I had a long talk with Mike on the phone tonight. He now has 3 flights on his Pietenpol, and it is working and flying great. The plane has a 2700cc Corvair installed, and it utilizes a Culver 66×32 prop. I saw the plane uncovered in California in 2016, it has outstanding craftsmanship, and the photo below shows how well it finished.
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Guys new to Corvairs may imagine that Mike and I spent the hour talking about power plants, but it wasn’t so. We spent only a few minutes speaking of his engine, as there was nothing much to talk about, all the learning and understanding had taken place years before, the flying now is just an affirmation of Mike’s craftsmanship. His is a contrast with people who install engines they know little about, and try to understand them in a rush during the test phase.
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Almost all of our conversation was about Mike’s 20 year path building his plane, where the idea came from, things that he knew from his dad, builders who had inspired him, memorable hours in the process, and how he feels connected to the timeless elements of flying in the plane. I had some tings I was working on in the hangar, but none of it seemed important given the chance to spend an hour listening to a friend share some really moving things about twenty years of his life.
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Below, a short note from 2016 when Mike brought his plane to Corvair College #38 for a test run:
He is a quick tip on painting your ring gear. I put it on a plastic cup, and paint it horizontally. It resists runs a lot better. I then flip it over and do the other side.
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After it dries, I hang in on a wire in my shop oven and bake it for 20 minutes at 300F. I do this last step in Florida because the very high humidity tends to blush very fast drying paint. The time in the oven makes it glossy again.
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This is the only brand of paint I use on engines. It is vastly better than other paints I have tried .
The Contents of the box in the picture are a complete set of Lycoming and Continental cylinder wrenches. The were once every day tools of my late friend Dick Philips. He gave them to me 12 years ago. It was something of an honor, Dick was a bad-ass aircraft mechanic of the first order, and the gift came with the unspoken understanding that I had learned things from him, and had the obligation to give his life’s work some immortality and continuity. Dick had already been diagnosed with the cancer that would kill him.
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Although I am an Embry-Riddle trained A&P for more than 30 years, and have owned both Lycomings and Continentals, I don’t do that much work on them. I have enough stuff to do with Corvairs, that I could work them and installation components 10 hours a day for every day I have left on earth. I came across the wrenches cleaning up, and spent some time thinking about Dick, now gone a decade. Time for the wrenches to move on, continue the validation that the skills and ethics of hard core aircraft mechanics are perpetual.
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Kevin Purtee is known both as a very accomplished homebuilder and pilot of his corvair powered Pietenpol, but also as a combat military pilot. In recent years he has continued to fly helicopters in the civilian world, but has expanded his skill sets to flight instructing and A&P maintenance. Perfect candidate for continuity of Dick Philips skills and values. Into the box they went.
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By deciding to build your own aircraft, and build the engine for it, you are reaffirming all the things that made Dick Phillips’s post war career in aviation meaningful. Your life is better for it, better for deciding that aviation for you will not be just another consumer experience. Stay with it, invest in yourself with skills and understanding, and if follow the path long enough, you just might turn out to be someone’s Dick Phillips.
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Dick Phillips was my friend and neighbor here at the airpark. He was something of a mentor to me, not fully on mechanical matters, but on how a man of ethics conducts himself in a world that presents daily, a string of petty, small and corrupt people. By example, he led his life on his own terms, and he didn’t care if it wasn’t popular nor apparently lucrative. There was nothing a man would gain by giving up being himself.
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I have included below a story I wrote after his passing. It is worth your time. Some of the photo links expired in the last decade, but the moral of the mans life is still there.
Ironic postscript: Dicks original place at our airport was a super cool 40′ x 40′ concrete hangar with an A frame house on top of it. It sits on one acre, right on the southern end of our runway. After he passed, his widow revealed that Dick driving a 35 year old truck and being frugal was a facade; he was actually quite wealthy, and had secretly donated cubic yards of funds to peoples aviation education. She said that Dick had loved the place, and asked me to find any good person for it. The money wasn’t important, she just wanted someone to enjoy it as Dick had decades earlier. She asked for $50K, and was willing to hold it as an interest free loan for 10 years. The first person I offered it to was Mark from Falcon machine, my friend in WI who rebuilt Corvair heads for years. After 30 days he declined, saying Florida was “Too full of rednecks” . The next day I offered it to Ron the drummer, who signed the papers that afternoon. He has lived there every day since. With the escalation of property values here, he has been offered six and a half times what he paid for it, but he doesn’t care. He views every day of his life here as invaluable, he doesn’t see the world as dollar signs. Dick would have concured with that perspective.
In the picture are four complete cowls for Pietenpols. These came out of the molds I had made last year. This has been a long term project that started a number of years ago. It was originated by Dan Sheradin for his personal plane, and I liked it enough to have molds made. That took a long time due to Covid closing my composite shop for most of a year. In a few days they will appear on my products page as regular catalog items, but you can se the origins in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8XjNBbrAGI
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Notes:
These are only for Corvair powered Pietenpols, they will not fit other engines.
