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VERMONT DEPARTMENT OF LIBRARIES
NORTHEAST REGIONAL LIBRARY
ROAD
23 TILTON
ST JOHNSBURY VT 05819

4
.
 No. 2294
$9.95

PRACTICAL
ULTRALIGHT
AIRCRAFT
YOU CAN BUILD
BY DON DWIGGINS

MODERN AVIATION SERIES

TAB BOOKS Inc.

BLUE RIDGE SUMMIT. PA 17214
 FIRST EDITION

FIRST PRINTING— JUNE 1980

Copyright © 1980 by TAB BOOKS Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

Reproduction or publication of the content in any manner, without express

permission of the publisher, is prohibited. No liability is assumed with respect
to the use of the information herein.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Dwiggins, Don.
31 practical ultralight aircraft you can build.

Includes index.
1. Airplanes, Home-built. I. Title.
TL671 .2.D893 629.133’343 80-14764
ISBN 0-8306-9937-6
ISBN 0-8306-2294-2 (pbk.)

Cover photo courtesy of Larry Collier.

Other TAB books by the author:

No. 2205 Aircraft Metalwork
No. 2230 Restoration of Antique & Classic Planes
No. 2254 Man-Powered Aircraft
No. 2267 Low -Horsepower Fun Aircraft You Can Build
 —A 3

Contents

Introduction 5

1 A New Sport Is Born 7

’ Modern Gliders —A Powered Glider — Unplanned Aerobatics
Introduction to the Public

O The View From Australia 1

“ —
The First Minimum Aircraft The Rediscovery of Hang Gliding
—
Powered Hang Gliders Air Navigation Order 95. 1 0 Designing a —
— —
Minimum Aircraft Flying Minimum Aircraft The Minimum Air-
craft Federation of Australia —
The Current Situation Australians —
— —
on the go The Hornet The Scout

O An American Tradition 30
**
—
An Unusual Homebuilt Octave Chanute — Alexander Graham
Bell— —
The Wright Brothers The Secret of — Demoiselle
Flight
—
The White Monoplane The Penguin

A Hang Gliders 40
Stability — The Elevator — Lateral Control —The Airfoil — An Ul-
tralight Glider

K Ultralight Engines 47
^ A — Snowmobile Engines—A New Design
Go-kart Powerplant
The Gemini System — The Soarmaster— The Powerhawk

Powered Hang Gliders 53

0 The Sun Fun— The VJ-24— Across the Channel — Quicksilver—
Foot-Launched Cycle— Pterodactyl Fledgling — The Mitchell
Air
Wing
 —

Flying Wings ..74

7 The Lazair —
A Powered Super Floater — Weedhopper— Ultimate
Fun —The Chotia 460
Powered Sailplanes ...84
8 Mountain Green Ultralights — The Honeybee — The
.

Hummer
The Backstrom Flying Plank

Very Light Planes ...94

9 —
The PDQ-2 The Birdman TL-1 A — The Windwagon—The Micro-
— —
IMP The Bi-Fly Quickie

The Flying Bathtub ..112

10 —
Ramsey’s Tub On to Oshkosh —The Wier Draggin’ Fly— Aerial
Simplicity

STOL Aircraft ..120

11 The Stork — The Beta Bird— A Simple Ultralight

Index .128
 Introduction

The decade of the 1980s has come at a time when the pendulum of
technology’s time clock has already begun a giant swing away from
the search for bigness toward a beat more compatible with the
economics of ecology. In the 1970s, we all became more aware of
the limitations of the natural resources of our small planet.
The sudden emergence of ultralight aircraft in the burgeoning
homebuilt movement is a new direction for experimental design.
Hundreds of thousands of young men and women in the United
States and abroad are joining the action. By one Federal Aviation
Administration official’s estimate, today there are more than a
quarter-million people actively involved in the process of building
and flying the most rudimentary of ultralights— hang gliders, both
powered and unpowered.
There are many reasons for the emergence of the “minimum
airplane” at this time— socio-economic, technological and sheer
fun. For the first time in the long history of aviation, we are
approaching the elusive goal of flying with the freedom of the birds,
the way Leonardo da Vinci envisioned centuries ago.
Wide-bodied jets have their place in the sky, for all their
technological problems, and so do civilian and military supersonic
aircraft. Multi-seat private aircraft, communter planes and other
types of general aviation transportation machines will continue their
popularity, of course. But now as never before, the trend is toward
small, economical, inexpensive aircraft that don’t cost an arm and a

5
 leg. Instead of paying $25, 000 for a small commercial two-seater air

trainer, many pilots are flying lovely homebuilt craft that cost only
one-tenth as much or less. And they are having as much, if not
more, fun.
We are sure to see new, exciting developments in the im-
mediate years ahead that seem certain to revolutionize the world of
flight. Exotic new materials are coming into widespread use in the
homebuilt movement. New aerodynamic designs are pointing the
way toward revolutionary concepts that seem certain to help the
ultralight explosion fulfill its promised destiny— the small, safe, fun
aircraft for everybody.
The 1960s closed with great promise for manned conquest of
space following Apollo ll’s 1969 lunar landing. Space conquest
slowed during the 1970s for some of the reasons that aviation
technology appears destined to make a 180-degree turn in the
1980s. Big is no longer beautiful.

Don Dwiggins

6
 Chapter 1

A New Sport is Born

Ultralight aircraft are not new. The first powered flying machines
;
were of necessity ultra-light, compared with today's popular gen-
There were several reasons for this, the prime
eral aviation aircraft.
factor being non-availability of powerplants with adequate power-
to- weight ratios. The first airplanes were built of lightweight bam-
boo and silk because sheet aluminum was simply not available. The
early designers and experimenters used birds as their models.
They knew that heavy birds like the ostrich and emu were virtually
ground-bound by their own weight.
The rebirth of ultralight powered aircraft had its roots in the
reappearance and acceptance of unpowered hang gliders in the
1960s. It was almost a replay of a scene of the early 1900s when the
Wright brothers added a crude powerplant to a Chanute-type bip-
lane glider at Kill Devil Hill, to launch the era of heavier-than-air
powered flight.

Modern Gliders
The modern hang glider movement got under way at Langley
Research Center when a National Aeronautics and Space Administ-
ration engineer named Francis M. Rogallo developed a flexible- wing
para-glider for military applications. In Australia, the device was
quickly adopted for sport flying. Bill Bennett
used the Rogallo
first

wing glider for aerial jaunts behind a speedboat, while in tow on

water skies. He soon introduced the sport to America.

7
 About the same time, another revival of hang gliding occurred
in Southern California. A school teacher, Jack Lambie, helped his
sixth-graders build a Chanute-type aircraft with 28-foot wings from
$24.95 worth of scrap wood, wire and plastic. The kids called her
Hang Loose (Fig. 1-1) and were delighted to watch Lambie make a
number of short flights down a hillside near San Juan Capistrano
Mission.
Other biplane hang gliders quickly appeared in Western skies,
notably one graceful, swept- wing, tailless craft named for Icarus—
the legendary Greek youth who flew too close to the sun and melted
his wax wings. Icarus was the creation of a 16-year-old son of an
aerospace engineer and astronomer, Taras Kiceniuk, Jr., who be-

came the envy of the Rogallo flyers by making extended flights along
coastal slopes where the ocean breezes provided steady orographic
lift.

A refinement of Kiceniuk’s design, called Icarus II, soon be-

came known on hang gliding slopes the world over. But it shared
one drawback with all other hang gliders— you needed a hilltop
launch site to get airborne, with gravity doing the work. John
Moody, of Milwaukee, WI, decided to do something about that. In

the mid-1970s, Moody was an experienced Icarus II pilot with a

brilliant idea. Why not add an engine and dispense with re require-
ment of a downhill ground-skimming launch?

A Powered Glider

Moody installed a McCulloch 101 two-cycle engine in his Icarus

II, and soon was foot-launching the machine from flat Midwestern
fields On one flight, using a backup
with the greatest of ease.
Moody set an unofficial world altitude record
plastic-bottle fuel tank,
for powered hang gliders of 8700 feet above mean sea level after
launching from a field at an elevation of 690 feet MSL. The record
flight was accomplished without the aid of thermal, wave or ridge
lift.

A major goal for Moody was to make hang gliding in ultralight

machines safer than ever. With a power package installed in an

ultralight machine, a beginning pilot could gradually gain pilot profi-

ciency flying low and slow over level terrain, on calm days.
A second goal for Moody was to make low-cost, completely
portable ultralight flying available to the average builder, using an
aircraft which one man could handle, transport, assemble and teach
himself to anywhere with relative safety. The powered Icarus II,
fly

which Moody named Easy Riser, was a unique configuration among

8
 a

Fig. 1 -1 . Jack Lambie revived the biplane hang glider movement in America with
Hang Loose, built for $24.95.

rigid-wing ultralights. It had a parachuting type stall, important to

low-time pilots winning their wings in foot-launched craft.

Easy Riser’s parachuting capability comes from the wing de-

sign, which includes a tip washout to permit the outer panels to keep
flying when the middle section stalls. This was not a new idea, but
one that acts as a sort of air brake to hold the sink rate down.
Stability is further enhanced in both pitch and roll axes by a combina-
tion of dihedral and sweepback.
The wingtip rudders, mounted on ball bearings for smooth
operation, yaw the wing toward the direction in which the rudder is
deflected by creating tip drag. This arrangement was developed by
Taras Kiceniuk in his Icarus II and Icarus V hang gliders. Easy Riser
emerged from Moody’s conception five pounds lighter than Icarus
II, Moody claims it is stronger, with higher lift-drag ratio, better
penetration, lower sink rate and faster climb under power. It can be
assembled in only six minutes.
One of the more popular PHGs flying today, Easy Riser is

available in kit form from Ultralight Flying Machines, PO Box 59,

Cupertino, CA 95014, or you can order them through Moody at

UFM of Wisconsin, Box 21867, Milwaukee, WI 53221. According

to UFM of California, Easy Riser is a “third-generation” high per-
formance, rigid-wing PHG, a production version of the earlier
Demoiselle. They describe it as actually a modified Monowing—
main wing with an aspect ratio of 8.8 and a newly-designed, high-lift

9
airfoil consisting of the former Monowing tail moved forward to
become the staggered lower wing of the biplane configuration.
Call them what you will, Easy Risers are flying by the hun-
dreds. Kits come ready to assemble with Mac 101 engines equipped
with a compression relief valve and recoil pull starter, intake stack,
exhaust muffler, in-flight pull starter rope and pulley, Lord motor
mounts, ear plugs, prob hub and face plate, and epoxied propeller.
UFM also supplies a twist-lock throttle cable, 5-quart fuel tank
and shutoff valve, fuel line, fuel filter, mixture adjustment control
and primer bulb, with a three-position ignition switch, wires, termi-
nals, safety switch with retractile wire, and all required paperwork.
The unique ignition switch consists of a three-position mouth-
held safety switch that lets you select engine-off, engine-on, and
engine-on-via-safety-switch modes. During takeoff and landing
maneuvers the mouth switch is used, so the pilot can kill the engine

simply by opening his mouth.

Ear plugs are a must because the noisy McCulloch engine is

right behind the pilot's head. Moody found that the best propeller
was a 28/8.5 blade capable of producing 65 pounds of thrust from
the Mac engine at 7300 rpm. The pilot sits in a swing seat or
harness. However, during early flights Moody suggests hanging
from the hang tubes under the armpits and staying below 15 feet
altitude while you become proficient in handling the craft. Moody
liked a commercial seat manufactured under the name Safety-Pro
Harness, by Aero Float Flights, Box 1155, Battle Creek, MI 49016.
He felt this seat gave a better sense of security than a swing seat
made with a board suspended by two ropes. However, Moody
warns that the quick release buckles could fly back and shatter the
propeller blades if released prior to shutting down the engine.

Unplanned Aerobatics
There was some question about what would happen if a PHG
somehow became inverted in flight. The question was answered
dramatically at the August, 1976 EAA Fly-In at Oshkosh, WI, when
Moody overdid a maneuver while showing But let him tell it:
off.

