EAA Sport Aviation

EAA VOICES
Homebuilding Privileges and Responsibilities
KERRY FORES, EAA 131990
kerry@riveting-images.com

Ihave experienced both sides of the homebuilding fence; first as a customer who scratch built a Sonex, Metal Illness, and currently as a Sonex Aircraft employee providing technical support to customers. A phone call I recently received made me think about the incredible privileges we enjoy as homebuilders, as well as the tremendous responsibility we carry in our pursuit of homegrown aviation. To be clear, I am addressing aircraft certificated as experimental amateur-built, which are largely unrestricted in what an individual can dream and build.

My caller asked whom he could hire to build a Sonex and what it would cost. I told him he couldn’t hire anyone to build his airplane, as that is not within the spirit, intent, or regulations that govern the amateur-built aircraft category. He countered that some people, himself included, do not have the skills necessary to build an airplane, and he knows of others who have made questionable—if not dangerous— modifications to proven designs that, in his words, risk the lives of the people who fly them.

The amateur-built category has given us freedom to dream and to build. Some great, and some not-so-great, designs have come out of garages, basements, and damp T-hangars. I watched the Sonex prototypes take shape in a hangar crowded with Cub and Vagabond restorations. I was also privy to an attempted test flight of a rubber band-powered airplane and saw a World War I Gotha bomber replica, to be powered by Chevy 350 engines, take form. Neither of the latter projects “got off the ground,” but the regulations allowed those individuals to dream, build, and try.

There are many “experimental” successes: Van’s series of RVs, the Pietenpol Air Camper (its slogan: “Experimental for over 75 years”), the VariEze, the Wittman Tailwind, the Sonex, and many others. These aircraft are not successes because they are the products of “airplane factories;” they are successes because they are good designs, each appealing to their own markets. Most started life as an individual’s dream, but good engineering and performance is why others embraced them and why they now populate flightlines. Had the rubber band-powered airplane enjoyed a successful flight, then it would no doubt have its own following.

In the United States, more than any other country, we

enjoy the privilege to strap anything we want to our back and try to fly. If your idea is truly outlandish (an outboard motor attached to a 3-foot by 5-foot throw rug) the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) may issue flight restrictions allowing your creation to fly only on the second Thursday of each week, but you will get it certificated.

We have the privilege to design and build anything we want. To retain that privilege, we must act responsibly. But what does “responsibly” mean in the wild west of experimental aviation?

I think we can agree that it would have been irresponsible (though legal) to market kits for the rubber band-powered airplane before it was proven. And the full-scale Gotha bomber did eventually leave its nest, but in the form of scrap 4130 tubing. But bless them both for not just dreaming but trying, and doing so responsibly.

Most of us are not interested in birthing an original design under the annoying flicker of an aging fluorescent bulb, so we look to existing designs. Many builders are sold on a particular design with no desire to change anything— some even timid about swapping out one bolt length for another. Others make small changes to make an aircraft “theirs.” I stuck faithfully to the plans while building Metal Illness, but eliminated a line of rivets on the bottom of my instrument panel, eliminated visible fasteners on my gear leg fairings, and added fairings for wingtip and tail position lights. All were cosmetic changes, nothing structural, but in my mind “improvements.”

But what about structural changes, aerodynamic changes, powerplant changes? All of the established, successful designs have engineering and testing in their pedigree. The designer knows what the aircraft will do, what it won’t do, and what it shouldn’t do. And when properly built the customer should be assured performance equal to the advertising. We took a call once from a customer who wanted to turbocharge a Sonex, make it a four-place, and give it retractable gear. Designers have just as much responsibility as builders— more, really: the responsibility to warn against dangerous or untested changes to their design. Some builders propose significant changes, like our friend. To most of us such significant changes are obviously bad ideas.