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/378679
16 Vol.3 No.9 / September 2014 RISING TO THE CHALLENGE worked on his private pilot certifi cate, the required cross-coun- tries got him thinking about getting a four-place airplane for Vicki, but he wasn't sure she'd go for it. "We had a bad experience on her fi rst light airplane ride," he said. "The pilot decided to play 'watch this.' It was hot and bumpy, and he was thrashing the airplane around so, she came down feeling really bad and pretty much underwhelmed by her little airplane experience. But she's a strong, game girl, so I set it up to take a trip with a Cirrus dealer in a new airplane with air conditioning. That turned the trick. I looked at her in the backseat and she couldn't have been happier. That was in 2005 and I had total fl ight time of 65 hours. Since then, I took a lot of training and we've put more than 1,500 hours on the Cirrus, fl ying all over the U.S., touching down in 39 states, Costa Rica, and every place in between. We pretty much use it like an airliner. "That got Vicki over her dislike for little airplanes. But it had a pretty serious ef ect on the Cub project because I got 'glass fever.' I really liked the glass cockpit of the Cirrus. This would be no big deal except that we had the Cub ready to cover and the panel was installed, completely fi nished and ready to go. But it was all steam gauges. And I wanted glass. So out it came and we designed and built an entirely new one." Mark's instrument panel is one of the fi rst hints that this is not your usual Super Cub because it's constructed of carbon fi ber. Mark said this is a holdover from his race cars. Carbon fi ber is a material used a lot in race cars, and they made the molds for it. He also used carbon fi ber on the wing root covers and the throttle panel and pillar covers. For the interior, he put imitation leather on .020 aluminum. Mark opted for a Mattituck, 180-hp IO-360 engine swing- ing an 84-inch prop. He said so far the engine has been crazy good. "I'm burning one quart of oil in 22 hours, which no one believes, but I swear it's the truth. I went up to the Mattituck shop and watched it go together and I was fascinated. When we installed it, we used a lot of race car stuf like stainless- steel braided hoses, all hard lines, etc. We did everything to race car standards." When it came time to cover the airplane, Mark went the Poly-Fiber route. He and Richard covered the smaller parts themselves but gave the bigger ones to Jack McCloy at Swamp Air Services in Lakeland, Florida. Mark said, "I had Scheme Designs do the paint layout, something Jack said he'd never do again because he had close to 50 hours in masking alone. Every bit of it is paint. No decals. But I think it's worth the ef- fort. Their design is beautiful and the airplane wouldn't be the same without it." The movable Mackey slats, from Back Country Super Cub, on the leading edges are another clue that this isn't your granddad's Super Cub. Mark said the slats are absolutely amazing. "They are activated aerodynamically and you don't even know they're working. At normal speeds they are fl ush with the wing, but as the angle of attack goes up, they start pivoting open and let you do amazing things. "Power of , fl aps down, the plane hangs on down to about 18 mph indicated and does absolutely nothing unusual. At 15 mph, it starts sinking 500 fpm, but there's no stall break. I've tried and I can't get it to break. The slats work unbelievably well. "Before I fl ew the airplane, a friend took me out in his Super Cruiser and we did a bunch of landings. At the time he said I did well, and I told him, 'When practicing for races, I generally have a coach criticizing my driving and telling me what to do, so I'm only doing what you're telling me to do. In a way, you're fl ying the airplane through me, and I learn the skills along the way.' "One thing about fl ying the airplane that I'm really working on is the dif erence between it being just me in the airplane and having someone in the backseat. Aft CG really feels dif erent. So I got a couple of big bags of dog food, and I'm shooting landings with the CG in all sorts of dif erent positions. Although I'm not going to be doing any serious bush fl ying that has me landing on sandbars and such, we do intend to use the airplane a lot." So now he has one of the fastest airplanes in the fleet—a Cirrus—and one of the slowest—a Super Cub. How do they fit together? "The way I look at the Cirrus and the Cub, the Cirrus will do things the Cub can't do, and the Cub will do things the Cirrus couldn't even think about," Mark said. "So they each fi t into our lives in dif erent ways and let us really enjoy both." When he fi nished the Super Cub and started fl ying it, he couldn't help but love it. It's hard not to like a well-done Su- per Cub. However, what makes Mark and his airplane unique is that he came into aviation totally cold. He had zero back- ground to draw on. He had a steeper learning curve to climb than most. But he had a self-education method that had stood him in good stead in the past. "I absolutely love building stuf , so I built our house, I mean really built it," he said, "but when I started, I knew nothing about what was involved. So I bought every book in the Time Life building series and DVDs on everything having to do with a house, from plumbing to electrical, and made learning to build a project easier. I did the same thing with the Cub. I spent a lot of time fi nding the right resources, and that includes locating people who have all the answers and putting them on speed dial. I knew I was a babe in the woods. But whether you're building houses, boats, or airplanes, there's always a lot to learn, and the educational resources are out there, if you dig deep enough." Mark said one of the very best moments in building, and then fl ying, the airplane was on the fi rst fl ight with Vicki in the backseat. "We were fl ying along and her voice came over the intercom. She said, 'I never thought I'd be perfectly happy to be fl ying in an airplane that my husband and his crazy friend built in our backyard.'" Those kinds of moments only come once or twice in a lifetime. Vindication from the backseat is sacred and very much appreciated.