Phantom Thing

Phantom Thing

By William Berson, EAA 89061

This piece originally ran in the October 2023 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.

My first takeoff in a Phantom felt like I was being shot out of a cannon. I had never felt such incredible acceleration in any of the dozen or so aircraft I previously owned and restored.

Another Airplane Adoption

I didn’t have any plans to buy an ultralight project at the time, but somehow I ended up buying this Phantom in September 2022. The owner joined my RC airplane club, and I was the club instructor who gave him free RC model lessons. He told me that he also owned an ultralight that had been stored in his shed for the past five years. He never assembled it but wanted to put it together and fly it at some point.

This Phantom was originally built in 1995 from a factory kit and flown as an ultralight until 2008. Then it was converted to an experimental. My friend soloed a Cub decades before but didn’t finish with the private pilot certificate needed to fly an experimental. I told him that since it had a single seat, there was a small possibility it could be converted back to an ultralight — if he wanted to fly it without getting a private or sport pilot certificate. I was an EAA technical counselor and offered to help him with the details of the conversion and his certificate.

I went out to his property and looked at his Phantom and found some records were missing. I suggested the first thing to do was get all the records from the FAA in Oklahoma City. He sent $10 to the FAA for the records file, a process that took 10 months. By then, he had medical issues that prevented him from working on any conversion. He called me to see if I wanted to buy the airplane. I thought about it for a bit and then offered him a low bid — after all, the airplane was unassembled — and he agreed. His wife was delighted to see it leave the yard. Once I got to know the Phantom, I ultimately decided to keep it as an LSA vs. trying to convert it back to a true Part 103 ultralight. I just didn’t want to struggle to get it down below the 254-pound weight limit.

Condition Inspection

I set aside May 2023 to go through the repairs and condition inspection. Incredibly, after five years in storage, the Rotax 503 two-stroke engine started on the first pull. That was a good sign, but it still took weeks to adjust the prop pitch, add a fuel drain, and fix instruments.

By June, I couldn’t do much more inspection or testing with it still unassembled in my yard, so I hauled it to the local airport and assembled it for the first taxi and engine power testing. I figured out a way to assemble the wings by myself by placing a 2-inch foam pad on my car roof to support the 37-pound wing as I connected the cables. That worked well, as long as the wind was calm.

The Ballistic Recovery Systems parachute included with the airplane was new to me. At first it seemed like a great idea, until I read the 96-page manual with daunting procedures and calculated the cost of repacking the parachute, which exceeded the actual value of the aircraft. I wondered if having a parachute was necessary for me. I don’t do aerobatics, and my wife, an ATP herself, said it wasn’t needed.

Taxi and Flight Testing

On the first taxi test, I found the rudder steering was too sensitive due to the pedal pushrod connecting directly to the nose wheel. But then I did 10 slow runs up and down the taxiway and trained my feet to just apply light pressure instead of actual pushing. It was much like driving a go-kart, and kind of fun. Adversely, the rudder in flight is not sensitive at all. In fact, the rudder pedals are almost frozen and are hard to move due to air pressure on the overly wide rudder.

After the taxiway practice, I moved to the runway for the higher speed runs. It seemed to track well with no more of the sensitive nose wheel issues at that speed. I did six more runs the following day, and then did some runs getting it light and just barely lifting off. Unfortunately, the speed runs indicated the power was not enough for flight.

Luckily, a guy from a nearby hangar stopped by to chat. He had the same Rotax 503 and helped me find an error in my prop pitch. After he checked his prop spec sheet, we found that I had incorrectly set the prop with 2 inches of excess pitch. After the pitch was corrected, the engine had the proper rated rpm and was ready for flight.

The quick takeoff and the steep climb angle put me at 600 feet AGL by the time I’d reached the end of the 3,000-foot runway, so I throttled back and turned to return for landing. My downwind leg was much more turbulent than I expected, and I remembered that an ultralight’s lower wing loading will make it rock more in turbulence. Even with the unexpected turbulence, the landing was uneventful compared to that shocking takeoff.

Fabric Repair

After the initial transport to the airport, I found a 1-inch fabric tear near the leading edge of the right-wing fabric. It turned out that fabric tear was a blessing in disguise because it gave me a chance to take a small sample from that highly stressed fabric area. For the tear repair I used curved sewing needles from Walmart and waxed string to sew the tear with baseball stitches in accordance with AC 43.13-1B. The fabric sample tested above the specifications given in AC 43.13, so the fabric was still airworthy. But it bothered me to leave that unprotected upper fabric out in the intense sun.

The Phantom X-1 manual said the sails will deteriorate in less than a year if left exposed in the sun all the time. Ultralight sails are uncoated, and this lack of UV protection was my concern. I considered wing covers, but the Phantom has 16 wing attach cables that prevent any simple cover usage. The thought of buying and fitting new sails, just to fret about them slowly deteriorating, was disconcerting. Short-term summer hangaring wasn’t a cure, either, as none is available in my area.

I decided I could coat the upper surface with protective paint. My Aeronca Chief survived being stored outside for years in Alaska with UV protective paint. Or even better, I could glue on another layer of Dacron fabric and a thin coat of penetrating paint that wouldn’t crack. Using that extra layer of fabric seemed unusual but sensible. I remembered reading in EAA Sport Aviation that Kermit Weeks used double fabric on his aerobatic design.

My existing sails are made with several machine-sewn panels with widths of 4 inches to 24 inches. I first tested my plan on the 4-inch strip, and it worked. The blue fabric was thinner for some reason, so I covered all the blue panels first. They now have an extra top layer of 1.8-ounce Dacron fabric with a single coat of blue acrylic paint from Home Depot. The panel fabric is glued at each seam in accordance with AC 43.13-1A and -1B — panel repair method — using 3M Fastbond water-based contact adhesive. The adhesive dries fast enough for contact in about 10 minutes or less in the sun.

I used my model airplane fabric iron to heat set the bond firmly, and then I shrank the fabric. The fabric will still need finishing tape and perhaps another thin coat of blue after the black panels are done next summer.

Working at the Airport

I did the fabric work at my tie-down spot in a week and a half while working one or two hours a day. I simply love being out in this big grassy field doing things and watching airplanes do touch-and-goes. It is as close to being at AirVenture as I can imagine, and only costs me $53 per month for this beautiful tie-down with a mountain view.

Oddly, I am the only owner who chooses to tie down on the grass. Other pilots and local people stop by to look at the “ultralight thing.” I like showing the airplane off, and I have the opinion that aircraft like mine should be outside in full view for local folks to see. I have plenty more work to do on this “ultralight thing,” but I’m saving that for next summer. I can hardly wait.

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