“I overdid a wingover type maneuver which resulted in flying

my ultralight right over onto its back. After several seconds of

stable, level— though inverted flight— recovery was accomplished.
But not until after doing three tight loops, or tumbles, around the
lateral axis. I now believe that the unplanned aerobatics during the
recovery would not have occurred if I had turned the engine off with
the safety switch as soon as the recovery attempt was initiated.

10
 “However, wanting to try only one thing at a time, I delayed
turning the engine off. Apparently, my inability to stay in one spot in
the aircraft, coupled with the thrust of the engine at full power,
combined to allow the airplane to carry over in to a second and third
loop. Once the engine was turned off, the aircraft immediately
recovered into level flight. There was no structural damage of any
kind, although am sure God played the major role in my being here
I

to write this account of what happened. I am also now more confi-

dent than ever in the structural and aerodynamic integrity of these
”
aircraft.

Moody, in admitting pilot error, absolved the Easy Riser of

blame, as did EAA officials. Moody was permitted to continue flight
demonstrations during the remainder of the event. It was a hair-
raiser for sure— I was there and I held my breath as Moody’s
machine did what appeared to be a series of Lomcevaks down below
treetop level where he disappeared from view. Moody has had a few
other tight situations, including a landing in four feet of water when
his engine lost power and prevented him from reaching shore during
the 1975 Frankfort Hang Gliding Meet.

Introduction to the Public

Moody’s appearance at Oshkosh in 1976 was a unique and

thrilling introduction of the sport of PHG flying to the public and it
was a harbinger of things to come. In 1977, there were two PHGs at
Oshkosh and in 1978 a total of 25 powered ultralights appeared.
They had a special field all their own set aside to keep them out of
the way of the faster conventional homebuilts flying past the review-
ing area.
Later on you’ll read about the incredible scene at Oshkosh 79,
when ultralights really turned out en masse and drew proportionate
acclaim. Many of the new PHGs are not simply converted hang
gliders, but aircraft designed from the start to provide maximum
performance from minimum horsepower with a total weight well
under 500 pounds.
New engines also are making the scene, in addition to the
standard Mac 101s and the Chrysler/ West Bend 820 converted
outboard powerplants. Chainsaw engines like the SV^-horsepower
Swedish A. B. Partners can be mounted in twin-engine configura-
tions as marketed by Ed Sweeney’s Gemini International, 655
Juniper Hill Road, Reno, NV 89509.
Another, larger engine now being used with motorgliders is

the 24-horsepower, twin-opposed, two-cycle Dyad engine that

11
turns up at 7500 rpm and was initially designed for use in remotely
piloted vehicles. Itweights a mere 12V2 pounds. Then there’s John
Chotia’s 456-cc single-cylinder Chotia 460 engine he designed
especially for his Weedhopper PHG. It is able to put out I8V2
horsepower. It replaced the Weedhopper’s earlier converted 22-
horsepower Yamaha motorcycle engine.
Aside from small, light powerplants, PHGs also need special
aerodynamic qualities if they are to realize their ultimate potential.
Only recently have our national research efforts come face to face
with the problems of designing craft to fly at low Reynolds numbers
for aircraft like the NASA Mini-Sniffer, designed to become the first

airplane to fly through the thin atmosphere of Mars.

12
 Chapter 2

The View From Australia

Australia was the scene of hang gliding’s appearance as a sport, but

few know that ultralight aircraft also were “born again” in that
country. We are indebted to a Quantas Airlines pilot, Gary Kimber-
ley, of 73 Queens Road, Connels Point, NSW 2221, for this report
on “minimum aircraft” development there.
Kimberley, 1979 president of the Minimum Aircraft Federa-
manufactures the delightful Sky-Rider Ultra-Light
tion of Australia,
which represents a new approach to the problem of producing an
ultra-cheap, ultra-safe sport aircraft. Though classified as a pow-
ered hang glider, Sky-Rider (Figs. 2-1, 2-2, 2-3) has the controls
and handling characteristics of a conventional light aircraft. It is

equally suited to the novice flyer wishing to progress to conven-

tional light aircraft piloting or to the experienced light aircraft pilot

who wants to step down low cost sport or hobby.

to ultralights as a
Sky-Rider is designed to be dismantled and folded for car-top
transport and garage stowage. It is built of cable-braced aluminum
tubing and Dacron covering as a high-wing monoplane, using a
modified McCulloch 101 engine of 12 horsepower.
Sky-Rider’s wingspan is 32 feet, the length is 18 feet and the
height is 7 feet 10 inches. Empty weight210 pounds and
is

maximum takeoff weight is 400 pounds. Cruising speed is 40 mph

and it takes off and lands at approximately 20 mph, stalling in ground
effect at 18 mph. It climbs at 150 feet per minute. As a recreational
machine, no pilot license or aircraft registration is required in
Australia under Air Navigation Order 95. 10.

13
Fig. 2-1. Gary Kimberley, president of the Minimum Aircraft Federation of
Australia, flies the ultralight Sky Rider which he designed.

Kimberley has been flight-testing a brand-new powerplant, his

experimental alcohol engine, that might deliver twice the power of
the McCulloch 101, complete with dual ignition and quiet, smooth
operation.
Australia, says Kimberley, has many excellent hang gliding
sites, mainly on the East Coast. The best and most popular, he
says, is probably Stanwell Tops, just south of Sydney. While Easy
Risers currently are the most popular type PHG’s, Kimberley has
an interesting story to tell about the rebirth of the sport.
On 28 March 1979, Kimberley gave a lecture on “Minimum
Aircraft— Sport Flying For the Layman/’ It is reprinted with his
permission:
To do justice to the history of our movement, I feel one should
start with the experiments of Otto Lilienthal (Fig. 2-4) in Germany
in the late 1890’s. In my opinion, Lilienthal was the real father of

flight. He was the first to achieve successful, controlled heavier-

than-air flights. He was the first to be able to remain airborne for
sufficient periods of time, to be able to establish satisfactory
methods and to begin accumulating useful aerodynamic
of control
data. Prior to his tragic death in one of his later model hang-gliders,
Lilienthal had thrilled the world with his daring feats and there is no
doubt that his amazing exploits and remarkable successes provided
the inspiration to Wilbur Wright to embark on his ambitious project
to become the first to achieve powered heavier-than-air flight.

The First Minimum Aircraft

Using Lilienthal’s tables of air pressures and “vaulted” (cam-

bered) wings, Wilbur devised his first series of man-carrying gliders

14
Fig. 2-2. The cockpit area of the Kimberley Sky Rider is utter simplicity.

for his Kitty Hawk experiments. He shrewdly realized, however,

that weight-shift control was far too limiting and that successful
powered flight would depend on the development of a satisfactory
method of aerodynamic control.
The breakthrough came when Wilbur discovered the wing-
warping technique which enabled him to achieve fully- controlled
banked turns. With the addition of a workable engine and propulsion
system, the first successful powered airplane was born— the
world’s first minimum aircraft.
The rapid progress of aeronautics through this embryonic,
ultra-low and slow stage was so swift that very little detailed
research was done in this area. The quest was for bigger, more
sophisticated aircraft of ever-higher performance. Two world wars
saw quantum jumps in the development of aviation that left the

Fig. 2-3. Clean, simple lines of the Sky Rider show here. Note the wide ailerons.

15
minimum aircraft regime far behind. The result was that it became
an abandoned and forgotten art.

With today’s enormously costly and sophisticated aircraft, re-

search and development is carried out in infinite detail and its cost is
measured in thousands of millions of dollars. Publications are availa-
ble to the modern aircraft designer that can provide him with
aerodynamic data to the Nth degree, or just about any aerodynamic
shape he likes to think of, in the conventional flight regime. But if
you want to design and build your own minimum aircraft with an
all-up weight of less than 400 pounds, a single-surface wing with a
normal operating speed range of from 15 to 35 knots, then you’re on
your own!

The Rediscovery of Hang Gliding

Some flying had been done by water-skiers using flat penta-

gonal kites behind powerful speed boats, but it was the invention of
the Rogallo Wing by Dr. Francis Rogallo and its later development
for the United States space program, that really revolutionized the
sport and brought about the hang-gliding boom that swept around
the world in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The Rogallo (Fig. 2-5) or para-sail was designed as a flexible
deltawing which could be rolled up and folded, and carried on a
space vehicle in such a way that, after reentry, the Rogallo could be
popped out like a parachute— enabling the spacecraft to glide down
to a controlled landing on the ground. As it turned out, NASA’s
requirement for the Rogallo never developed. But the tow-kiting

Fig. 2-4. Otto Lilienthal was a pioneer hang glider pilot. He was killed when he
attempted flight in a powered glider.

16
Fig. 2-5. An early Rogallo wing hang glider with the pilot riding in the prone
position.

enthusiasts were quick to see the potential of the device in their

application and so a brand new sport was born— the sport of hang
gliding.
Much of the early pioneering in hang gliding was done in

Australia by John Dickinson, Bill Bennett and Bill Moyes in Sydney.

The breakthrough occurred with their introduction of the A-frame
control bar, which enabled complete pilot control of the kite in free
flight. This meant that, on attaining a safe height, the pilot could
release from the tow rope and glide down to a landing wherever he
chose— with the kite under full control.
It wasn’t long before others, such as Steve Cohen, began
experimenting with tethered flying in strong sea-breezes, gliding
down sand dunes at Kurnell and ridge soaring at Stanwell Park, in

the shadow of Lawrence Hargrave, pioneer Australian aircraft de-

signer.

Powered Hang Gliders

After visits to America by Bill Bennett and Bill Moyes, the
sport of hang gliding really began to boom. It wasn’t long before the
Americans, with their flair for innovation and ingenuity, were pro-
ducing hang gliders of increasingly greater sophistication and higher
and higher performance capabilities. The Rogallo’s nose angle was
widened, aspect ratios were increased and the sails were progres-
sively flattened by decreasing the degree of billow.
As the Rogallos became more and more like flying wings and
began to reach the limits of their design potential, the next step
became obvious— the development of the Rigid Wing. It wasn’t long
before such sophisticated gliders as the Icarus, Easy Riser, and

17
Mitchell Wing began to appear on the scene. Although they were
heavier and lacked the portability and quick assembly and break-
down times of the flexible wing kites, they more than made up for
this with their superior performance capabilities. The incorporation
of wingtip rudders or spoilerons became essential on these high
aspect ratio gliders. Weight-shift alone was not enough to provide
adequate roll control. Instrumentation began to appear in the form
of airspeed indicators, altimeters and variometers. Naturally, it was
to be only a matter of time before someone got the bright idea of
bolting a chainsaw engine onto a hang glider.
In 1974 Ron Wheeler, a Sydney boat manufacturer, who had
begun making hang gliders in his Carlton factory, designed a re-
volutionary new high aspect ratio, flexible wing glider, with a con-
ventional aircraft-type configuration that had a performance capabil-
ity approaching that of some of the rigid wings. This rather unusual
hang glider was called the Tweetie and employed an ingenious
method of using yacht masts and sails.
Although Tweetie never became a huge success as a hang
glider, it made a vital contribution toward the birth of the minimum
aircraft movement through the ready adaptability of its design for
conversion into a very basic, powered miniature airplane. The
Sky craft Scout the first of the true, modern-day minimum
,
aircraft

was born (Figs. 2-6, 2-7 and 2-8).

Air Navigation Order 95.10

Having produced the world’s first viable minimum aircraft, it

then became necessary for Ron Wheeler of Skycraft Pty. Ltd. and
his colleague Cec Anderson to obtain official approval from the
Australian Department of Transport in order to fly it legally. In
November 1976, permission was finally granted by the Department
in theform of an Air Navigation Order which exempted this class of
aircraftfrom all normal requirements of Air Navigation Regulations
but imposed strict limitations on their operation.
This Air Navigation Order, ANO 95.10, was an enormous
breakthrough. It enabled the development of an entirely new branch
of aviation and brought about the birth of an exciting new sport—
minimum aircraft flying. It enabled personal, recreational flying to
be brought back within the reach of the ordinary private citizen and
displayed an unusually generous and progressive outlook on the
part of the DOT. It was also a tremendous breakthrough for Ron
Wheeler and Cec Anderson of course. It now meant that their
company could legally manufacture and sell their Scouts in
Skycraft

18
Fig. 2-6. Ron Wheeler’s Australian Skycraft Scout was the first of modern day
minimum aircraft.

the minimum aircraft category. Almost overnight their sales began

to boom. There are now more Scouts flying than any other minimum
aircraft type anywhere in the world.
Now, of course, there are a number of other designs also flying
(Fig. 2-9), such as Col Winton's Grasshopper, (Fig. 2-10) which is

also in production in Sydney, Steve Cohen's Ultra-Light which is

currently under development and my own experimental design, the

Sky-Rider. This, however, is just the beginning. The field is wide
open to personal enterprise, and individual, inventive ingenuity.

