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.
Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/194874
After AirVenture, Jay was free to truck it the rest of the way to the East Coast. What a deal! Back home, he was part of an active EAA chapter and had begun to network with a group of fellow Lancair builders; he found himself working beside a lot of newfound friends. Jabe was one of the first. Scott Denham worked beside Jay during his first week at the factory. Joe Gauthier, his designated airworthiness representative, pitched in, and Bruce Staubley, who owns Simsbury Precision Products, built a lot of the parts and pieces that went into the aircraft. Jay's EAA chapter was a source of tremendous support, and the Oxford Flying Club, which he'd joined after getting his private certificate, was also there to help. And so the work proceeded. Sometimes there were periods of weeks or months when nothing got done; other times, when the work fascinated him, he'd still be working after 12 hours. He faced some difficult hours trying to work inside the limited space of the tail cone and forward of the instrument panel, especially after the panel had been installed. Like all composite aircraft, there were countless hours involved in sanding and other types of bodywork. Jay spaced out the sanding over the entire program, delivering an airframe that the painter lauded as far more finished than most. Just staying focused over the long haul was a challenge. Of course, there were times when the work was highly gratifying. For Jay, an electrical engineer, the wiring was fun. Tying in the mess of spaghetti aft of the firewall and forward of the panel, as well as running wires out the wing and through the fuselage, provided him with hours of challenge and reward. Mounting the instrument panel with all its components in place represented a big step toward completion. On the other hand, getting all the avionics components properly calibrated and working together, i.e., the Chelton EFIS, autopilot, AOA, and GPS, took a long time and a lot of phone calls and led to some head-shaking frustration. There were other learning curves; recognizing aircraft construction standards (i.e., having a bolt protrude beyond the nut two threads) took time to learn, and Jay leaned on his friends for a lot of those procedures. To make sure that everything in the panel was convenient to reach while flying, he built several mock-ups before having SteinAir put the pieces together in a bolt-in unit. He decided he would add nothing that might distract from performance. That meant keeping the weight down and leaving out things such as air conditioning. He did add some fairings to reduce drag, covering the attach points where the wings and horizontal stabilizer join the fuselage. He covered the cutouts that were in place to allow access to the hinges on the rudder and elevator. Though his friend Jabe had opted for a Continental 550N with full authority digital engine control (FADEC), Continental had dropped its support of that program, so Jay went to Corona Aircraft Engines in California to build up a more souped-up 550, incorporating ECI cylinders, precision balancing, polished ports, and changing the pistons from 8-to-1 to 10-to-1. On the dyno, similar engines get a roaring 370 hp, about 60 more stallions than a stock 550! Perhaps because of his earlier work with engines, he baffled the engine and cowled it in, escaping any kind of cooling problems. He's proud of the fact that he has low CHT and EGT readings all the time. Jay, an electrical engineer, said the wiring was fun, even if it was a mass of "spaghetti." Jay works on the fuselage in the primer stage. EAA Experimenter 13