Sent away for Aircraft Spruce & Specialty catalog. It's like the Whole Earth Catalog for airplanes. Or the old Sears catalog.
Bookmarked the EAA Homebuilder web site and a bunch of others. Began voracious reading.
Ordered info packet for the Cvjetcovich CA-65. After a couple of weeks, asked vendor about the packet. He thanked me for the reminder - he had put my check on his end table and it had gotten buried. Not terribly impressive. A few days later the packet arrived - that's not terribly impressive either. The pages don't seem to be in any particular order, and a good deal of the information and photos were also on the web site. Further, some key information I had been expecting was missing - for example, what's the difference between the "normal" version and the "wide" version? I contacted the vendor, and he told me to write Anton Cvjetkovic - who now lives in Croatia! It's a good-looking airplane, but...!
Ordered the $25 catalog of C. Piel and G. Vidor designs marketed by Sylvia Littner. A much more professional product than the CA-65 packet. It would be nice if there were a table comparing the key performance features of all the designs, though.
Joined the Emerauders group on asia.yahoo.com. I'm not sure if the Emeraude is the design I want - it doesn't seem to be stressed for aerobatics - but there's some good information there.
I think my wife tossed out my AS catalog in a cleaning fit. Have to order another one. Ordered Wicks Aircraft Supply catalog, and it arrived. Smaller than AS by half.
Found the AS&S catalog I though my wife had pitched. Apologized to wife. Now have two AS&S catalogs.
Ordered plans for 1/4-scale Emeraude R/C model and full-scale Evans VP-1 Volksplane. Even if I never build a VP, the plans will be informative.
Exploring the idea of a folding wing for an Emeraude. Falconar has plans for a 3-piece wing, but according to Rich S. of the Emerauders group, it's not exactly user-friendly. I know it's seriously non-trivial, but then so is trying to build an aiplane fifteen miles from home in a rented hangar!
Back in the air again after a five-year hiatus - 1.2 dual logged towards the BFR. CFI said I did very well considering how long it's been. I guess Bill Gates is good for something after all. Landings need work, but that's hardly a shock. It's good to be home!
The VP-1 plans arrived. A tad disappointed that they are half-size - some of the tables are unreadable. You have to pay another $40 or so to get them on 11x17 sheets instead of 8.5 x 11. But that's ok. They seem to be well drawn, with a fair amount of notes. Wish there was a layout template for the aluminum and steel, but at least it contains a layout for the playwood and spruce. No template for the windscreen either. I suppse the method is cut-and-fit with posterboard, then transfer to lexan.
LOTS of quarter-round in that plane. Some of it is called out as douglas fir, but most is unlabeled. Wonder if regular old pine stock from HD will do. The package also includes a set of design references - lots of tables and graphs that take me back to my college days. But nary a word on the engine - I guess that's a whole separate issue.
Chatter on the Emerauders group is getting a little more encouraging as regards building a folding wing. The VP1 is trailerable, but you take it apart, store it in the garage over the winter, tow it to the field in the spring, put it back together, and leave it there. I hope the Bowers FlyBaby plans go back on the market - that may be a better solution. But reading the VP plans is surely educational!
Got a set of plans for the VP-2, a slightly larger, two-place version of the VP-1. Funny, I had envisioned it as a tandem arrangement, not side-by-side. The cockpit is 32" wide - a tight squeeze for two. I suspect that's a non-starter for a two-place. May have to take another look at the Pietenpol Air Camper or the Bowers FlyBaby, if plans come back on the market. The FB is a single (Pete Bowers designed a whole new 2-seat airplane, the Namu), but several folks have two-place tandem versions. Worth looking at, in any event. The FlyBaby is a nicer-looking plane than the VP-1 IMO. The lower cowling, and especially the vertical fin and rudder. Probably more complicated to built, too.
Ordered plans for the Bowers FlyBaby the day I saw the news that they became available again. Also bought the four Bingelis books secondhand from a gentleman in Washington who's been very generous with information and advice about homebuilding in general and the Emeraude in particular.
The Bowers plans and the Bingelis books should arrive early this month. Bingelis books arrived, along with a bunch of other goodies - THANKS, Cap'n Rich! Still waiting on the FlyBaby plans. Almost bid on a set of Beryl plans on eBay; let them go at the last minute.
Need to get serious about the garage/shop/home hangar design. I think a 12-foot loft is in order to accomodate the eventual goal of an Emeraude or CA-65 with its wings folded. Wonder how to sweet-talk the local code police...
Visited with Chris, VP builder in St. Boni, and Larry, who's rebuilding a BD-4 and who has a 35-year-old Emeraude project.
VP impressions: Even a simple airplane is a lot of work. Even a small airplane takes up a lot of space. The VP is hard to get into and out of. It's not that it's narrow (it is, but it's wide enough) but it's short fore-and-aft. Your legs have to go through the forward bulkhead, and it's hard to bend the knees properly while supporting your weight with your hands. I suppose there's a trick to it. Once in, it's snug but comfortable. The stick is way short, though. It can't be much longer, though, or it'll hit the bulkhead. Not much room for side-to-side movement, either. Maybe the VP2 has more room. I have the plans; perhaps I'll mock up the cockpit and see. Might consider mounting the rudder pedals farther apart - I don't know why they're crammed so close together.
Emeraude impressions: Wow. Larry showed me the control surfaces and lots of miscellaneous fittings - the fuselage and wing are 70 miles away at his brother's farm. Each piece is a work of art - delicate traceries of feather-light wood. Wow. I can see starting work on a VP and an Emeraude at the same time, with the goal of flying the VP before my newborn enters school, and finishing the Emeraude before she graduates from college! It is a daunting amount of work. But golly, it's a nice-looking airplane....
FlyBaby plans arrived yesterday, today (9/18) my department at work was eliminated. Yee-haw. Good news - time to work on projects. Bad news - no discretionary funds to do so. FlyBaby plans are impressive in several ways. Very complete and thorough. It's a complicated little airplane compared to the VP. Of course, the VP was designed to be as simple as possible, with everything else subordinated to that goal.
Well, it's been a busy two months. I picked up three more classes at the art school where I'd been teaching part-time, so that has been keeping me more than fully occupied. I've decided on the Fly Baby - I just like the looks of the plane. The fact that the wings are truly foldable helps, too. With the help of a VP builder and A&P out in St. Boni, I managed to cut some wood - three years ahead of schedule! It took two hours, but we turned a nine-foot Douglas Fir 2x12 into 1/4" slabs for laminating into FlyBaby landing gear legs - that and three bushel bags of high-grade hamster bedding!
It looks like I'll be accepting a job offer in another state, so it's likely that I'll make no further progress for a couple of months. Putting the house on the market, moving... yuck. I hate that stuff. Oh, well, it's just a transition.