Designing a Minimum Aircraft

Imagine that in a sudden fit of creative enthusiasm you have

decided to design and build a minimum aircraft of your very own
creation. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds, and is probably quite

Fig. 2-7. A Skycraft Scout fitted with pontoons flies nicely.

19
Fig. 2-8. Ron Wheeler’s Skycraft Scout appeared at the EAA Fly-In at Oshkosh
in 1979.

most of us if we are prepared to put our

within the capabilities of
minds to it. However, before we start getting too involved in the
design and construction of our minimum aircraft, we must really
make sure that we know exactly what is involved in the ANO. There
is not much point in spending a lot of time, effort and money on an

airplane that could never be legally flown.

Air Navigation Order 95. 10 applies to power-driven, heavier-
than-air, fixed-wing aircraft having a maximum takeoff weight not
exceeding 400 pounds and a wing loading not exceeding 4 pounds
per square foot. It therefore includes both powered hang gliders and
minimum aircraft and these machines are thereby exempted from all
the normal requirements applicable to conventional aircraft.
It sounds good— no pilot’s license, no registration, no Air
Navigation Charges. But the sting is in the tail— the operational
limitations imposed, conditions which can briefly be summarized as
follows.
Aircraft to which this ANO applies shall not, under any cir-
cumstances, be flown:
• In cloud.
• At night.
• Over built-up areas.
• In instrument-flying conditions.
• In commercial operations.
• In any aerobatic type maneuvers.
In addition, except with written permission of the regional
director of the Department of Transport, these aircraft shall not be
flown:

20
Fig. 2-9. The Hovey Whing Ding from America is popular in Australia. This one
was built by David Ecclestone.

• At a height in excess of 300 feet above terrain.

• Within 5 kilometers of a government or licensed aero-
drome.
• Within controlled airspace.
• Within any prohibited or restricted area.
• Within 100 meters of members of the public.
• Within 100 meters of any building.
• Within 300 meters of any sealed road.
• At any regatta, race meeting or public gathering.
Virtually, what all this means is that if you want to fly minimum
aircraft you will have to get out into the country, away from any
towns or built-up areas, so that if you have a prang you’re not going
to hurt anyone but yourself. The Department of Transport’s con-
cern, of course, is public safety.

Fig. 2-10. The Winton Grasshopper is another Australian ultralight.

21
 If, after all this, you still want to go ahead with the design of

your minimum airplane, the key limitation will be the 400 pound
minimum takeoff weight (MTOW). If you can design your aircraft to
comply with that, it you will exceed the 4
is fairly unlikely that

pounds per square foot wing loading limit.

The biggest single problem facing minimum aircraft designers
at the moment is that of finding a suitable engine. It must be
extremely light in weight (preferably under 30 pounds), put out a
minimum of around 10 to 12 horsepower, be completely reliable and
readily available at a reasonable cost. It must also be decided how
your aircraft is to be transported to and from the flying site— on the
car roof-rack, on a trailer or towed.
Next, it must be decided whether it’s going to be a tractor or a
pusher, enclosed or open cockpit. And finally, all the nitty-gritty
decisions on how you're going to get it all together in such a way that
it will actually work, while still remaining inside the legal weight
limit. And I can assure you, “It ain't easy!" If you finally get your
masterpiece finished, that alone be quite an achievement.
will

Statistics show that, of those who start homebuilt aircraft projects,

very few ever actually finish them.

Flying Minimum Aircraft

So, having paid out the money, worked all those hours and
solved all those seemingly innumerable problems one by one, you
are now the proud owner of a brand new minimum airplane of your
very own design. It is a thing of beauty, a unique work of art, the end
result of your labor of love and tangible proof of your creative
genius. All you have to do now is learn how to fly it without “writing
it off’ the very first time you try to get it into the air! If you can do
you have done very well indeed. You will experience the pride
that,
degree of personal satisfaction enjoyed by few
of achievement and a
others— a handsome reward which you will have well and truly
earned.
A word of warning: flying minimum aircraft is a new and
specialized art. It can only be learned through practice and experi-
ence and should be approached cautiously and conservatively, ad-
It presents many problems not
vancing only one small step at a time.
encountered in other branches of aviation and, unfortunately, it

provides a fertile breeding ground for over-confidence and careless-

ness.
Previous light aircraft flying experience, while helpful, will not
provide a pilot with the skills necessary for flying minimum aircraft.

22
In fact, in some instances, such as in the case of the Skycraft Scout,
previous conventional light aircraft experience can be a disadvan-
tage because of the different control system and the different flying
techniques required. The experienced light aircraft pilot has the
added burden of endeavoring to overcome his normal instincts and
habits built up over many hours of conventional aircraft flying.
We have had a number of minimum aircraft accidents and
incidents recently, involving licensed light aircraft pilots. In each
case, except one, the pilot was very lucky to have escaped serious
injury. The exception, unfortunately, was fatal.
Minimum aircraft operate at low Reynolds numbers, dimen-
sions are small, weights are virtually in the hang-glider category and
airspeeds are extremely low— with very little margin above the
stall. The weight of the pilot is usually around 50 percent or more of
the total and can be a critical factor in the aircraft's performance.
Engine power is minimal and very few minimum aircraft could
sustain a level turn with more than about 15 or 20 degrees of bank.
Even when climbing with full power, a minimum aircraft can easily
begin to lose height if it suddenly encounters a downdraft or runs
into an area of sink.
Large control inputs can create such an increase in drag that
the aircraft will be forced to descend to maintain airspeed. Wind
gusts which would not even be noticed in a light aircraft can easily be
15 or 20 percent of the flying speed of a minimum aircraft. For this
reason, minimum aircraft should never be flown in gusty conditions
or in winds over about 10 or 12 knots maximum.

The Minimum Aircraft Federation of Australia

In granting the exemption under ANO 95. 10, the Department

of Transport expressed the wish that some sort of controlling body
be formed. Ron Wheeler subsequently wrote to all Scout owners
asking if they would be interested in forming a Minimum Aircraft
Association.
On April 20, was held at
1978, a meeting of interested persons
the Royal Aero Club of NSW in Bankstown,
where Nicholas Meyer,
a Sydney businessman and Scout owner and flyer, became presi-
dent of The Minimum Aircraft Federation of Australia. The organi-
zation is growing steadily with members in every state of Australia
plus a number overseas. The aims and objectives of AMFA are:
* To promote minimum aircraft flying as a safe, low-cost
sport that will bring enjoyment of flying back within the
reach of the ordinary citizen.

23
 • To protect the right of the private citizen to build and fly

his personal aircraft within requirements of the law.

• To safeguard the interests of minimum aircraft en-
thusiasts throughout Australia.
• To guide and control development of the sport in an
organized and constructive manner, with safety as the
prime objective.
• To encourage formation of minimum aircraft clubs
throughout Australia and offer them guidance and assis-
tance and seek their affiliation with the Federation.
• To act as a central communications and coordinating
body for the minimum aircraft movement as a whole, to
liasie with the Department of Transport and act on
behalf of the members where necessary.
• To ensure that costs, paperwork, and rules and regula-
tions are kept to a minimum commensurate with safety
and do not become the inhibiting burden that they have
become with conventional aviation.
• To promote friendship, courtesy, mutual assistance,
and the return of a spirit of chivalry in the air.

The key aim is, of course, to preserve ANO 95.10, for if we

should ever lose that, we’re out of business.

The Current Situation

In addition to Scouts, we now have Grasshoppers, Whing
Dings, Sun Funs, and one Sky-Rider. We are also taking an interest
in such powered hang gliders as the Easy Riser, Quicksilver and
Mitchell Wing, as they operate under ANO 95. 10 and are now being
fitted with wheeled undercarriages and in some cases additional
aerodynamic controls.
For purposes of definition, we are working on the principle that
if the pilot hangs suspended in the aircraft and weight-shift is used in

all or any one of the three control axes, then it is a hang glider. If it

flies like an airplane with all aerodynamic flying controls, then it is a

minimum aircraft. However, some powered hang gliders, such as

the Easy Riser biplane, when fitted with its tricycle undercarriage,
is near enough for our purposes to be considered a minimum

aircraft.

A Giant Step Backwards. The minimum airplane has been

jokingly described as a “giant step backwards. ” This rather hilarious

24
and astute comment is really quite true. Minimum aircraft flying

represents a return to the good old days of early aviation when flying
machines were very basic and aviators flew them for the sheer thrill
of flying.
The years that have elapsed since Wilbur and Orville Wright
made their first short flights over the sands of Kitty Hawk have seen
aviation progressfrom an exciting experiment to the world's most
automated and regulated mode of transport. Now, by going back to
basics, we are just beginning to rediscover what it's really like to fly!
The Future. The advent of the minimum airplane has made it
possible once again for the ordinary citizen to own and fly his

personal aircraft. It brought about the discovery of an entirely new

and exciting branch of aviation, halfway between the hang glider and
the old “ultra-light" aircraft.
Conventional private flying is becoming so bogged down with
rules, regulations and red tape, and is going to become so prohibi-
tively expensive over the next few years, that our minimum aircraft
type of flying will probably eventually become the only way in which
an ordinary citizen will be able to enjoy the privilege of personal,
recreational flight.

Our sport is still very much in its infancy, but I believe we are

on the verge of an upsurge in sport flying that will sweep throughout

Australia and right on around the world. Minimum aircraft flying has
the potential to become the world's largest sport aviation move-
ment, provided it is handled correctly and is not fouled up in the
early stages of its development.
Already in Sydney alone there are at least four different
locally-designed minimum aircraft, either already in production or in
advanced stages of development, all of which will be available to
Australian enthusiasts at a price well within the reach of ordinary
wage earners. At the moment, we are well ahead of the rest of the
world in the minimum aircraft field, including the United States,
thanks mainly to ANO
95.10. Just how long we will be able to
maintain our lead be interesting to see, but obviously it will
will

depend to a great extent on our own enterprise and enthusiasm.

Conclusion. The Minimum Aircraft Federation was formed
to further the aims and safeguard the interests of enthusiasts
throughout Australia who simply wish to fly safe, simple aircraft
which they can afford to buy and afford to fly for the sheer enjoy-
ment of flying. People might ask: “What is it about flight that makes
so many peoplestrive so hard to achieve it?"
Perhaps the best answer was given by Wilbur Wright back in
1905: “When you know, after the first few minutes, that the whole

25
mechanism is working perfectly, the sensation is so keenly delight-
fulas to be almost beyond description. .. More than anything else,
the sensation is one of perfect peace, mingled with an excitement
that strains every nerve to the utmost— if you can conceive of such
a combination.”

