{"id":153,"date":"2012-10-25T00:36:51","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T05:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lutorm.wordpress.com\/?p=153"},"modified":"2017-10-30T18:55:57","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T04:55:57","slug":"airplane-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/25\/airplane-building\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing a new category: Airplane building!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post opens a new category: airplane building. I&#8217;ve been wanting to get a pilot&#8217;s license for a long time, and I got halfway back in 2001 before losing momentum and realizing the financial futility of the endeavor. This past spring I thought I would get back into it, actually flew twice back in Massachusetts before it became clear that we were moving to CA which kind of made that pointless.<\/p>\n<p>But what really got me fired up was the realization that you can build your own airplane! From a cost perspective it&#8217;s a big win, because when you are your own manufacturer you can do all maintenance yourself, not to mention that building a plane is generally a lot cheaper than buying one (for what you get). And how cool is that?!? It totally seemed like a project for someone like me.<\/p>\n<p>I looked around for what suitable airplane models were around. Generally you can either buy a kit, where you do the assembly, or you can build from scratch. There are some cool kits out there. Check out this video featuring the <strong>Lancair Legacy<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"730\" height=\"411\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dK-lw58ekGg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" gesture=\"media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>How awesome is that? They&#8217;re <em>fast!<\/em> However, they&#8217;re also a bit on the pricey side, at $75k for the kit plus something like $50k for the engine&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>After looking around some more, I pretty much settled on the <strong>Rutan Long-EZ<\/strong>. This was a quite popular aircraft to build back in the early 80&#8217;s, when the Rutan Aircraft Factory sold plans to them. It&#8217;s small, economical and relatively fast &#8220;canard&#8221; airplane (meaning the big wing is in the back) built from scratch out of fiberglass. This is a pretty good video showing it off even if it can&#8217;t match the Vince Walker video in awesomeness:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"730\" height=\"411\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KxHUhXr-ZFI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" gesture=\"media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The catch is that they stopped selling plans to them back around &#8217;84. There are still people building them, though, and you can still find unused plans around. Before moving to CA, I picked up a set of plans with serial #1122 off a guy nearby who&#8217;d never gotten around to building. Now I just needed to find space and learn the technique!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_158\" style=\"width: 555px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/atom.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/mg_5972.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-158\" class=\"size-full wp-image-158\" title=\"Long-EZ plans\" src=\"http:\/\/atom.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/mg_5972.jpg\" alt=\"Long-EZ plans\" width=\"545\" height=\"363\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/mg_5972.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/mg_5972-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/mg_5972-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/mg_5972-600x400.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 545px) 100vw, 545px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-158\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">My Long-EZ plans, S\/N 1122.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Moving to LA, starting at SpaceX, and buying the motorcycles put this on the back burner for a while, but when I saw that the Experimental Aircraft Association was having their SportAir workshops in Riverside I signed up for the composite one. That&#8217;s the next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post opens a new category: airplane building. I&#8217;ve been wanting to get a pilot&#8217;s license for a long time, and I got halfway back in 2001 before losing momentum and realizing the financial futility of the endeavor. This past spring I thought I would get back into it, actually flew twice back in Massachusetts &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/25\/airplane-building\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading &lsquo;Introducing a new category: Airplane building!&rsquo; &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7,10,12],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airplane","tag-airplanes","tag-composites","tag-fiberglass"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2282,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/2282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.familjenjonsson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}