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
34 Vol.3 No.9 / September 2014 WHAT OUR MEMBERS ARE BUILDING MY PLANE ITSELF is quite simple—tube and fabric, a few basic instruments, a Rotax in the back. With full tanks, this two-seat experimental amateur-built aircraft weighs in at 502 pounds. This lends the plane a degree of "responsiveness" that I did not anticipate. As I explain to friends, if I'm fl ying over you and you look up and sneeze, I might gain 100 feet of altitude. But the fl y- ing stories are for another day. This is the story of the build that took approximately nine years, 3,000 miles, three dif erent EAA technical counselors, and one marriage. With a vague notion that I wanted to know every nut, bolt, and rivet on the collection of parts that was keeping me in the air, I sold my share in a 1978 Piper Archer and spent a few months researching the various kit planes that were available in 2001. I settled on the Chinook +2 because it seemed a straightforward build; it could be placed on skis, floats, or amphibious floats; and the wings could be removed in about 30 minutes. I had no building experience and knew no one who had built a plane. Undeterred by my own ignorance, I placed my order in August 2001. I eagerly anticipated the "cool" factor once I was done. Yep, I built it, all by myself. Little did I realize that a project like this would require many hands. Like most Americans, I was struggling after the events of 9/11 and trying to fi gure out what I could do for my country in the days after. My version of service morphed into joining the Navy Reserve, and I was inducted just a few days after my 35th birthday. By the time the kit arrived that cold January 2002 evening, I was going to have at least one fewer weekend per month to work on the plane. But I still believed I could be fl ying by the late spring, as the manufacturer estimated the total build time to be 200 to 250 hours. As I helped the freight truck driver unload the (seemingly endless) stream of boxes and crates, I started to get the fi rst inkling that I may have bitten of more than I could chew. What made me think I could build a plane? I'd never even built a doghouse, let alone one that could take to the air. Fear- ing that I'd made a huge mistake, I opened the paperwork from the kit maker. The fi rst thing they suggested was that I unpack and catalog everything, making sure what was on the parts list was actually present in my narrow one-car garage. After two days of sorting and trying to fi nd space and some sort of logical system to place things, I determined that indeed I had an entire airplane in the garage, albeit the "be- fore" version. I looked at the "after" pictures and could not envision how I would make that connection. The builder's manual was generally excellent. I suspect that anyone who had done any plane building, or even as- sisted with a build, would have made much faster progress than I did. But I found myself reading the directions for a given step, gathering the required pieces, lining everything up, then rereading the directions, checking the alignment of any predrilled holes, rereading the directions again, then sit- ting back and questioning if I was doing any of this correctly. As a result, I spent a lot of time overanalyzing each step of the build, especially in the beginning when I was so unsure of myself and of the overall process. Life has an annoying habit of getting in the way of our aviation dreams. So it was for me. Those first winter week- ends were too cold for me to do much in that unheated garage. The Reserve was taking more time than I antici- pated. My wife, while completely supportive of all my crazy schemes, still wanted and deserved some time on the week- The Long Game Getting my Chinook +2 airborne BY MICHAEL MCCUSKER, E A A 587200 Photography courtesy of Michael McCusker The Chinook +2 and its very basic interior.