunt spinner, arguing it didn’t effect cooling. He did put 5″ inlet rings in his cowl, and then bitched they didn’t work. Doing this but having no working cowl flap on the exit side is akin to complaining about the radiator in a pickup truck not cooling, and saying you have the grill clear, but neatly failing to mention you have a piece of cardboard between the radiator and the fan. All of these actions were not caused by lack of information, it was simply because he was unwilling to follow information that was readily presented to him. 

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You don’t know his name, but you have met him many times: He is the guy standing there with his arms tightly folded for 15 minutes as I answer a question he asked, but I’m not saying the words his ego needed to hear to feel vindicated. He is the guy who will not follow advice for a guy with 800 hours of Corvair time without incident, but spends hours studying an old website from someone who quit Corvairs a decade ago, after having a long series of failures. He is the guy who’s ego needs to make his engine ‘different’ or ‘unique’ because the positive comments from internet tolls mean more than successfully flying his plane with a proven system. He is the guy who blames everyone body but himself when he exits Corvairs, and issues a earnest sounding warning to other builders that doom is in the future, because a brilliant guy like him couldn’t succeed, so they have no chance. 

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I have said countless times, new builders and the eternal ‘I’ll build one day’ people are fascinated with every story of people who claim to have issues, but they will spend next to no time studying the Builders who are out successfully flying the same combination that the guy exiting claims will never work.

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William.

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Like to see more on good cooling on the same plane? Check out this video:

 

Builders:

Here is a new video about the results of incorrectly setting the push rod to lifter orientation. Not a very common occurrence, but one worthy of a video.

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Builders,

Here is a link to our latest release, it addresses making a two phase building plan to keep your homebuilt project on track:

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If you have not yet done so, please take a moment to subscribe to our YouTube Chanel, and turn the notification bell on. We will have many more videos coming.

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Builders,

I am well known as Experimental Aviation’s most prolific provider of house calls. In 31 years of business, I have made hundreds of house calls to builders. Today the list got one call longer, as I went to see Tom Kodey and his newly flying 3.3L Corvair powered SPA Panther. 

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Above, Tom and I follow national guidelines and stay six feet apart during my 2 hour visit. It was a good time, his aircraft is magnificent. I had not seen Tom since we ran his engine at one of our finishing schools last year. It is a 3.3 Liter (3,300cc) 125+ hp Corvair built from an ‘Engine in a Box’ kit. It took just 2 days to build start to finish.  Tom’s plane has about 2 hours of flight time, and everything is going great. His previous plane was an RV-12 with a Rotax. Tom is a very successful guy and could afford any of the optional engines for his Panther. He selected the Corvair, and a little bit of flying has affirmed his choice. 

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The centerpiece of Tom’s power plant is the SPA, Billet, made is the USA from a Timken Billet, stroker crank. The strength of these cranks is long proven, they have been doing Aerobatics in Panthers since 2012, without a single flaw failure of any kind. If anyone suggests you can import a comparable crank, be polite, it’s the best way to deal with mental ill people.  Read more here: SPA Billet Corvair Cranks.

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The Panther has many features, and one of them is being very quick to build. Tom’s plane was in the works a little over a year. It took just 1,200 hours to completely finish, including building the engine. That is not the record, Brent Mayo’s Flying 3,000 cc Panther, was built, including the engine in just 830 hours. It isn’t a competition nor a race, but the success of these two men illustrate both Dan and I have worked very hard to make out products buildable. Keep in mind, these are not ‘just buzz around’ planes, they are very capable aerobatic planes with great utility, and a perfect safety record.

If you are out there practicing social distancing, make sure you are making progress on your project. It is an excellent self investment. 

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Builders; 

I live on a little grass airstrip in rural Florida. 102 other people also live here, we all contribute to the upkeep and operation of our little home. This year, I’m serving another tour as airport manager. I like the job, it is all done outside in the sunshine. Running our place is a whole community effort, ongoing for decades. If being here didn’t  restore someones optimism about people, not much else would. 

