Category: Flying Planes

Builders:

Dale Williams of SC sent in this link of his Grandson’s first flight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho2uh1cZwmY

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It is a particularly good video, not of the plane, but capturing the day. If you are working in your shop this weekend and wondering if finishing your plane will be a milestone event in your life, look no further than this film and picture having this kind of day with someone in your own family.  Catch the credits at the end to learn who covered the soundtrack.

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Dale sent these words with the link:

“One of the great joys I had recently was that of taking my seven year old grandson for his first ride in my Corvair powered Sonex. I’ve desired to do this for a number of years but waiting for him to be old enough, and me working to build and learn skills that I didn’t yet possess was all part of the process… Besides the satisfaction that comes to us personally from going where the timid fear to tread, there is the part of giving to others in the manner which you have demonstrated by your work, and also the giving to others by sharing what we have achieved, that brings us a greater fulfillment of purpose, – Dale, N 319WF”

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Above,The Cleanex of Dale Williams taxis out at Corvair College #27.

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 For more details on Dale’s plane, click on this link:

New 3,000 cc Cleanex, Dale Williams, SC

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Builders:

Zenith 601XL builder Ken Pavlou, the man who has done the online registration for most of our colleges, hosted Corvair College #14 and even set up this blog for me, has flown his plane for the first time.

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Ken in 2009, introductions at Corvair College #14

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Get a look at the film of the planes first flight at this link:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK01KhG2CkE&feature=youtu.be

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Ken is a very unique individual. When I first starting working with Corvairs, I suspected that they might be an avenue to meeting many varied and interesting people. This has proven to be true, but I must confess, I did not foresee meeting a guy like Ken…. I reality I didn’t even know a character like him was walking around on this planet.

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People who know Ken understand exactly what I mean, he doesn’t remind you of anyone else you have ever met, he is one of a kind. People who have not met him think his friends are kidding when we point out that he is a RN, a very skilled pilot, happily married father of two, State ballroom dancing champion of Connecticut, an immigrant to the us who arrived without being able to speak a word of English, he has a savagely irreverent sense of humor, and now he can throw ‘successful airplane builder’ in for good measure.

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Ken flies a lot, and now with his own plane, we are certain to see him at a great number of events with the plane every year. Hats off to Ken Pavlou, the latest ‘Zen-vair’ pilot.

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For photos of Ken over the years, get a look at the sequence at the bottom of this link:

48 Hours until Corvair College #29 Cutoff.

-ww.

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Builders,

I spoke with Doc Mosher last week. As all of you Piet and Grega builders know, Doc and his wife Dee Just finished a six year run at producing the Brodhead Pietenpol Newsletter. It was an outstanding effort that brought back the whole community spirit around Pietenpol building and flying.

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Doc is not a guy to blow his own horn, but I have known him for long enough that he will forgive me if I do it for him. We all understand that newsletters are often covered by the guy in the club who has free time, is good with word processing, and let me put this politely, doesn’t have the strongest of flying nor building backgrounds. It often produces a newsletter with good graphics, but very weak technical and editorial content. Although well intentioned, many editors don’t have a lot of broad based flight experience.

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I hold that the last 6 years of the BPN is the ‘gold standard’ of the history of the publication, and newsletters in general, because Doc is the antithesis of the typical newsletter writer.  Lets start here: He has the ultimately rare distinction of holding both of the FAA’s highest awards, The Master Pilot rating and the Charles Taylor Award.  Get this: just to apply for these, you have to be an active, accident free pilot for 50 years, and for the Taylor award you have to be a working A&P for 50 years. (I just figured out that I can’t even get my application in until 2041!) Doc is a very modest guy and I knew him for several years before I discovered he had the Charles Taylor award. He used to politely listen to me, letting me believe I had something to teach him about engines.

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I used to think that you could measure writers and editors by their written content. Doc taught me by example that you also have to consider what the really good choose not to include. This judgment only comes with a depth of knowledge of the subject and a insightful understanding of people and their actions. If you have been around Pietenpols for 5 years this might not grab you, but if you have been around a long time, Doc’s judgment and choices are easily appreciated.

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I have been fortunate to know people with encyclopedic knowledge of the history of aviation, but when you listen to Doc speak of  Dee Howard, Ed Swearingen and Schweizer brothers, he isn’t speaking of historical figures, he is speaking of friends. His first hand experience through some of the most interesting periods in flight is captivating. He is a very keen observer of the human condition. His stories are always seen through the eyes of humanist who sought out the good in people, forgiving their frailties if they were real characters.

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Conversational topics with Doc are unpredictable; he might comment on being James Brown’s corporate pilot, having Thelonious Monk as a neighbor or Hunter S. Thompson as a regular in the bar Doc owned. Or he is just as likely to spend the evening speaking about a plane that is the creation of a builder he just met today. Memories are cared for but not worshipped, what can be done next always a better topic that what has passed.

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In a previous story: Pietenpol Weight and Balance project I covered a description of doing the 5 part series on Weight and Balance on Ford, Continental and Corvair powered Pietenpols.  It was a project I had thought about doing for a long time,  but I would like to be publicly clear that it is my immense respect of Doc and the quality of the newsletter that he and Dee were producing that motivated me to do the work and make a lasting contribution that might measure up to his standards. Few builders know it, but Doc has painstakingly collected and carefully authenticated an incredible collection of original plans data on Pietenpols. It is called “the Packet” and it fills a 2.5″ thick 3 ring binder.  I wanted to produce something that might add a few pages to this historical record.