Australians on the Go

To amplify Gary Kimberley’s account of Minimum Aircraft

flying in Australia, let’s look back across the years to the turn of the
century when Lawrence Hargrave made an important contribution
to the young science of aerodynamics, in its slow evolution from
kites to airplanes.
In 1892, Hargrave sent a scientific paper to Octave Chanute, in
America, to present at the world’s first conference on aerial naviga-
tion at the Chicago World’s Fair. In ithe described how he had built
kites with square sides— not just flat plates or single curved sur-

faces. He called them box kites, because they looked like flying

boxes.
Hargrave used curved surfaces on the top and bottom of his
box kites, buthe added something even more important to their
basic design. Using two surfaces instead of one, he doubled the
force of lift. In addition, the sides of his box kites acted like rudders
to keep the kites flying straight.
Hargrave learned two important things from his box kites.
First, he found that their curved surfaces developed twice as much
lift as flat surfaces. And if he flew a box kite at a relative angle (to the

wind) of about 45 degrees, lift and drag were about equal. He then
tried flying one tilted a little lower and discovered that lift exceeded
drag considerably.
Later on, Chanute, Lilienthal and the Wright brothers would
refine the study of the ratio of lift to drag, called LD, and compile
detailed tables for wing curves of different shapes. Another Austra-
lian, Richard Pearse, developed a powered flying machine of his
original design that reportedly flew on several occasions— though
not too well. Pearse’s experiments actually were carried out in New
Zealand, but Australia considers him a sort of adopted son to show
the world that aeronautic inventiveness flourished years ago “down
under.”
With the current rebirth of interest in ultralight flying in Au-
stralia,new designs are appearing with regularity. However, sev-
eral American designs already are highly popular in the Outback of
Australia, where sheep ranchers use them to survey their flocks
from the air.

26
 Among the American imports that have gained wide accep-
tance in Australia is Bob Hovey’s little biplane, the Whing Ding,
perhaps the world’s smallest ultralight biplane that weighs only 123
pounds empty and can attain a speed of 50 miles an hour. Hovey has
sold more than 6000 sets of Whing Ding plans around the world at
$20 a set, not bad for an amateur designer! In a later chapter, the
Whing Ding and Hovey’s latest design, the monoplane Beta Bird,
are discussed further.
As Kimberley points out, the Volmer VJ-24 Sun Fun and John
Moody’s Easy Riser also are highly popular imports in Australia. As
the sport of Minimum Aircraft flying has caught hold there, some
highly interesting local designs have shown up.

The Hornet
One of the newer models is David Betteridge’s flying wing
minimum Hornet 160. The pilot sits in an enclosed
airplane, the
cockpit atop the swept-back wing, whose span is 33 feet and area
162 square feet. Wingtip rudders are operated independently by the
pilot’s feet for turning, or together to serve as dive brakes.
Betteridge was an aeronautical engineer with Hawker de Havil-
land Australia in Sydney, then joined Free Flight Hang Gliders
Proprietary Limited of Adelaide, South Australia, to develop a
powered hang glider. This development work resulted in the Hor-
net 160 design, similar to the American Mitchell Wing, except for
the higher pilot position.
The Hornet 160’s powerplant is a modified 177cc two-stroke
motorcycle engine mounted behind the cockpit, driving a ducted
fan. The craft’s is 70 mph, its climb rate is 400 feet per
top speed
minute and speed is 25 mph. Stressed to 6 G’s, the
its stalling

machine can handle severe turbulence. Construction is of aluminum

alloy, plywood, polyurethane foam and fiberglass. The wing’s lead-

ing edge is plywood-covered and the rest is covered with fabric.

Assembly or disassembly takes only 10 minutes. At this writing,
plans were firming up for a production run.

The Scout
had the pleasure of watching a Sky craft Scout fly at the 1979
I

EAA Fly-In at Oshkosh, WI, and

I admired its unusual grace and

good performance. This confirmed what I read about it in Alan

Chalkley’s report from Australia to the British publication Popular
Flying in their March- April 1979 issue.

27
 Chalkley pointed out the unique way the designer, Ron
Wheeler, a Sydney boat builder, had adapted the highly efficient sail
of a racing dinghy to aeronautical use. The result was almost birdlike
flexibility.Wheeler started off using a section of a dural boat mast
for the leading edge of the wing, with lift and landing wire braces
rigged to a cabane strut above and to the A-frame below. Single stay
wires to the forward fuselage handle the drag loads.
The wing is covered with Dacron, stiffened with seven
aluminum alloy ribs sewn into place in a manner permitting the
covering to be rolled up for storage or cartop transport. The magic
of the design becomes apparent in flight. As the angle of attack
increases, the wing flexes progressively from the tips toward the
root. This will effectively wash out the high incidence to prevent
stalling. Chalkley reported witnessing a Scout flown by Ces Ander-
son, Wheeler’s colleague, put into an extreme nose-high attitude
without power at 150 feet above ground level and watching it gently
settle back into landing attitude in bird-flight fashion.

Construction of the Skycraft Scout is simple. The fuselage is

made from a Dural A-frame in

spar, beneath which is slung a tubular
which the pilot rides comfortably in a fiberglass seat. The main gear
is suspended from a steel leaf spring beneath the forward end of the

framework in a manner to absorb shock loads from hard landings and

to prevent injury to the pilot.
There are no ailerons or wing-warping involved since the
all-sail wing provides adequate lateral control. Rudder control is

linked to the control stick which is moved sideways toward an

intended turn, eliminating the need for foot rudder pedals. Your feet
rest on a simple crossbar.
Wheeler’s factory also produces the small Pixie powerplant for
the Skycraft Scout, a two-stroke, single-cylinder affair mounted at
the front end of the fuselage boom with rubber shock mounts. A
geared chain drive with a 4:1 ratio reduction is automatically lubri-
cated. Wheeler also went to the advanced solid state electronic
ignition system.
A half-gallon fuel tank is mounted above and behind the Pixie
engine and operates by gravity feed. This amount of fuel is good for

40 minutes flying, giving a range of 28 miles, no reserve. When the

engine quits you simply glide down and land, providing you are over
open country. Australians are lucky here, for there are thousands of
square miles of open space for sport flying in minimum aircraft
without penetrating controlled airspace or violating the restrictions
of ANO 95.10, which is written to keep the little guys at a safe
distance from airports and paved highways or buildings.

28
 Chalkley reports that Wheeler maintains a pilot training area
where clipped- wing Scouts run back and forth without taking off, in
the manner of World War I Penguin trainers at Pau in France. Short
hops with shallow-banked turns follow. Within two or three hours a
neophyte pilot is considered ready to leave the nest. Veteran pilots
of conventional aircraft seemed to have difficulty learning to handle
the Scout without rudder pedals, but once they got the hang of it

there were no problems.

Wheeler has manufactured and sold close to 300 Skycraft
Scouts at this writing— mostly in Australia, though one was repor-

tedly flying on Christmas Island. Sale price was quoted as $1885

(£1075).
The Scout weighs only 122 pounds empty or 297 pounds all-up.
Its wingspan is 28 feet 6 inches and wing loading is a light 2.03

pounds per square foot. It can take off at 24 knots in about 200 feet,
climb at 180 fpm, hit 42 knots and cruise at 36 knots.
Stall speed is 18 knots in ground effect and the stall is very
gentle and straight forward due to its unusual wing design. It lands
at 24 knots in a 90-foot rollout. Glide ratio is listed at 7: 1, maximum
pilot weight 175 pounds. The Pixie Aero engine displacement is

173cc.
On a visit to Australia by 45 Canadian and United States
members of the Experimental Aircraft Association in the Spring of
1979, the ultralights displayed a real international flavor at a gather-
ing of homebuilts at Bowral for the Sport Aircraft Association of
Australia's Fifth National Fly-In convention. Among the wee ones
that drew admired attention was an Australian design, the
Grasshopper, with a streamlined cockpit area, midwing airfoil,
and a tiny pusher engine pylon-mounted behind the
tricycle gear
pilot's head.
But if Australia is leading the way in Minimum Aircraft, the
United States today remains the site of the largest concentration of
ultralight aircraft. In the following chapters, you'll read more about
the made-in- America brands.

29
Chapter 3

An American Tradition

Itshould come as no surprise that many of the most recent ad-

vancements in design of ultralight flying machines have their roots in
antiquity— primarily in methods of achieving stability and control.
Well known is the pioneer work of such aeronautical innovators as
Sir George Cayley in England, Adolphe Penaud in France, Otto
Lilienthal in Germany and the Wright brothers in America, who
were first to produce and master a workable heavier-than-air flying
machine.
Less known is the work of countless experimenters at home
and abroad, who independently strove to duplicate the mechanisms
of bird flight and largely failed, primarily because they did not quite
understand how to separate the two main functions of the bird’s
wing— to provide both lift and propulsion.

An Unusual Homebuilt
Orville Wright was just 5 years old when a forgotten American
aviation pioneer was making local history in a small Tennessee town
with an unusual homebuilt ultralight machine. In 1876, Melville
Milton Murrell was the 21-year-old son of the postmaster at

Panther Springs, a waystop on the Knoxville stagecoach road, who

like so many others, turned to birds for inspiration in aircraft design.
Murrell settled at length on an omithopter (wing-flapper) de-
sign.He built a set of slatted wings resembling a Venetian blind (Fig.
3-1). The slats opened on the upstroke and closed on the
downstroke. When they were held rigidly flat they formed a sustain-

30
Fig. 3-1. Melville Murrell was flying gliders like this more than 100 years ago in

Panther Springs, Tennessee.

ing plane that made it a reasonably good glider. Today, wing slats

are occasionally incorporated to maintain a laminar airflow over a

wing at high angles of attack. But to young Melville they were
simply imitations of a bird’s feathers, which, we now know, actually
do serve as laminar flow devices. Observant of wheeling hawks, he
also was aware that birds often fly for long periods without flapping.
One reason why he incorporated in his design its convertible nature
was to provide both and propulsion.
lift

After several failures, Murrell on December 4, 1876, was able

to write to a friend, Will Turner, that he had mailed a model of his
machine to the United States Patent Office. “I can say ‘Eureka!
Eureka!’ For it works like a charm!” he exclaimed. In 1877, the
Patent Office saw fit to grant Murrell a patent, No. 194, 104, in a
description of which Murrell explained: ‘‘The machine is operated
by the hands and feet” and was “guided by the tail” to which a
“wriggling or partially rotary motion is imparted.”
An historic photograph, given to me by a member of the
Murrell family, shows the machine at the Murrell farm, with several
witnesses who had been summoned to attest to its successful
operation. Witnesses were the Reverend W. C. Hale, John Mathis,
Henry Mullins, and F. Roger Miller, who later would become
president of the United States Chamber of Commerce.
Family sources report that, after a few glides across the family
apple orchard, young Murrell— on the advice of his father— turned
down an offer of $60,000 for his patent. But Melville was simply
ahead of his time. In 1876, German inventor Nikolaus Otto had just
developed the first internal combustion engine that operated on

31
natural gas. Shortly thereafter, Gottlieb Daimler would convert it to
burn liquid gasoline.

Stability and control problems had not been solved by the

Murrell flying machine and young Melville finally gave up flying and
turned to follow the sawdust trail.

He preached the gospel for the next 45 years as a Methodist

circuit rider. His early dreams of flying were carried in his heart and
are cited here primarily because they represented dreams shared
by so many other early American inventors whose ideas found their
way into the Patent Office files.

Octave Chanute
In 1894, the American civil engineer and bridge builder Octave
Chanute published many of these early concepts in a book, Progress
inFlying Machines, and followed up on his research with the design
and construction of a rigid biplane hang glider whose upper and
lower wings were stiffened by the Pratt truss design common to
railroad bridge engineering practice.
Although Chanute was too old to fly his gliders except on rare
occasions, an assistant, A. M. Herring, did make numerous glides in
them. He maintained longitudinal balance with body shift in the
manner of modern-day hang glider pilots. The problem was to keep
the center of lift of the wings coincident with the craft’s center of
gravity. Chanute used a horizontal tail surface, as tried out by
Penaud in France, to more easily maintain longitudinal stability in

gusty air.

After reading Chanute’s book, Wilbur and Orville Wright con-

tacted Chanute in 1899 and settled on the Chanute biplane config-
uration for their early glider designs. There was a major difference.
The horizontal plane was placed in front of the wings in canard
by Burt Rutan in his highly
fashion, a design feature recently revived
successful VariEze design. The Wrights also developed an innova-
tive method for maintaining lateral control by adding a wingtip-
warping control system inspired by the “wingtip torsion” they
observed watching buzzards in wheeling flight.