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On a day were many millions of people in America succumbed to media and corporate pressure to feel fear and react emotionally, I chose to turn all that stuff off and go spend some time outside.  I am deeply bothered that the America of my ideals, the “Home of the Brave”, is not easily seen in our national behavior on this day.  Rather than dwell on something I can not effect, I went outside to do something productive on the runway. 

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In front of my hangar, I load sacks of fertilizer into the hopper. I picked up 2,000 pounds of it in my old truck. Phil Maxson’s Zenith 601XL is between my truck and the hangar. What do the machines have in common? They are all the simplest way to accomplish the tasks they so. They make bigger tractors with automatic transmissions, Far nicer trucks run by computers, and much higher tech aircraft engines. But I honestly have to say that simplicity has served me far better in life. At age 57, I have gotten quite particular about seeking out the least complex, most peaceful , easiest to maintain things in life. I intentional live in a very quiet setting, and from there I lead my life as who I am, not as a reaction to the constant onslaught of consumerism, complexity and conflict that invade most peoples lives. There are costs for this, but I personally find them small. On this day, watching how my fellow countrymen reacted to the days news, I felt insulated from the stress most people swallowed today.

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This turtle, about the size of a tennis ball, was taking a little stroll down the road to my house. There was little danger he would get hurt, often many hours pass between vehicles on my road.  You may have passed a wild turtle today, but were not walking in a peaceful setting, and you didn’t get to see them. There are many rewards and obligations people feel that keep them very busy. I understand this. I personally am not well equipped to digest stress of the daily sort, and if I could, I might never have found the setting I live in. My only point to share is that given the choice, perhaps any shift toward the simpler options in life would serve your sanity as well. My work involves showing people the simplest method to go flying, and how to be the master of this, not merely its owner. Your life, your choice, but for me, simplicity is sanity.

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Little guy with a long way to go. Didn’t seem to bother him, it was nice out and as an animal, he has no other option than to live in the moment. I watched him for a while and thought about how I wasted a lot of my life as a self-made exercise in stress and conflict.  Why was it important? I like to know, and then I might have some reason that I spent a lot of my life doing things that brought me little happiness.  I was sent links today, to a heated internet debate about alternative engines. There was a time I would have felt a very strong compulsion to express something there, but I read the comments, and it was very obvious that no one was learning anything or changing their opinions. I watched another engine provider I know personally, get very frustrated explaining a point he was correct on. I watched and couldn’t quite remember why I once would have typed an effectively identical essay to an equally closed minded people. I shut the laptop and went back out to the tractor.

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Mowing the runway: This is the view which always make me think of the phrase “Fairway to Heaven”.  The main runway between the lights is 7 miles of passes at a stately 6 mph. To people in a rush to be somewhere else, it might seem tedious, but to me, it is a peaceful spot. It is the destination. 

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Builders,

Here is the first announcement of Corvair College #48, at Barnwell this November:

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More information to follow, but start planning now, this is a very special event, our 10th College at barn well, a tribute to the late P. F. Beck, the man who made the previous colleges possible and set the standard on what a grat Corvair College is.

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Builders,

Here is a new video, New builder Skip from texts shares some thoughts on getting started:

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Builders;

 

“The problem was simple: after 30 years of marketing the ‘Disneyland’ clean cut appearance of safety, we now had a generation of aviators who could no longer distinguish the appearance of safety from actually having safety, and these people’s conditioned taste for ‘Disneyland’ precluded coverage of actual grass roots events.”

 

Here is the latest video in the “Thought for the Day” video series.

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The story covers an aspect of the m’marketing’ of Experimental Aviation, where certain groups have tried to clean up aviation “Image” . Personal, I have been training people to be better aviators, not just look like AOPA’s idea of the approved image of pilots.

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A story about aviation image:Thought for the Day: “The only guy promoting alcohol, firearms and aviation”

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A funny story that is in the same idea: FMU – The greatest flying club never started.

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