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Doc did not amass this information to occupy a dusty shelf in the EAA’s reference library. He put it together to be a useful tool to today’s builder; to make the next generation of Pietenpols  a little better than the last. To make the specific Weight and Balance data articles accessible to builders, Doc has offered them in a single package to builders. If you would like a set, stick a $5 in an envelope and mail it to Doc’s address below. If you wish to make it a little easier, send $12 and perhaps he can send it to you in a flat rate priority mail envelope.

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While your at it, you can include a thank you note to Doc and Dee for their years of work on the newsletter. They don’t need the praise, but you will feel better about yourself knowing you expressed gratitude for being the beneficiary of an excellent newsletter.

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Doc and Dee Mosher

1071 Meadow Lane

Neenah, WI 54956-3936

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Blast from the past, summer of 2000: Doc (in the beard) and I in my hangar at spruce Creek for Corvair college #1.

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To read a little more about Doc’s background in aviation, get a look at this story Ed Leinweber wrote about Doc last year:

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http://www.midwestflyer.com/?p=6720

Builders,

I received two emails asking about the plane pictured below. It is for sale on Barnstormers.com. Part of the add says “William Wynne engine”. This is not entirely accurate, but I don’t think it was done with ill intent. The plane is simply being sold by a friend of the builder who passed from this earth, and he is just offering a general description.

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A more accurate description would be to say that it has a “William Wynne style conversion.” I did not build the engine, nor did we see it run at a college, but it was made with our parts, and it does have a Dan bearing on it. I am pretty sure Dan supplied many of the installation components. Note that the pictures are of two nearly identical yellow airframes. One with a VW the other a Corvair. The picture above is the VW one, the Corvair looks just like it but has a spinner. For a complete overview of the Corvair/Sonex combination, please click on this link:

Corvair Power for Panther and Sonex reference page

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The plane is located in Eastern Georgia. The builder was a very experienced homebuilder, but I have never seen this plane in person. If someone wanted to look into buying this plane, I would highly suggest calling Dan Weseman for more input. On the surface, it seems like a very good beining point, that might need a through going over and a new cowl from Dan.  If is a much better starting point than any of the Corvair/Sonexes that have rear starters and mounts that were not made by Dan.

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While the plane above seems well worth looking at, I would like to warn potential Corvair people to Avoid something else I saw on Barnstormers:

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Builders:

I spoke to our “Man on the west coast” 601XL builder and pilot Woody Harris last night. I caught him on his cell phone after he had just landed at Merced CA. He was short of his home destination, Vacaville in Northern California. He and a friend were shut out from returning by weather. No matter, Woody’s daughter lives near by, and they were having a beer in the pub while they were waiting. Woody is the kind of guy who is flexible enough to have a good time in any situation, even if it was unexpected.

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Woody and His friend had been all the way down in Southern CA for a particularly extreme off road race called “the King of the Hammers.”

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_the_Hammers)

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His friend had driven in it, spending 14 hours the day before behind the wheel. In the middle of the 10 minute call, Woody mentioned that he had just crossed over 400 hours in his plane, (N743WH). To people who do not know homebuilts this sounds modest, but it isn’t. For a variety of reasons, less than half of homebuilts reach the 500 hour mark. But it isn’t the hours I find impressive, it is the fact that Woody has flown his plane all over the country and had some incredibly good adventures.

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What should be important to you is that his plane and 2,850cc Corvair engine are straight out of our parts catalog and installation manual.  In the links below, I relate that Woody is not a life long aviator. He has been in the game just a few years. In short, there is no reason why anyone reading this couldn’t achieve what he has done. Woody took our proven path and used it to serve him. While it did take time and cost money, neither of these are the major hurdle to others doing the same adventure. The single biggest impediment is just deciding that it is your time to get started on this adventure. I can show you how to build the engine and install it, I can put  you on our ‘Zenvair builder list”, I can have you at a college, offer all kinds of support. But the one thing I can not do for you is to make you get started. That decision must come first.

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I was going to say that you must have faith in your own ability to learn the skills you will pick up in the building and learning to fly process, but faith is the wrong word. Technically, faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Deciding that 2014 will be your year does not require faith, just observation. Your belief that you can do this can simply be based on observing that Woody, and dozens of other Corvair builders have done it. Some of them might have predeveloped skills or a bigger budget than you, but that just changes the time line a bit, the opportunity for adventure is just as open to you. You just need to decide that you will do this.

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Above, Woody’s plane on the way to Oshkosh 2011. For starters, I am going to confess to stealing most of these pictures off  well-known Zenith 601 builder, Steve Smith’s website. My only defense is that I always ask our guys with flying planes to send in pictures, but a lot of them are too busy having fun. Woody is part of the group of guys that move from one adventure to another without documenting many of them. Steve is a California based 601XL builder with a Jab 3300 on the front of his plane. He, Woody and Zenith’s west cost guy Doug Dougger (who has an O-200 in his bird) fly around together on a lot of trips, including a big one to Oshkosh that provided some of these photos.

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 Woody flying over Grand Teton.

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Woody and Doug Dougger over South Dakota.

 Woody needs little excuse to fly places; Above he is speaking with Sebastien Heintz, president of Zenith Aircraft, at a West Coast Zenith fly in at Quality Sport Planes in Santa Rosa. This facility was the site of Corvair College #11.

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