The cowl is designed to use the same Van’s FP-13 spinner we use on all my other installations.
These are not for everyone, if they are not to anyones tase, no problem, they can make any cowl they like. This is just about making a good part available to a limited group of builders.
I’m still hammering out the cost with my fiberglass shop. He is giving me several quotes on ordering a number of them, when this is finalized, the part will appear on my product page, with the price and shipping costs.
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Thanks, William.
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Tiny vehicle in the picture is a 240cc trike designed and built by my friend Vern Stevenson.
Mark Gravatt shared some pictures from his family and a story of his personal connection to building a Corvair powered plane. Builders share a lot of powerful thoughts in letters, but this one resonates on many notes, and leads to the question in the title here. Every son who had a better father than he had a right to expect, would be moved by Marks words
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Mark’s father joined the United States Army Air Corps after Pearl Harbor. He worked on aircraft, particularly ones powered with Allison engines. He went on to post war work with Allison, moving into their gas turbine engines.
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Allison was a regular division of General Motors, just like Chevrolet. Chevy didn’t design the Corvair as a flight engine, but they were doing it with a very long and successful history of aviation powerplants. If you know engines, the Corvairs ‘unique to automobiles’ offset 2+1 intake runner arrangement appears four times on every Allison V-12.
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Mark drew a connection from his fathers service, to American manufacturing, and his fathers aviation career. He sees his homebuilt aircraft, also powered by a GM engine, built and operated with principles that his father would have concurred with, as both an an extension of his father’s story, and a tribute to it. It’s a very moving idea.
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In 120 days, I will be manning my booth at Oshkosh. At least 1/3rd of the people who wander through will say some close variation of this phrase: “It would be cool to have one of those Homebuilt planes”. Notice it doesn’t say “Build” it says “Have”. This isn’t a semantics game. The guy who says build is thinking about making something, working, learning and using tools. The guy who repeatedly uses the word “Have” is in an entirely different mindset. He is thinking about acquiring something, buying it possessing it. He isn’t thinking of making anything, he is just envisioning the possession of the object as “Cool”. I’m not clairvoyant, and I admit it when I wrong about individuals, but let me say with a great deal of certainty, Thirty Three years of working with homebuilders has taught me that thinking a plane “would be cool to have” isn’t enough motivation to get anyone through the building process, and people with that mentality who buy second hand homebuilts have come to a lot of grief.
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You don’t have to have as strong a personal connection to aviation as Mark does to succeed at homebuilding and to have the process of learning, building and flying be transformative to your life. But you need to have motivation well beyond “Cool, dude” to get much out of homebuilding. If you like learning, if you want to build skills and understanding, and have a strong desire to make things with your hands, that is more that motivation enough, and I have a long proven process to challenge you and support you enough that you will succeed, and perhaps become the motivator to your own kids that Mark’s father has been for him.
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William
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Above, Mark’s Father
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Joining the USAAC
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Notice it says “General Motors Corporation”. Your Corvair has a legacy that few other automotive engines can make a claim to.
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Allison V-12, Compact potent engine in P-38’s, 39’s, 40’s and many other aircraft. Many elements of this engine are more rugged than those inside a Merlin. This is the engine the training certificate above applies to.
A defining characteristic of my business has always been personally making most of the components I sell, for example all of my welded components are made in my hangar, Conversely Gold parts , like the hubs and the oil filter housings, have been made to my specifications by the same Florida aerospace machine shop for 25 years. The CNC machines that make them cost hundreds of thousands of dollars .
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In the last 18 months I have spent a great deal of time and a cubic yard of money to increase the percentage of products I make in house. The first Tool and system I bought was a Van Norman 944S Boring bar, so I bore and hone all the cylinders I sell right in the hangar. Second, I purchased a new MillRite, the CNC in the video, it makes any flat part like top covers, alternator brackets, ring gears etc. The third system is a Winona PH-2000-12 seat and guide machine to rebuild Corvair cylinder heads. The whole goal is to have better control of the time line of parts production, and to directly control the quality.
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None of this happens without the assistance of good friends. The PH-2000 was picked up in remote Arkansas and brought to my shop by a old friend: the Van Norman was loaded by a crew of my friends and one of them went to great lengths to track down modern tooling for it; the selection, installation, upgrade and training on the MillRite is all the work of one friend, 601XL Builder/Pilot Ken Pavlou. I have had it in operation for nearly a year, but Ken was just here and completed radical modifications of his own design, to make it vastly better, and importantly, much easier for The Troglodyte in Chief , (me) to effectively use.
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This installation is the last major production upgrade for the year. We are 115 days from leaving for Oshkosh, and it is time to use this increase in tooling to fill the shelves.
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Video: The is the upgraded CNC in my hangar, it is machining a ring gear for a #2400 ultra light weight starter kit. It is working on the six mounting holes. It doesn’t drill them, they are milled with a circular pattern, so a 1/8″ mill can make a 3/16″ hole. The hex shape on the screen is the tool path between the individual holes.
