Waiex Christmas

Christmas gift to myself: about 20 minutes of project planning on the Waiex.  Sonex provides only hard copies of the drawings, so to really get organized I am spending time going through the drawings and distilling them into a digital bill of materials (BOM), which will help me efficiently plan out processing and assembly of the airframe kit parts.

Facing Reality

Not much has been happening on either airplane, but especially the Sonex (actually a Waiex). Part of it is the required trip to the hangar, which although pretty convenient is still proving a barrier with numerous small children in the mix.
So to shift the balance, I have set up a satellite workshop in the garage. This little offshoot of the My New Invention Heavy Industries leviathan will be dedicated solely to piece part work on the Waiex on days when I don't make it to the hangar.
One issue though: I still need to run this whole concept by Don, having run off with his drill press and stripped the main facility of key capital equipment that may be needed for the Bearhawk.

Pondering Waiex engine choices

Sick Day

No progress on the Waiex today due to another virus brought home from 1st grade.

Waiex Days 5-6

Light progress because I am running a low grade fever.

Yesterday I stopped by the hangar and spent about 30 minutes of project management budget getting a bill of materials (BOM) started, so we have a framework to begin tracking all the fabrication tasks.

Today I spent about 0.3 hours setting up a work history log.

Waiex Tail Kit Inventory Complete

Don and I spent 1 hour completing the inventory against the plans bill of material (BOM). We did not measure total lengths of angle and hinge stock, but all types are now "in stock" at MNIHI Aircraft Works.

Day 3 - Tail Kit Inventory

1 hour and 20 minutes minutes unpacking and inventory.

Waiex Day 2

Didn't want to start without DV, so just migrated the nascent project into the hangar and recreated the on-pallet condition. Will put the wrapper back on so Don can still open his present.
Whole activity took less than an hour all told, of which only 20 minutes was touch time with the boxes. We also dragged out Gober (the compressor) and filled the tires on the station wagon.

Quandary

With the launch of a second aircraft project, it may be time to spin off the MNI Aircraft Works into a separate blog, and return Swamptooth to its original raison d'etre, music.  Hmm.

Waiex - Day 1

Yes, we have been making so much Bearhawk progress that we need a second project just to keep ourselves from overheating. The tail surface kit arrived today. Since it's Don's birthday present, better wait for him to open it. I'll give him 'til tomorrow.

Phase 2 of MNI Heavy Aircraft Industries

http://www.sonexaircraft.com/aircraft/waiex.html.

To my complete surprise and delight, Bill informed me today that he ordered the tail kit for my birthday!

Other major events today:

1) Kent, who was the first person on scene when the Bearhawk arrived, and who has been great fun to hang out with over the past year, took a large part of his day to walk us through the puzzling array of tools we received. I'm not sure that I've seen anyone in a field possess such an in-depth knowledge of almost every item in a tool kit.

2) The Great BatmobileTM vs Airplane Of Our Choosing Race was formalized after a contentious battle over terms. The opposing party, dressed in a red jacket of questionable pedigree (possibly stolen from a waiter or the recently deceased Michael Jackson) is now in a heated wager with the keepers of this blog. Stay tuned for details.

3) Discussion of the formation of MNI Party Barge, LLC, a Nevada Corporation, was entered into. This would complete our domination of air, land and sea. Not to mention sound. The discussion was tabled for a later date.

Bullet Proof?

While chasing that philosopher's stone of general aviation, the "bullet proof" piston engine, I ran across this stimulating post on aircraft engine reliability.

Based on the data posted, I estimated the fleet-wide odds.  Over a 25 year period this is the rough-order-of-magnitude fraction of aircraft engines (including automobile engine conversions) that experienced catastrophic in-flight failure:

Lycoming:         1 in 1000
VW:                  1 in 120
Ford/Subaru:     1 in 30
Mazda:              2 out of 3
Chevy:              4 failures each

This is based on actual NTSB accident investigations back to 1985, compared to aircraft fleet sizes currently registered (as of 2009).

The truth is probably significantly worse for the Subaru/Mazda because there were very few flying before 15 years ago or so.  People have been flying behind Fords since the 1930s (Model A) and the VWs since the 1970s and maybe earlier.  Chevy enthusiasts have been trying to fly the "big block" engines but most have been using the Corvair.  I am disappointed the Mazda engines did so poorly here, because I had/have high hopes for the Wankel (rotary) engine.

The VW conversions actually come out looking pretty good.  The Aerovee slated for use in our Sonex probably does better than above because the data includes ALL Volkswagen derivatives.

The poor record of the Chevy conversions may be slightly overstated, but then again maybe not, because if the author's data is to be believed, apparently there are currently NONE registered (I cheated and divided by one).  The first thought that springs to mind is that they all must have crashed or scrapped!

As a postscript, I will add that the engines that I found most often mentioned as "bullet proof" are the Lycoming O-235 and O-360.  That's encouraging news for our Bearhawk, which sports the latter.

Where to start?

It's taking a while to absorb everything about the Bearhawk. Up until a few months ago, the Sonex was at the forefront, so all of my focus was on learning about a small aluminum plane. Catching up on the Bearhawk has been quite the challenge, with so many sources of information (the fairly simple plans, actual manuals, magazines, forums, and so on...). There's a sort of DIY/Wild West mentality about the Bearhawk vs. the structured factory plans that come with the Sonex. I guess that embraces the experimental nature of this plane. And with the changes made by the original builder of this one, it makes it that much more...interesting.

A few observations from what I've looked at so far:

1) The mods we were planning on making are probably a great idea, because they will get us that much more insight into the current structure.

2) We'll need to do a lot of material inspection and measuring to ensure that this thing ends up solid but not overweight.

3) One mod we discussed (large access panel on the empennage) is in the builder's manual, so I don't feel so guilty about the damage I did to the fabric during the horizontal stabilizer removal. Knowing that, I probably could have removed the four final screws in something less than the four hours it actually took me while lying on the ground in -6 F winter weather.

Next up we'll come up with a good plan of attack, and then systematically improve and complete the plane.