Alexander Graham Bell

Independent of the Wright development program, the Aerial
Experiment Association, a group of enthusiasts organized by Dr.
Alexander Graham Bell, struggled with the problem of stability
control in flight. While riding a train one day, Dr. Bell conceived of
the aileron as a device for changing the relative angle of attack, using

32
a mid- wing control surface hung between top and lower wings of the
AEA’s biplane.
Dr. Bell obtained a United States patent on the aileron system,
in the name of all members of the AEA, and later it formed the basis
for a drawn out court battle over priority for invention of a controlla-
ble flying machine. The Wrights claimed that their wing-warping
patent, with a vertical rudder to offset adverse yaw, was basic to the
three-torque control system of aircraft management in pitch, roll
and yaw. A patent truce was finally arranged at the outset of World
War I to allow manufacturers to get on with the business of building
warplanes.
The problem of adverse yaw and how to control it stumped the
experts at first. They sought to attain control in turns by increasing

the angle of attack of the outer wing to make it rise into the required
bank. In so doing, the increase in angle of attack at the same time
was accompanied by an increase in drag that tended to pull the rising
outer wing backward.

The Wright Brothers

To solve the problem, the Wrights improved on the birds, so to
speak, by adding vertical fins behind the wing on their 1902 experi-
mental biplane glider. It worked at first, until steep turns were
attempted and the machine developed a tendency to overbank. In
correcting for this with opposite wing warping— to increase the
angle of attack of the inner, lower wing and make it rise— the inner
wing in the turn, which was traveling slower than the outer wing,
reached a stall. A helical dive ensued and started the deadly stall-

spin maneuver that has killed so many pilots since.

Orville puzzled over this behavior and finally decided they
should abandon the double fixed rudder in favor of a single, movable
rudder. Wilbur came up with the idea of linking the rudder and
wing- warping controls together to eliminate the need for pilot coor-
two levers at the same time. This linkage was
dination in working
famous contribution of Fred Weick in designing the
similar to the
popular Ercoupe so that it could be flown without rudder pedals.
The Wrightssettled on independent pitch, roll and yaw con-
trol,abandoning the rudderwing warping linkage in their 1904
machine (Fig. 3-2) for a method of three-axis control most widely in
use today. The wing- warping was done with a novel hip saddle. The
pilot merely moved his tail left or right in the direction of intended
turn. It seemed like a natural progression from control by body shift

33
used by Lilenthal and Chanute, but would eventually be replaced by
the standard “joystick” and rudder bar for three-torque control.
The mystery of the wing curve was another feature of the
airplane that puzzled early experimenters unfamiliar with fluid
dynamics. While the Wrights attained success by means of their
well-known series of wind-tunnel tests on various airfoil shapes,
most of their contemporaries simply tried to adapt the curves of the
wings of soaring birds. The Wrights also proved to themselves in
their small wind tunnel that a long, narrow wing of high aspect ratio
worked better than a short stubby wing of wider chord— the way
nature designed buzzards and soaring seabirds.

The Secret of Flight

One so-called inventor, presented a paper at the 1893 Interna-

tional Conference on Aerial Navigation at the Chicago World’s Fair
claiming that the secret of flight lay in goose feathers. Serious
investigators, like Chanute,Samuel Pierpont Langley and Albert
Zahm, who had organized the meeting, listened with something less
than awe when the delegate climbed to the podium and asked
rhetorically:

“How can a wild goose carry itself so easily? Weight every

feather and they will not total one pound. Yet, pick those feathers off
goose and he can come no nearer to flying than we can!”
Alternately cheered and booed, he paused, then continued:
“Thus it is demonstrated that one pound of goose feathers
clearly
can pick up 19 pounds of goose and carry it through the air at half a
mile a minute!” All that was needed, he concluded, was someone to
discover the secret of goose feathers and the problem of flight
would be solved.
Not all the delegates to the 1893 Chicago meeting were so wild
in their imaginations. Delegates came or sent papers with such
practical ideas thatChanute was moved to remark that the airplane
had already been invented and it only remained to get all the ideas
together and make them work. From California, John J. Montgom-
ery had built and flown an ultralight glider on the slopes of Otay
Mesa near San Diego. Others were on the right track, but it took
Orville and Wilbur to assemble the first powered heavier-than-air
craft and learn to fly it.
As in the past, today young inventive people are making new
discoveries in the area of ultralight flight. They are finding new ways
to make their craft inherently stable, or more controllable in the
realm of low-speed flight, where airflow is measured in low

34
 Wilbur Wright made the first powered flight in America on December
Fig. 3-2.
14, 1903.

Reynolds numbers. Others are rediscovering basic laws of

aerodynamics put aside long ago in the rush to fly faster, higher and

farther.

Demoiselle

The first decade of this century saw a proliferation of small,

light, powered flying machines take to the sky —
among them Al-
berto Santos Dumont’s pretty Demoiselle, (Fig. 3-3) also called Le
Santos No. 20. In 1909 it attracted much attention at a Paris air

exhibition. It measured from wingtip to wingtip, half the

only 18 feet
span of a J-3 Piper Cub, and weighed only 242 pounds. It was
constructed from bamboo and muslin. Its two-cylinder engine de-
veloped an amazing 30 horsepower and swung a fat-bladed propeller

Fig. 3-3. The Santos Dumont Demoiselle was the first plans-built homebuilt
ultralight. This one was built recently by Earl M. Adkisson of Atwood, Illinois.

35
6 feet 6 inches in diameter. It was so heavy that it served as a
flywheel and produced huge gyroscopic loads that made the
machine difficult Santos-Dumont rigged the
to control in turns.
controls with an elevator lever and a control wheel hooked up to the
rudder.
Homebuilders flooded Santos-Dumont with requests for plans
for the Demoiselle. In 1910, Popular Mechanics magazine offered
sets of working drawings for $2 a set, announcing: “The machine is
unencumbered by patent rights, the famous aviator preferring to
place his invention at the disposal of the world in the interest of the
art to which he has devoted his life.”
By contrast, the Wright Kitty Hawk biplane was jealously
guarded to prevent others from copying the design. So deeply were
Orville and Wilbur involved in litigation in 1916 that Congress, facing
involvement in World War I, arranged a patent truce and approp-

riated $640 million to initiate a warplane production program.

Slow starting as a result of the Wright litigation, the United
States lagged far behind Europe in production of military aircraft.
When the Armistice was signed November 11, 1918, America had
only 757 pilots and 481 observers, along with 740 planes and 77
observation balloons at the front. However, thousands of brand-
new crated Standards and JN4D trainers flooded the postwar mar-
ket. The glut of surplus aircraft sorely impeded development and
sale of new private aircraft.

The White Monoplane

The era of barnstorming gypsy flyers was bom after the war.
But at the same time there was a strong appeal in ultralight flying
among returning service pilots who wanted to build and fly inexpen-
sive machines such as the White Monoplane that first appeared on
the market in 1917. The design was developed by George D. White,
who offered plans for $2 a set.
“Think of flying with an ordinary twin-cylinder motorcycle
engine!” White’s advertisement suggested. “This is the only aerop-
lane that will do it. It is the smallest and most efficient of all aircraft.

No longer is flying the sport of acrobats or millionaires. If you can

use a hammer, saw and a pair of pliers, you can build one of these
”
remarkable flyers for a few dollars and in spare time if necessary.
Like the early Wright machines, the White Monoplane used
the canard design with its tail up front. While it never became
popular, preceded a number
it of other ultralight designs that ap-
peared soon afterward.

36
The Penguin
In the September, 1919 issue of Popular Mechanics the ,

magazine again offered plans for an ultralight. The Penguin was

patterned after a World War I primary flight trainer that appeared in
1916 while American Escadrille cadets were learning to fly at Pau,
France. Aviation Magazine described its operation at the time:
“First of all, the student is put on what is called a roller. It is a
low-powered machine with very small wings, and is strongly built to
withstand the rough wear it gets, and it cannot leave the ground.
The apparatus is known as the Penguin, both because of its humor-
ous resemblance to the quaint Antarctic birds and its inability, in
common with them, to do any flying.
“A student makes a few trips up and down the field in a
double-control Penguin and learns how to steer with his feet. Then
he gets into a single-seated one and tries to keep the Penguin in a
straight line. The slightest mistake will send the machine skidding
off to the right or left and sometimes, if the motor isn’t stopped in

time, over on its back. Something is always being broken on a

Penguin, so a reserve flock is kept on hand.”
A first-hand account of construction and flying a Penguin ul-
tralight comes from Tom Gunderson, a veteran crop-duster and
commercial pilot of Twin Valley, MIN, who in 1972 made the
maiden flight in a Penguin built from the original plans he found in an
old issue of Popular Mechanics.
It was in 1929, during the Great Depression, that Gunderson

had built his first plane, a Pietenpol Scout, and taught himself to fly.
It seemed a more practical machine than the Penguin, though the

Popular Mechanics article had first turned him on to homebuilding.

When World War II came along, Gunderson instructed cadets with
the Civilian Pilot Training Program, then went on to crop-dusting
after the shooting stopped.
Recently he recalled the ridicule he suffered when he first

started on the Pietenpol and he mused: “The old boys who made fun
of kids trying to fly are all dead now. I tell you, for a young man to
start flying now is as hard as when we were young, back before the
big war. The way I figure it, there’s a million small fishing boats for
recreation, but what we need is a small, cheap sports plane for fun
and training.”
It turned out that Gunderson’s Penguin, which he finally got

around to building, cost him less than $50, not including its snow-
mobile engine. The little ultralight, N41047, is just about the
cheapest machine flying today— you can hardly fill the gas tank of a

37
private plane for $49.95! Gunderson made -a few changes in the
original plane for safety's sake but basically it turned out to be a
reasonable replica of the World War I trainer. “Those 1919 plans
were just too light to be safe even for short hops," he points out.
In place of five-eighth inch ash longerons specified in the plans,
he substituted one-inch thick spruce. He increased the rudder area
by 50 percent and instead of using motorcycle wheel spokes for
turnbuckles he used standard aircraft tumbuckles. For a wing, he
picked up the pieces of a wrecked Aeronca and chopped down the
span from 36 feet to 24 feet. After hanging a 650 cc snowmobile
engine up front, he had to add 30 pounds of ballast beneath it to keep
the center of gravity where it belonged.
Gunderson added an extra diagonal steel tube brace to stabilize
the engine installation and built injury struts to strengthen the wing
bracing. The wooden prop, scrounged from a 40 horsepower Conti-
nental, is geared to the engine with a V-belt drive to provide 3:1
reduction.
Generally speaking, Gunderson followed the Popular
Mechanics plans except for abandoning the USA-3 wing curve. He
did follow the plansby starting construction of the fuselage first,
from longerons and spruce stmts and braces tied by piano wire. The
wood, according to directions, “should be free from knots, pitch
pockets and wind shakes, and coated with two coats of good spar
varnish."
The engine mount was built of sheet steel, 72 by 32 inches in

size. For the main gear, Gunderson used a pair of old Jenny wheels
from his Pietenpol, fitted with motorcycle tires.

Conventional stick-and-rudder controls were installed and a

lightweight metal seat was fitted behind them. The gas tank was
hung on the top longeron and finally the whole thing got a paint job
prior to ground testing in the manner of the original Penguin train-
ers.
Gunderson recalls 1919 article was quite specific about
that the
there being plenty of room to roam in. “For flying," it specified, “a
field, with at least one mile of straightaway and half a mile wide, is

desirable. The first step is manage his

for the student to learn the
engine and steer with his feet. The plane should be started off down
the field with all the controls in neutral position. Any tendency of the
plane to swing off its course should immediately be counteracted by
use of the rudder. When the student can taxi about under perfect
rudder control, he is ready for his first hop.
“He should start out with the elevators slightly deflected and
run along with the tail well up, until maximum speed has been

38
acquired. Then, gently pulling the stick back, lift the machine 2 to 3
feet off the ground and push the stick back to neutral position. The
”
hop should be continued 100 yards or so.
for
The article wisely cautioned Penguin pilots against trying to fly
in circles until they gained sufficient experience. Then, and only
then, should they attempt to climb to the dizzy height of from 50 to
100 feet “before attempting circles, and they must be wide, without
perceptible banking.”
In his first hops, Gunderson found that he couldn’t get the tail

down far enough on takeoff to get the angle of attack he wanted. So

he went down the pasture wide open at a hot 30 miles an hour. Once
in the air, the Penguin handled just fine, he recalls. “The propeller
slipstream was broken up by the engine so that it was about like
riding a motorbike at 60 mph. You can really see the ground you’re
flying over!”
Because of all the extra drag of the open framework Gunder-
son used power down the approach until just off the runway. Then
he greased her on at a nice 25 mph, rolling to a stop in under 100
feet.
Gunderson has retired his Penguin to the Experimental Air-
craft Association’s Air Museum, where it reposes as a fine example
of an historic ultralight aircraft that started an unknown number of
military aviators on their way to the high sky.

