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/401344
14 Vol.3 No.10 / October 2014 THE GA-11 entire cowling of in about 15 minutes without removing the nose bowl. "At Clyde Smith's suggestion, I installed a belly stringer to hold the fabric of the bottom fuselage cross-tubes." INSIDE THE GA-11 Inside the cockpit of the GA-11, it's obvious the J-3 lineage has been left behind. The machined throttle units came with the project. Claude Jochmans had machined them from aluminum plate in a manner that was clean and not obtrusive. They don't look like a space-age part in a 1940s environment. Gary said, "Claude also made a metal baggage bin that looks similar to an inverted, bottomless mailbox. It really is a thing of beauty." Gary also made some changes to the cockpit itself. He ex- plained his reasoning. "The J-3 is soloed from the rear, and the front seat is tight fore and aft. You're really folded up to fit in and the stick is halfway up your chest. The PA-11 is so- loed from the front, and to my knowledge, had the seat in the same location as the J-3. Claude had made the seat exactly per Wag-Aero plans, but it was excruciatingly tight, with the top of the back digging into my backbone below my shoulder blades. So, after the initial flight tests, I moved the front seat aft 1-13/16 inches and cut the seat back off and extended it 4 or 5 inches higher. Moving the seat aft made entry/exit from the front seat much easier and made a world of difference in front seat ergonomics. I had to shorten the rear stick 2 inches so it would clear the front seat back with the stick full forward. I saw photos of Cubs with F. Atlee Dodge 'porch' steps installed on the right-side landing gear. I cootered up my own design, and the step makes getting in and out much easier for a fat old man." One thing Claude had done that Gary liked is the way he set up the horizontal tail. The Wag-Aero plans show both a stan- dard J-3 tail that is trimmed via a screw jack and a fi xed stab with a trim tab; Claude went with the fi xed tail, and Gary says it's much simpler and fl ies really well. Although the landing gear is still essentially a J-3 gear, the PA-11 had faired bungees with airfoil-shaped fairings. But bungees, being nothing more than lots of rubber bands, require constant care and routine changing. Gary said, "Wag-Aero has a conversion kit that replaces the bungees with coil springs, and you don't have to worry about them wearing out. The tires are Carlisle ATV tires from Wicks. They're mounted on 6-inch wheels with Cleveland 600-by-6 brakes, which can be too much brake for a Cub. I used the original, diaphragm-style Scott master cylinders that don't produce enough pressure to lock up the brakes. In a Cub you seldom need brakes for anything but ground maneuvering, and these work fi ne for that. "After completing the fuselage mods, I tried cleaning it my- self with Scotch-Brite and solvent but soon gave up and took it to a local auto restoration specialist and had him bead-blast and paint it with PPG DP-50 epoxy primer that was gray. That was a mistake. If I were to do it over, I'd defi nitely use white primer. He did a nice job, but I had to repaint all exposed metal parts with white primer prior to fi nal color coats. You can't paint yel- low over gray primer and get good results. "I had covered my Cassutt with Poly-Fiber and was somewhat familiar with it. I chose that to cover the Cub. Jim and Dondi Miller suggested Ranthane for the color coat, and I love that paint. The base color is Ag Cat Yellow, which is a stock color. The stripe is Forest Green. Using those paints, I didn't have to worry about the aluminum coming out a slightly different color. "When I took the airplane to Oshkosh 2014, it was my fi rst long cross-country in the airplane, and I didn't know what my actual fuel burn would be. I planned two fuel stops going up. I left home at 7 a.m., and even with two fuel stops, was tying it down at 2:30 p.m. Had I known how well it'd do, I could have made it with one stop. On the way home I only stopped once. The leg from Oshkosh to Quincy, Illinois, was 310 statute miles, and I made it in three hours even and burned 15.1 gal- lons. The second leg was 261 miles and took 2.5 hours. At one point I was at 8,500 feet to stay above the building cumulus. It was a much easier trip both ways than I anticipated. "This is the fi rst project that I have kept good records of cost and building time. I haven't totaled up the hours yet; but I did add up the cost and I am too embarrassed to admit what it to- taled. Although I don't know how many hours, it took fi ve years at three to four hours a day. Hey, four hours a day is full-time work, isn't it? "When I started this project, I thought I'd fl y it a year or two, then sell it; now I think I'll keep it. After all, it is sport-pilot eligible. It certainly isn't a T-18 for performance, but you'd be hard pressed to fi nd a more docile, pleasant airplane to putter around in locally. More often than not, I fi nd myself dragging the Cub out and leaving the Thorp in the hangar. Sometimes you just want to go fl ying and go no place in particular. And the Cub does that better than any other airplane." Photography by Craig Vander Kolk The PA-11 was soloed from the front seat, not the back, as with Cubs, but few were equipped like Gary's GA-11.