6/19/11 Travel Day

Today Eric and I got up at 2:00 am to make our morning flight out to Seattle, Washington.  Everything went fine and we got to our hotel at about 1:00 pm local time.  The weather here is kinda gloomy (overcast and 62 degrees), but we spent the day getting oriented to our surroundings and going out and grocery shopping for next week.  Tomorrow we start the build.

Engine & Prop

Lycoming IO-390-X

Lycoming IO-390-X series engines are 390 cubic inch, fuel-injected, 4-cylinder direct drive engines that produce 210 horsepower at 2,700 RPM. The IO-390-X is one of Lycoming's "Specialty" engines, and is designed to meet the power, payload, and speed requirements of the fast-growing kit aircraft segment. All this power and innovation is offered with the advantage of low fuel consumption, only 11.1 gallons per hour at 65 per cent power.

 

The propeller  will be a Hartzell blended airfoil 74" controllable pitch prop.  This combination should be good for about 130 knots cruise.

What Kind of Avionics?

Advanced Flight Systems AF4500 EFIS & EMS, Backup Airspeed Indicator, Backup Altimeter, RC Allen Lighted Electric Attitude Indicator, Compass, Garmin GMA-340 Audio Panel, Garmin GTN-650 GPS/NAV/COM, Navworx ADS600B Transceiver, Garmin SL-30 NAV/Com w Garmin GI-106A Nav Indicator , Garmin GTX-327 Transponder, Trutrak Digiflight II Autopilot, ELT

What's it 'gonna look like?

The plane is going to be a combination of these two pictures.  The first picture shows the Sportsman in the tail dragger configuration and that is how mine will be built because I'm planning to fly it from some short grass strips.

 

The second picture shows the aircraft in similar colors to how I would like to get mine painted.  The exceptions are I'm not going to have the "checkerboard" tail and I'm going to paint black the leading edges of the wings, the horizontal stabilizer and the rudder.  I'm hoping that by doing this it will limit how bad the bugs show up on the aircraft.

You're 'gonna do what?

This has been an awfully long journey.  Since about the mid 1980's I've wanted to learn how to fly-and almost for that long I've wanted to build a kit aircraft.  So with those thoughts as my guide, I set about accomplishing some of those goals.  In the late 80's I took some time off of work and got my private pilot single engine land license, and I also got my instrument rating.  I flew fairly regularly in the 90's when I owned a Cessna 182Q along with two other partners.  And then the "real" world came along.  I had two young kids who I needed to put through college-so my discretionary income went to things other than flying.  Fast forward to 2007 I have built a new house on some acreage that will allow me to build a private 1500' landing strip and I began to get my flying urges back.  In late 2009 I began to get current on my VFR rating and began to seriously consider aircraft that I could get in and out of my short grass strip.  At first I was looking at the Zenith line of STOL aircraft, but I wanted something that had a better cruising speed, which ultimately led me to the Glasair Sportsman.  The other consideration I had was that I wasn't sure that I had the discipline to work on a plane for a number of years, I wanted an option that would get it done sooner, and the Glasair folks had the "Two Weeks to Taxi" option to build their plane.  Needless to say I was very interested.  In the summer of 2010 my wife and I went up to the EAA fly-in at Oshkosh and I was able to look over the Sportsman up close and personal.  After the fly-in the Glasair folks flew the aircraft down to Adrian for me to fly it, and I was sold.  I put my order in at the end of August 2010, and I made my last payment to the escrow account on the aircraft in early March 2011.  I get out of school for summer vacation on June 17th, and I'm scheduled to start the build on N449MF on June 20th!  Lets get it started!