39
Chapter 4
Hang Gliders

The Wright brothers had to go through an evolutionary period of

designing and flying gliders before adding power. The ultralight
movement has from careful design studies in the
largely developed
early 1970s to improve upon the popular Rogallo wing hang gliders
and learn more about their aerodynamic properties before adding
small powerplants.
Department of Transport was uneasy over
In 1973, the British
the explosive growth of hang gliders in that country. They appealed
for technical information from Taras Kiceniuk, director of the
Mount Palomar Observatory in Southern California and a veteran
sailplane pilot. His son, Taras Jr., a 16-year-old undergraduate at
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, already was in
the forefront of the hang glider movement. Young Taras was mak-
ing remarkable flights in his Icarus II, a swept- wing, tailless biplane
that weighed only 55 pounds empty and could be built for around
$100 in about 150 to 200 man-hours. Icarus II used simple, effective
wingtip rudders for turns and was capable of tight, continuous spiral
turns with considerable dihedral and body shift. Stressed for 3 G
load factors, its glide angle was 8:1 and sink rate 3.5 feet per
second. Taras already had set a world record duration flight of two
hours 26 minutes for foot-launched gliders, with landing at takeoff
altitude, and another world record of 1000 feet altitude gain above
foot-launched takeoff point.
Director Kiceniuk replied to the British officials: “I’d really like

to explore the subject in depth, but that would mean writing a book.

40
I’d love to write such a book, but running an observatory is a time
consuming task.” However, he did make a number of pertinent
observations on the basic characteristics of early hang gliders. He
noted that gliders seemed to be sorting* out into three main
branches.
These, he were narrow angle Rogallo “kites,” fixed wing
said,
and taut membrane hang gliders, and “back-yard” experimental
types of the non-airworthy variety. The Rogallos with wide angle
leading edges, he warned, “are dangerous and unpredictable, with
pitch instability.”
Kiceniuk suggested that “standards will have to be quite diffe-

rent for the different kinds of craft. So far, all craft which use fore
and aft weight shift for pitch control are potentially hazardous when
towed aloft by mechanical means, although this problem might be
solved.”

Stability

He continued: “There would seem to be an important differ-

ence between those craft which have a strong directional depen-
dence on stability (similar to metacentric stability for boats), as
compared to those which have a basic velocity dependent response.
All hang gliders are a combination of both— but the ones which

derive stability from the extreme pendular disposition of the over-

powering weight of the pilot would seem to be unsuited for true
”
thermal soaring or for flights in turbulent air.
The same is probably true, he added, “for membranes which
can flap or lose their aerodynamic characteristics under extreme
changes in attitude or angle of attack.”
Spiral instability problems, Kiceniuk said, “should, I think, be
of two types— using conventional control surfaces with insufficient
effectiveness to roll out of steep, low-speed turns, and dynamic
spiral instability, where hanging the pilot far below the craft can
cause it to ‘wind up’ because of the centrifugal reaction.” The
control system on the Icari seems to be particularly effective for
this class of flight.
Most of the non-towing accidents in hang gliders, Kiceniuk
said,“seem to be associated with attempts to soar in conditions
where the slope wind speed conditions cause the pilot to be blown
backward into the hill or into lee eddies downwind of the ridge.
Rogallo kites suffer due to relatively poor glide ratios. This tempts
the pilot into seeking higher and higher wind speeds to permit
soaring, rather than seeking steeper slopes. In light winds, a good

41
Rogallo probably affords the best and safest way to get down from a
mountain— and by automobile!”
that includes driving
Taras Kiceniuk Jr. went even deeper into the aerodynamics of
his Icarus II flying wing hang glider that same year. In a seminar at
Northrop Institute of Technology, he explained in detail why he
considered the tail unnecessary and possibly harmful to the craft’s
flight and stability characteristics.

Longitudinal stability, he explained, can be achieved in any of

several ways, “but in the end it always comes back to the same

thing. The effective center of pressure and the associated lift vector
acting on an airplane must move rearward if the craft noses up and
forward if it noses down. The aeronautical pioneers understood this
without knowing about moment coefficients, aerodynamic center,
metacentric parabolas and so forth. For this reason, they performed
their wind tunnel tests on complete wing-tail combinations to
evaluate the suitability of various designs.
“Out of all this came the realization that the rear surface must,
in effect, be at a lower angle of attack than the forward one. For a
conventional wing-in-front, tail-in-back arrangement, this means
that the tail is at a negative incidence angle with respect to the wing.
For canards, the ‘little wing’ up front must be at a positive angle with
respect to the main wing. For unswept flying wings, the designer
makes use of reflex. He turns the trailing edge upward. For swept
flying wings, the tips— being farther aft— are twisted down or
washed-out, with respect to the center portion. Since this is what is
needed to obtain a favorable span lift distribution and good stall
recovery properties with a constant chord wing, we have killed
several birds with one stone.”

The Elevator
Discussing the function of the elevator (or elevon) Taras con-
tinued: “It functions to produce nose up or nose down moments on
the aircraft, changing the angle of attack of the main airfoil— and
with it trim the craft. With a conventional tail-in-back configuration,
the elevator is so far behind the wing that the moment of change is

quite large for small lift on the tail. The fact that the tail was
producing a slight downward or upward force is of no consequence.
“In a flying wing, the situation is different. Raising the elevons
produces the desired moment but at a cost. The elevon has, in
effect, changed the camber— and with it the lift of the wing— so that
the change in lift is less than the desired amount. When the elevon is
deflected upward, the wing pitches up, giving more lift. At the same

42
time the up-elevons also act like up-flaps, reducing the lift on the
wing! The two effects counteract each other and make pitch control
difficult. Both takeoffs and landings are tricky with this configura-

tion.

“So what’s the solution? How about center of gravity shift? If

the angle of attack of the wing is increased by moving the pilot’s

body weight aft, the increase in lift is exactly the same as that
produced by a conventional craft with a tail for equal aspect ratio
,

and angle of attack change. Interestingly enough, this is the lon-

gitudinal control system used by soaring birds. Jack Lambie has
pointed out that a bird does not use his tail to change angle of attack,
but rather to control his trim after he moves his wings forward or
backward with respect to his body weight.”

Lateral Control

Taras next discussed the problem of achieving lateral control

and pointed out that, “given the intrinsically stable airfoil and sweep,
one needs only dihedral angle and rudders attached to the swept
wing tips to produce a completely flyable and steerable machine.
Notice, I don’t say anything about three-axis control. We must
decide whether independent roll and yaw are important or even
desirable. It has long been recognized that rudder paddles were
added to most airplanes to make up for the shortcomings of their
designers. As of this time, both Icarus II and Icarus V have de-
monstrated continuous spiral turns at angles of bank in excess of 55
degrees with no signs of instability.

“The other possibilities for lateral control are ailerons and

spoilers. Aileronshave quick response, but they are tricky to build
and actuate effectively. And they introduce problems of adverse
yaw. Spoilers are simpler, but they are basically an inefficient,

energy- wasting system. Considering the problems of these devices

and the remarkable success I have had with the first Icarus, I have
retained the simple, individually controlled wingtip rudders.”
One drawback to the wingtip rudder system, Taras admitted,
was that “roll control is slow for small corrections because the
aircraft must yaw before it will roll. The moment of inertia is not
negligible about the yaw axis. This is especially true for the 32-foot
span Icarus V (Fig. 4-1). Still, the maneuverability of this craft
”
actuallyexceeds that of most conventional sailplanes and gliders.
Aircraft employing wingtip rudders tend to be very stable,
Taras says, because the effects of sweep and dihedral come into
play. “In fact, they possess such strong static recovery characteris-

43
tics that in a sense the pilot just goes along for the ride. Any
disturbance from straight ahead flying automatically results in re-
storation of straight ahead flight. In a normal turn, neutralizing the
differentially controlled wingtip rudders means a spontaneous re-
”
turn to normal flight.

The Airfoil

In selecting an airfoil for the Icarus II wing, Taras went to a

modified Eiffel section chosen for its low moment. The one that is
used on Icarus V is more sophisticated. He explains, that “after
studying the results of Stratford, Lissaman, Liebeck, and
Wortmann, an airfoil was ‘eyeballed’ which would have low moment
and still possess high efficiency at high lift coefficients.”
Low moment is achieved by employing reflex in the camber
line, Taras explains. High efficiency is attained by generating a

shape with a generous leading edge radius and a rather abrupt

thickening, followed by a smooth, gentle, “recovery” section.
“Several such sections were analyzed,” says Taras, “thanks to the
generosity and ingenuity of Dr. Peter Lissaman, using the Hewlett
Packard computer at Dr. Paul Macready’s AeroVironment, Inc.

firm in Pasadena. The resulting pressure distribution and perfor-

mance characteristics seemed ideal for a craft of this type and flying
in this regime.”
While highermaximum lift coefficients and lower stalling
speeds can be realized with highly cambered, high moment airfoils,

says Taras, recent experience has shown that takeoff and landing
speeds are well within the capabilities of most pilots without having
to rely on ultra-light lift sections. “Indeed,” he says, “most pilots
would trade extremely low stalling speeds for high speed perfor-
mance. Better high speed performance can be expected from sec-
tions without large undercamber.

An Ultralight Glider

The final design of the Icarus II and Icarus V was an almost

inevitableconsequence of several individual design considerations,
each interlocking with, and crying out for the other. The result is a
stable, pilot-launched ultralight glider with a glide ratio of about
eight or ten to one, a large usable range of flying speeds and
”
excellent controllability.
Success of the Icarus II biplane design is evident. It has
become the most popular configuration for adaptation to powered
ultralight flying, as pioneered by John Moody of Milwaukee, Wis-

44
 .

Fig. 4-1 . Taras Kiceniuk Jr. designed the lovely Icarus V hang glider with wingtip
“rudder-vons.”

consin in the Easy Riser version. Since many Icarus V monoplane

hang gliders are being converted to power, let’s look in on its early
development as described by Taras Kiceniuk Sr.
Icarus V is a swept, constant chord, flying wing monoplane of
32-foot span and 5-foot chord. It has a wing area of 160 square feet
and an aspect ratio of 6.4. Construction is of aluminum tubing, cable
(three-thirty-second of an inch) braced and fabric covered. Its
efficient, computer analyzed, high-lift airfoil (TK 7315) has a foam-

sheet leading edge formed over aluminum ribs. It was designed with
an ultimate load limit in excess of 6 G’s for a 200-pound pilot. Empty
weight is only 65 pounds. Construction time is about 200 man-
hours. It disassembles at the centerline in 10 or 15 minutes for
Assembly time is only a little longer.
transportation in a cartop box.
Control is by the same system used in the earlier Icarus
II— pitch control by body weight shift on parallel bars. The pilot sits
on a swing seat. Lateral control is through individually controlled tip

rudders. Deflecting a rudder causes the craft to yaw and the com-
bined sweep and dihedral produce strong roll response. Thanks to
the 20-degree sweep and the 7-degree geometric twist for wash-
out, the Icarus V cannot be stalled accidentally. And pitch stability is
astounding!
With a glide ratio of around 10:1, says Kiceniuk, landing in a
small area could present something of a problem. To meet this, both
tip rudders can be deflected simultaneously to serve as dive brakes.
The resulting drag provides effective glide path control.
“Unlike most ultralights,” Kiceniuk says, “especially those
with single-surface sections, Icarus V can be flown fast without
excessive loss of glide ratio, a must for cross-country flying and for

45
penetrating out of tight spots in strong winds near the crests of hills.
It is estimated that the V can be flown at 45 miles an hour when
nosed down and will still have a better glide angle than a standard
Rogallo wing flying at its best L/D. At the slow end, Icarus V can fly
at 16 miles an hour with sinking speeds around one meter per
second.”
Kiceniuk explains that Icarus III and Icarus IV were designs
that never got off the drawing board when it was decided to concen-
trate on Icarus V, which was introduced at the third Montgomery
Meet in 1973.

