Experimenter

NOV 2014

Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.

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14 Vol.3 No.11 / November 2014 AN EYE FOR DETAIL This requires a lot of precision to make sure everything is straight. Build a straight airplane and it will fly straight. "Just building the jigs would have been a major and very critical project. Their jigs are absolutely perfect, extremely rigid, and bolted to the floor so nothing can move. Since what you're building there, the center section and fuselage, are essentially the foundations for the airplane, this is time and money well spent and gives you a huge head start on the project. Besides saving many months work and giving a mea- sure of peace of mind, working with the materials under the guidance of experts gives you experience you'll need many times later on in the project. For me, it was very beneficial. But that just gets you started. After that, it becomes a matter of learning as you go and learning as needed." When he left the factory, William's trailer carried what looked like the hollow husk of an airplane. Having some- thing that actually looks like an airplane right at the begin- ning gives a psychological boost to any homebuilt project. For many homebuilt aircraft, it is months or years before any of the dozens of disassociated pieces come together and give visual confirmation that you are, indeed, building an airplane. This can be discouraging. When a builder takes ad- vantage of a builder assistance program, he has spent some money, but in exchange, he has gotten the project launched in a way that almost guarantees completion. In William Ford's case, however, life got in the way and brought things to a screeching halt. He explained, "In 2006, I had to mothball the whole proj- ect while we relocated to Durango. The project stayed like it was for almost four years while we got everything sorted out in the new location, had our business up and going, and I had a proper workshop. Then I got on it with a vengeance." When choosing an airplane design to build, a family man always has to consider how the airplane is going to be used and whether it will fit the goals of the family. "My wife, Tracy, has been quite supportive of the project from start to finish," said William. "Even when things slowed down fol- lowing the move, she was all in favor of my getting back on it rather than selling the parts. Regaining momentum can be a tough thing, but she helped with that by giving the nod to additional expenditures and loads of my time being invested, which of course came at her expense. "When I started building, I was looking carefully at whether I could put a child seat in the baggage area because we had a 6-year-old son, Garrett. Of course, this project has taken long enough that Garrett is now 6-foot-2, so it's just as well I didn't go for the child's seat." N11LL's powerplant is a far departure from the little Continental O -200 the first 1984 Lancair 200 had in front of the firewall. The race for more horsepower has culmi- nated in the Legacy, which has more than triple the original horsepower. William added, "The engine is a factory remanufactured Continental IO-550-N that is rated at 310 hp at 2,700 rpm Photography by Tyson V. Rininger Carefully designed GoPro camera mounts are located on the wings and tail. The interior was done by Sturgis Design in Corpus Christi, Texas. Porsche leather is used throughout the interior.

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