Last week my 29 year old Lincoln SP-130T welder quit working. I looked inside for an hour, but nothing obvious was wrong. I looked on line, discussion groups had no clear faults, and were full of dumb people saying dumb things.
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The welder owed me nothing, it was about $600 way back then, and it had served me faithfully through dozens of 10 lb spools of wire and enough argon/CO2 to fill a small blimp. Looking around the hangar, there was hardly a steel object it had not played a role in creating. From my trailer that has driven around the county filled with Corvair parts to the 42’ main truss supporting the front half of the hangar, it had burned all the beads fusing them together. If it had struck its last arc, so be it, it had served above and beyond.
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I looked and saw that a new 180T was about $850, and I was ready to buy one, it seemed like a good solution… but something ingrained in me wanted to know why old faithful was done. Phil Maxson suggested calling the factory tech line, but I didn’t have patience to wait through an hour on hold to speak to someone in the Philippines or India in a call center who had never seen a welder before, as we have all come to expect as ‘customer support’. Besides, wasn’t I just going to be spending money trying to fix something that was worn out?
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Phil thought I was being negative and called Lincoln’s tech support for me. I was more than surprised to have a short wait , and was speaking to a master technician in Ohio, who had actually worked on the production line that had built my welder. He told us where on line to find the wiring diagram, waited while we printed it, and talked us through 45 minutes of careful trouble shooting, explaining how each system worked. I have been welding for 40 years, but I was learning a lot about how these functioned internally from this man. After all else was eliminated, he said this was the rare case where the board was dead. He told me I could go to a dealer, or I could find one on eBay, and how to tell a real Lincoln part from a counterfeit. The board was $130.
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Phil plugging in the new board.
The new board got here yesterday afternoon. 20 minutes after dinner, and my 29 year old welder was back in action. I was happy.
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My satisfaction wasn’t in the $720 saved over buying a new welder, nor any other physical factor. It was in deciding that I could think my way out of a problem rather than just submit to what consumer society implores us go do, spend money to ‘solve’ every problem. No matter how life changes, there are few things that feel as good as bring self reliant, particularly when the alternative that most others take, really comes down to subconsciously doing as you are told.
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If you decide to build your own Corvair engine, you are willfully deciding to think your way out of the question of what will power your plane, rather than spend your way out of the question. Just like Lincoln, I have been here a long time, I have printed information and real parts, and I will spend time to teach you all the systems. In the end, you will be safer because nothing has the lowest risk as a simple machine operated by a person who really understands it, and you will have the quiet internal pride that comes with the purchase of no consumer product , ever.
I mail out 500-600 orders per year. A number of these are single manuals, some are 10-15 part orders, an a dozen or so are engines. I appreciate them all, and try to take care of them in a very timely manner.
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Many orders from my site, placed before 2pm, go out the same day. After 2, they go the next day. Builders have a choice between USPS and UPS, but in many cases USPS is about the same price, but the service is faster.
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If I’m busy, friends from the airpark help out, and take the orders 7 miles into town. Today I had Zenith Cruiser builder Dave Wurtz here for a supervised build and test run of his engine. Phil Maxson stopped by and offered to run the days shipments to town. Phil lives 1,000′ north of me on the same side of the runway, and his around the airpark is a classic 1970’s mini bike, ( because we are need a chance to be 12 again, even for a few minutes a day ). The armful of todays packages was not a problem, he rode up to his place with them to get his pickup for the trip to town.
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It was a funny moment, as these parts will cover most of the distance to their destination in the belly of an airliner, and they well eventually go to work on a builders aircraft, but today, they all started the trip on a very basic for of transportation
The recent cover story on the JaG-2 twin caused a bit of a spike in manual sales. Yesterday my on line inventory went to zero, but I had already ordered a fresh batch to be printed.
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Above, manuals in my pickup, they just got a ride home from the printer.
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If you would like to pick one up, the inventory on line will be updated in an hour. 🙂
Corvair builder/pilot Ken Pavlou designed and built his own super heavy duty CNC mill last fall, and on a whim decided he was going to make a little run of billet aluminum oil filler caps, and engrave them for Phil Maxson and myself. That was before things got out of hand.
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Above, the prototype Ken made for his own 601XL. The little shapes are hold downs which fit in the ears to clamp the cap down for engraving.
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Above, after Ken made a few, including this one made from a scrap piece of 1/2′ 6061 aluminum ( the defect in the ear was already in the blank ) I sent them off to my anodizer to be coated gold to match my other parts.
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Above, Ken unleashed his machine on a large plate. There are 78 caps in this picture. He now has about 100 caps made.
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Above, Ken’s CNC going to work on parts. It has a very powerful spindle. cuts like this does not tax the machines capability at all.
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This is what the inside of the part looks like before the gasket goes in.
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Ken’s idea is to get the blanks anodized Gold or Black, and then let builders order them with their name, plane and oil requirements engraved on. We will have more info shortly, its just a fun side project for Ken, I thought I would give you an advance look.
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If you have thoughts, questions or comments, please share them in the comments section here.