46
 Chapter 5

Ultralight Engines

Selecting the proper powerplant for an ultralight aircraft is largely a

matter of using Hobson’s Choice. In the 17th Century, a liveryman
named Thomas Hobson had a simple answer to customers wanting
to pick the best horse in the stable— “Take the one nearest the
door, sir!”
Today homebuilders frequently resort to the same logic in
selecting an engine— “Take the one that is available, sir!”
Long before the Wright Brothers built their engine for their
Kitty Hawk flyer, aerial experimenters were trying steam, elec-
tricity and all sorts of other power sources to achieve light weight

and adequate horsepower. The power-to-weight ratio is what we

call it today. Motorcycle engines were in big favor in the first decade

of this century, but as airplanes grew bigger and faster their engines
grew heavier and more powerful.
Now that the trend has reversed itself and the era of ultralights
has arrived, the idea that big is beautiful is passe. VW engines have
literally been cut in half to make pow-
lightweight, two-cylinder
erplants that really work. A few motorcycle engines have been
modified to Outboard motors, snowmobile and chainsaw en-
fly.

gines have been widely accepted. And a few hardy souls have
actually developed original engines for ultralights.

A Go-kart Powerplant
John Moody’s powered Easy Riser (Fig. 5-2) of the mid-1970s
pointed the way with a modified McCulloch 101 engine that has

47
Fig. 5-1. The Soarmaster C5A Rogallo-type ultralight uses a 10-horsepower
Chrysler powerplant.

become perhaps the most widely used powerplant in the field. The
McCulloch go-kart powerplants run from 100 to 125cc displace-
ment, with a power range of from 10 to 18. These are high-rpm
engines with crankshafts that were not designed to take the loads
imposed by the demands of flying such as full-power on takeoff and
engine-idle letdowns. Running at high rpm also imposes a resultant
shock-wave damage. The bigger “Macs” frequently are powered
with Methanol and Nitro methane fuels for bursts of higher
power— in the 24 horsepower range— but the higher torque cuts
engine life severely.

Snowmobile Engines
Scroungers have found that some snowmobile engines work
well. Examples are the Chaparral 242, which weighs about 32
pounds and delivers some 20 horsepower, or the JLO 397, a
45-pounder that can put out 36 horsepower. These single-cylinder
air cooled engines are fairly reliable and operate at direct drive

speeds. Reduction units operate at a noisy 6500 rpm.

Another choice is the Chrysler 820 industrial engine with 8 to
10 horsepower. It is a two-cycle powerplant that swings a bigger
prop via a reduction unit, as in the Soarmaster design. This power
train runs up to 35 pounds and the engine can be uprated to 14
horsepower, which unfortunately cuts its reliability (Fig. 5-1).

A New Design
John Chotia, designer of the popular Weedhopper ultralight,
decided the way to go was to design and build a new engine

48
specifically for ultralights— Weedhoppers and others. Says Chotia:
“When we Weedhopper program, we had some 250
started the
snowmobile engines lined up, but they were quickly snapped up.
The real delay in our engine program begaa when we were unable to
achieve the 50 to 55 percent prop efficiency we wanted, due to the
lower tip velocity. Our Chotia 460 propeller tip velocity was only 67 .

Mach, but our efficiency was only about 37 percent compared to the
snowmobile engine-propeller tip velocity of 95 Mach at peak power
.

and a low propeller efficiency of about 25 percent. As a result, our

performance of 18.3 horsepower was too low for what we wanted.
“The culprit here,” Chotia went on, “is the low air mass
passing through the propeller disc. The Weedhopper’s 42-inch prop
at 27 mph airspeed puts three times as much energy into each pound
of air as a 72-inch propeller swung by an engine of 100 horsepower
flying at 100 mph. The result is that the air virtually slips away. The
prop wash must move atfrom 65 to 70 mph to provide sufficient
thrust, almost like a jet blast, as opposed to the 100-horsepower,
”
100-mph combination, where the propeller acts like a rotary wing.
As a solution, Chotia saw that he needed more power. He
designed it into the engine and the result was the production Chotia
460 engine which delivers 25 horsepower at 3600 rpm and weighs
only 32 pounds. The engine sells for $700 (less propeller) from
Weedhopper of Utah Inc., P O Box 2253, Ogden, UT 84404.

The Gemini System

Another interesting power system is Ed Sweeney’s Gemini
Twin Thrust System (Fig. 5-3). Says Sweeney: “To power a hang

Fig. 5-2. The starter rope gets a yank from an Easy Riser pilot. He can stop and
restart the engine in flight.

49
Fig. 5-3. Ed Sweeney’s Gemini twin-engine powerpack includes special guard
fenders for propellers.

glider, some unique problems must besolved. The Gemini System

is arrangement which locates the thrust line as close to
a twin-thrust
the center of mass as possible and the weight of the system is on the
center of gravity. This eliminates the adverse handling effects
associated with thrust lines that vary as the center of gravity is

moved by the pilot’s shifting body weight.

“Also, as a safety feature, the pilot has no obstruction either in
front or behind. Since the engines are near the center of the
machine, they pose very little or no asymmetric thrust effects in
single-engine flight.”
Designed for all types of hang gliders, the Gemini system
mounts on the basic triangular pilot cage and the pilot is isolated
from the blades by shields and the A-frame. Each engine has its own

Fig. 5-4. The Soarmaster powerpack is mounted on a Cirrus 5 Flexwing. This

keeps the propeller blades at the rear and away from the pilot’s feet.

50
Fig. 5-5. The Soarmaster PP-106 powerpack has a two-stroke, 10-horsepower
Chrysler engine.

throttle, with the rpm fully controllable. The modified engines built

by Gemini International Inc. 655 Juniper Road, Reno, NV 89509,

,

use electronic ignition, recoil starters, piston port induction (no

reed valves), a pressure pump carburetor and weigh only 8.5
pounds each.
The standard Gemini Twin Thrust System delivers 85 pounds
static thrust (60 pounds dynamic thrust) and weighs 28 pounds
total. Each engine delivers 6 horsepower. Propellers are 26:25, fuel
capacity is .6 U.S. gallon and duration is 24 minutes at full power.
Noise level is 93 dB at 15 feet.

The Soarmaster
The Soarmaster Powerpack- 106 is another popular installation
for flex wing hang gliders of the Rogallo variety (Fig. 5-5). Instead of
jumping off a mountain, today’s PHG glider rides take off from the

flatland and climb into thermal country. With two quarts of gas you
can stay up for hours, shutting down the engine and restarting when
the lift goes away.
Installed in 3 minutes on a Cirrus V hang glider (Fig. 5-4), the
Soarmaster gives it a cruise speed of 32 mph, maximum velocity of
40 mph and a 325-fpm climb to a ceiling of 7000 MSL. The Soarmas-
ter Powerpack uses the 2-stroke Chrysler 10-horsepower engine
up at 8000 rpm. A chain-drive reduction unit is
(Fig. 5-5) that turns

51
Fig. 5-6. Larry Mauro’s Easy Riser has some 500 solar cells on top of the wing to
power a battery that runs an electric motor.

linked to a 4130 chrome moly steel tube drive shaft, driving a 42: 19
propeller at the rear. Total weight is 27 pounds. For information
contact Soarmaster Inc., P 0 Box 4207, Scottsdale, AZ 85258.

The Powerhawk
A top-of-the-line system is the CGS Powerhawk designed by a
CGS Aviation
veteran glider rider, Chuck Slusarczyk, president of
Inc., 4252 Pearl Road, Cleveland, OH 44109. As installed on the
Easy Riser, CGS Powerhawk retails at $875 and includes a 10-
horsepower West Bend and Chrysler engine, 42-inch propeller,
pulleys, belts, reduction mount with bearing, muffler, engine mount
assembly, throttle, kill switch, fuel tank, fuel line, hookup wire and
all other required hardware.
CGS Aviation also has a conversion pack for the Mac 101
engine, retailing for $625. It 85 pounds static thrust.
delivers up to
CGS has developed the first aircraft style engine mount and the
powerplant system is currently used on such top PHGs as the
Mitchell B-10 flying wing, the Birdman TL-1A and Volmer Jensen’s
VJ-23 Swingwing and VJ-24E Sun Fun.
In a time of high fuel costs, Larry Mauro, president of Ul-
tralight Flying Machines in Santa Clara, CA, amazed everyone

recently by using arrays of solar cells to capture sunlight to charge a

battery to run an electric motor. He flew it successfully on April 29,
1979, at Flabob Airport in Southern California (Fig. 5-6).
Says Mauro: “There is no energy crisis— there never was one
and there never will be! We needn’t look underground for sources of
power. All thepower this earth can use is outward and upward. The
sun is virtually a limitless source of power and just a wee fraction will
enable mankind to accomplish purposes as yet undreamed!”

52
 Chapter 6

Powered Hang Gliders

When a veteran sailplane driver turned to the design of an ultralight

powered aircraft, it was almost a foregone conclusion that it must
have high performance in thermalling and ridge-soaring as well as
ruggedness, quick assembly time and a good safety margin.

The Sun Fun

Such were the parameters considered by Volmer Jensen when
he elected to join the mushrooming ultralight movement recently.
With the assistance of another veteran designer, Irv Culver, Jensen
produced the excellent VJ-24E Sun Fun powered hang glider, with a
rigid wing and conventional aircraft controls (Fig. 6-1). See Figs.

6-2, 6-3 and 6-4 for other examples of powered hang gliders.
Outstanding because of its gracefulness, Sun Fun attracts
admiration whenever and wherever it appears at powered hang
glider meets. An example was the second annual Diamond PHG
Meet at Perris Valley Airport in Southern California in the spring of
1979. While standard Rogallo gliders, Quicksilvers and Easy Risers
sat ground-boundin gusty afternoon winds, Vol Jensen was up, up
and away doing his thing high overhead while other pilots watched in
awe.
To grasp the significance of Sun Fun’s performance, you have
man who conceived it. To understand Vol Jensen,
to understand the
you must know something of his background in flying. Back in 1931,
when Charley and Anne Lindbergh took up soaring along the ridges

53
Fig. 6-1 . Volmer Jensen’s rigid-wing VJ-24E Sun Fun is an excellent ultralight.

near Gorman, at the south end of California’s San Joaquin Valley,

Jensen already was an accomplished sailplane driver.
By 1941 Jensen had produced his tenth glider, the J-10 two-
seater. Abbott and Costello borrowed the J-10 for a publicity stunt
to sell war bonds and the War Department drafted it to train glider
pilots. Right after World War II, Jensen came up with an unusual
side-by-side two-place sport plane with a pylon-mounted pusher
engine. It was called the VJ-21 Jaybird and I had fun flying it down to

an airshow at Palm Springs for Vol.

Next came his popular amphibian two-seater, the VJ-22
Sportsman, which he used to explore hidden coves on scuba diving
adventures in the Sea of Cortez.

With the rebirth of the hang glider movement in the early

1970s, Jensen studied the crude Rogallo kites built of bamboo and

Fig. 6-2. Many Icarus V hang gliders have been converted to power. This one
belongs to Ted Ancona.

54
Fig. 6-3. Taras Kiceniuk’s Icarus II hang glider became the Easy Riser when an
engine was added.

polyethelene sails and decided there was room to join the foot-
launch gang with something that would have better flight charac-
teristics than the prevalent ground skimmers. He looked up Irv
Culver, a friend and retired Lockheed aerodynamicist. Together
they sketched plans for a superlight, boom-tailed hang glider with a
32-foot rigid plywood wing. Culver contributed the high-lift airfoil

and ran the stress analysis on the whole structure to insure that it
was safe. The VJ-23, as it was designated, weighed 100 pounds and
differed from all previous hang gliders since it was fully controllable.

