By Dan Moore, EAA 1220264
In the midst of the stressful process of selling my business over the course of 18 months, I kept telling myself, “If I get out of this with two nickels to rub together, I’m going to buy an airplane.” I’d been on a 14-year hiatus from flying, having taken over the business when my father became terminally ill, so it was more than just buying an airplane. It was reentering aviation. I repeated the “I’m going to buy an airplane” mantra to my wife, who patiently dealt with me as I stressed away years of my life during the ups and downs of the sale.
Finally, the sale went through, and my wife looked at me and said, “I don’t know why you’d buy an airplane. You should take our son and build one.” My son and I went to SUN ’n FUN International Fly-In & Expo looking for projects, and then a friend and I went to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh to look at engines, avionics, etc. Finally, my son and I attended an EAA SportAir Workshop, “The Fundamentals of Aircraft Construction,” at Oshkosh. By this point, I knew we were building an RV, but I wanted my son to have a say. After two excellent days learning about metalwork, woodwork, composites, and fabric, I asked him what he liked best. I was already planning the panel for the RV-10 in my head.
In order of preference from a 12-year-old: wood, fabric, composite, and then, lastly, metal.
My pet project was last.
So, we scrambled to find a project. The Just Aircraft SuperSTOL was side by side, could operate off our farm, supported a Rotax engine, and was relatively easy to build. Plus, I knew Robby Pedersen, the 2016 Valdez STOL competition winner, and he was willing to mentor us through the build. We started our build at Robby’s old hangar in Grantsboro, North Carolina. Then we brought the project home and worked on it in my barn from April 2018 to May 2019, averaging 8-10 hours per week.
While we ordered factory-built wings, we did all the covering and painting ourselves. We used the Superflite system and it worked very well. The paint scheme was inspired by my kids, who picked the moniker Transmogriflier for our build long before we had a project in mind. The name and the paint scheme are an homage to the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. We used the factory firewall forward kit and a new Rotax 912 ULS. We also built the panel and all the wiring. The primary instruments are a GRT Sport EX with a remote engine information system monitor, a MyGoFlight panel mount, and an X-naut iPad holder giving two screens of information. GRT’s partnership with uAvionix provided for an integrated ADS-B In and Out solution.
For the final build-out, we went to my home airport of Harnett Regional Jetport (HRJ) where the aviation community came together and helped us through the final two months of the build. We averaged about 40 hours per week for the first month and 80 hours per week for the second, all in preparation to make it to Oshkosh.
Thanks to the EAA Step-by-Step Certification Guide, the paperwork for the inspection was a snap and we had zero issues. With inspection and transition training out of the way, I pulled out the EAA Flight Test Manual I’d heard about on The Green Dot podcast and began working through the test program in earnest. We only had a week to complete our flight test program and make it to AirVenture. We didn’t make opening day, but we did arrive on Thursday, completing our goal of finishing the airplane and making my son’s first trip to Oshkosh in the airplane he and I built. Next, my now 15-year-old son will begin flight training this winter in this airplane and hopefully solo it next spring, thus beginning his aviation career.
I’ve had so many people tell me they were amazed we were building a plane and that they could never do it. I’m a machinist, welder, and woodworker, but I used none of those skills in this build. None of the skills I used were hard to learn or required much investment. The information was readily available either from EAA Hints for Homebuilders or from nearly anyone at a local EAA chapter. The best part of the build wasn’t the actual build; it was the friends I made along the way. From Scott and Josh, who helped me nearly every day at HRJ, to Mike and Mike (50 years in a row at AirVenture!), who took care of us on our overnight stop en route to Oshkosh. Aviation people are the best people in the world.
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