Culver added a joystick to dispense with the need for rudder pedals
to coordinate rudder and aileron control with the single stick.
On its initial trials, the VJ-23 performed far better than Jensen
had anticipated. Launched from a 75-foot hillside with a broad 3-to-l
slope, Jensen ridge-soared for well over five minutes before decid-
ing to land. At the Playa Del Rey hang glider site near Los Angeles,
Jensen and the VJ-23 joined the parade of gulls working the ridge for
42 minutes. It was the first public demonstration of duration flying in
a hang glider.
The VJ-23 was an immediate success. When Mechanix Illus-
trated published plans for it, the machine became world famous. In
England, one homebuilder won a cash prize for outdistancing all

other hang gliders in a launch from a 20-foot high platform.

The VJ-24
In 1974, Jensen followed the VJ-23 with a new model. The
VJ-24 was made of all-metal construction and pop-riveted together

55
in a fashion that required only 200 man-hours to construct. Wings
and tail were snap-locked on with pip pins rather than nuts and bolts,
making it easily and quickly assembled for flight or disassembled for
transport.
To launch the VJ-24, Jensen, who weighs 135 pounds, does not
have to run forward. A few quick steps into an 8 to 10 mph wind gets
him airborne. In a 15-mph headwind, the machine lifts its own
weight at a standstill. Landings are made at jogging speed. With
practice, toughdowns can be birdlike— the way a sparrow settles
onto a branch.
In flight, the VJ-24 is responsive to the slightest control pres-
sures and easily maneuvered for thermalling or ridge soaring. In one
flight along the seashore cliffs of Torrance, California, Jensen
stayed aloft for He gained 200 feet of altitude on each
90 minutes.
run up and down the cliffs. On one pass he silently buzzed a cocktail
party at a hillside home. He reported, “the guests all leaped to their
feet, glasses raised high, and cheered me on!”

If the VJ-24 Sun Fun had unlocked the secret of the birds, there
was still a new dimension of flight to be
added. It was well and good
to be able to soar along grassy ridges where gentle slope winds
blow, to take off with only a couple of steps and a hop and to land at
zero velocity with a simple knee bend.
But the era of powered hang had arrived and Jensen
gliders
instinctively saw that by adding a light power plant and propeller, a
VJ-24E Sun Fun PHG could open a whole new realm of flight.
Powered with a McCulloch 101 go-kart engine and a tiny pusher

Fig. 6-4. Volmer Jensen was a pioneer in the powered hang glider movement
with his graceful Swing Wing.

56
prop, the VJ-24E can outperform the best powered hang gliders by
launching from level ground at the foot of a slope and flying uphill to
soar along its crest, instead of the other way around.
The result of 14 months research arid development, is the
outgrowth of performance studies utilizing three different pow-
erplants, expansion exhaust chambers, eight muffler designs, two
carburetor manifolds, four rubber shock mounts and eight propeller
configurations. Brochures describing the engine installation on a
stock VJ-24 are available from Volmer Jensen, PO Box 5222,
Glendale, CA 91201.
Curious as to who were buying VJ-24E Sun Fun plans and kits,
Jensen surveyed the builders and discovered that “where the aver-
age hang glider pilot is young, the Sun Fun apparently appeals to an
older generation— lawyers, doctors, businessmen attracted to the
PHG movement who want something easy to build and easy to fly
”
safely with a little power added.
Sun Funs are flown regularly from established hang glider
sites. Some are known to be operating from designated airports,

FAA-licensed and operated by at least student pilots holding valid

airman certificates.
However, Jensen advises against flying ultralights in the vicin-
ity of airports even when legally licensed to do so. “For obvious

reasons,” he says, “a lightly-loaded hang glider is likely to become

unmanageable in the wake of even a small, low-powered aircraft
such as a J-3 Piper Cub. Most hang gliders are difficult to see
head-on or from behind in flight. Their low speed makes them highly
vulnerable in an airport traffic area.”
This is particularly true of PHGs and unpowered hang gliders
being flown from ridges near the approach and departure' lanes of
nearby airports. An example is the Sylmar site at the north side of
San Fernando Valley, CA. It is close by four major airports— Van
Nuys, Burbank, San Fernando and Whiteman. Powerplane pilots
already have reported several near-misses.
Out in the open country, however, Sun Fun is a joy to behold
and fly. One spring day I watched Vol Jensen demonstrate his Sun
Fun from a freshly-plowed field near Thousand Oaks, CA. It is a
rural area where ocean breezes sweep inland and up-slope over a
grassy, 500-foot hillside. A tractor stopped nearby and its operator
advised that this would be our last opportunity to fly there for some
time since he was preparing to plant a crop of lima beans. Jensen
nodded. It was the old story, hunting for virgin hillsides facing into
the prevailing wind, where one can escape the mundane worldly
cares and enjoy briefly the closest thing to bird flight.

57
 “Up there on top of the hill,” Jensen pointed. “That’s where we
used to launch hang gliders. But now I can launch from down here
with a couple of steps and ride the slope winds up to the top.”
No sooner said than done.
As I watched, Jensen and a friend removed the Sun Fun from
its trailer bed. Within 10 minutes, the two of them had it all set up

and ready for flight. The job was made easier by the special lock pins
that held the wings, tail and struts firmly in place. Not even a
screwdriver or a pair of pliers was required.
Jensen stuck a portable wind sock mast into the ground and
consulted his little vest pocket wind meter. The tiny ball gently
bounced up and down close to the 15-knot velocity mark. Just right.
Next he poured a quart of gasoline into a plastic tank, checked
everything in a careful preflight final inspection, stepped into posi-
tion between the aluminum tubing framework of the
sides of the
hanger and tucked the spars under his armpits.
Sun Fun weighs 110 pounds empty. With its engine installed it
weighs roughly 150 pounds. Facing into the gentle wind, Jensen
lifted it easily with the help of mother nature. The engine started

with a quick pull on the starter cord, positioned for aerial restarts.
Sun Fun trembled expectantly, anxious to be off and flying. Jensen
took two quick steps forward, knees bent, then tucked up his feet
for a very quick takeoff. He slid agilely into the sling seat, manipu-
lated the control levers expertly and buzzed off.

As watched in amazement, he moved slowly over to the foot

I

of the hill at perhaps 20 miles an hour. He banked over like a hawk

sniffing for the slope wind. He found it quickly, sweeping through a
graceful 360, then began soaring higher in lovely figure eight turns
until he topped the ridge. For long minutes he ridge-soared with the

engine throttled back and paced by a pair of curious gulls. He could

have stopped the engine and still remained aloft for an easy hour of
powerless soaring flight in the afternoon onshore breeze. Instead
he elected to sweep back down the hill to demonstrate a landing for
the benefit of my camera.
From where I I watched the Sun Fun
stood, partway upslope,
bend around into the wind and gently swoop down with birdlike
effect. Vol tilted the wing upward a bit and came in for a zero-speed

touchdown. His knees were flexed to absorb the energy of the

landing.
Another time he chose to land atop the hill, shut the engine
down and trundle the machine by the tail into the slope wind for
takeoff. With four or five quick steps he was off again, this time into

58
an eight-knot headwind. It demonstrated the advantages of Sun Fun

over that of conventional hang gliders, which must be disas-

flight

sembled at the termination of each flight and trucked back uphill for
the next joyride.
Irv Culver, who weighs 200 pounds, has flown Sun Fun a
number of times. His skill as a sailplane pilot and a conventional
airplane pilot make up for the higher gross weight. As in any aircraft,
flying skill makes all the difference between good performance and
poor performance. Jensen recommends that beginners take a
couple of hours dual instruction in a light aircraft with stick control,
such as a Piper Cub or an Interstate Cadet, to get the feel for Sun
Fun piloting. Of course, this is not a mandatory procedure. “Any
sensible, healthy individual from 16 to 60 who builds a Sun Fun
should be able to teach himself to fly it safely without difficulty,”
says the designer.
Design parameters for Sun Fun included easy construction and
good performance plus inherent safety, including a design load
factor of two and an ultimate load factor of three. Sun Fun is all metal
except for the wing fabric, built mostly of aluminum tubing including
the wing spars. It took Jensen only four hours each to assemble the
rudder, stabilizer and elevator, less the covering.
“You just cut the tubing and pop-rivet it all together,” he
explains. “Total time required to complete Sun Fun runs around 200
hours, about half that needed to build the VJ-23 Swingwing.”
The hanger structure is designed to insure safety of the pilot in
the event of a belly landing. Wheels were added to the design simply
to make it easier to transport. You can roll it where you want it
instead of carrying it.

Where Sun Fun doesn’t have the lovely tapered wing planform
of the Swingwing, its higher aspect ratio compensates for the extra
drag of external lift struts. And you can buy a kit option forSun Fun
that includes a protective device, not as a landing gear, to keep it in
the category of a foot-launchable PHG and not a standard airplane.
Across the Channel

Sun Fun made

international headlines in May, 1978, when one
built by British draftsman David Cook from Leiston, Suffolk, was
flown easily across the English Channel from the Kent coast near
historic Walmer Castle, 25 miles to the coast of France. Reported
the Daily Mail:
“
David strapped on a cherry red helmet, donned a wet suit,
gave his wife, Cathy, a kiss and ran like the clappers for France

59
while a competitor, Gerry Breen, scanned the horizon for his escort
boat. An hour and a quarter later, with just enough fuel left to wet a
postage stamp, the 37-year-old father of two landed beside a party
of picnickingGermans on holiday in the resort of Bleriot Plage. It
was an appropriate landing strip— it was near where French aviator
Louis Bleriot took off in 1909 for the first air crossing of the
”
Channel.
A year later another odd aircraft would complete the challeng-
ing Channel crossing. Dr. Paul MacCready’s man-powered Gos-
samer Albatross was pedaled furiously by veteran bike racer Bryan
Allen. Man has yet to cross the Chann 1 in an omithopter, however.
At this writing, there were several hundred sets of Sun Fun
PHG plans sold at $55 each. They comprise five blueprints totaling
36 square feet, 24 photos and a full size rib layout. A $2 brochure
also is available for the VJ-24E Sun Fun engine installation from
Volmer Jensen, PO Box 5222, Glendale, CA. 91201. See Table
6- 1 .

Quicksilver

In 1972, wher the hang glider movement was just rolling, a

sharp little high winger began showing its stuff at the local glider
slopes. Quicksilver (Fig. 6-5) called a classic in its own time, had the
traditional aircraft look and was quite stable in flight. It did nothave a
tendency to tuck under in a dive as Rogallo flexwings sometimes
did.

Fig. 6-5. The Mitchell Wing B-10 is designed with folding wings for easy
transport.

60
 Table 6-1. VJ-24E Sun Fun.

Dimensions

Length 18'
Height 6'
'
Span 36 V2
Wing Area 163 sq/ft.

Weight

Empty 110 1b.

Useful Load 200 lb.

Gross Weight 310 lb.

Performance

Crusing Speed 20 mph

Stall Speed 15 mph

Construction

AllMetal
Fabric Covered

Controls

Ailerons, Elevators, Rudder, Throttle

Glide Angle

9 to 1

Quicksilver was the monoplane hang glider to be made

first

available complete or form by Eipper- f ormance Inc. which

in kit ,

remains a leader in the field today. Eipper-formance Inc. has been a

major manufacturer of microlight aircraft since 1972. At all major
homebuilt aircraft meets, their top-of-the-line Quicksilver stands
out for its good looks as well as excellent performance.
Since its introduction a decade ago, thousands of Quicksilvers
have logged thousands of hours the world over, while maintaining an
excellent safety record. Quicksilvers were the first rigid wings
employing simple bolt-together construction. Its materials came
directly from the flex-wing field. Its design was so basic that, the
company says, it has changed little since 1973 except for improved
hardware and small detail modifications.

61
 was the first hang glider to make an altitude gain of
Quicksilver
a mileabove takeoff point. It also had climbed to 15,000 feet MSL
and covered more than 20 miles on cross-country flights. The
design was particularly attractive to pilots who felt comfortable with
its conventional configuration.
Early on, Quicksilver established its reputation for pitch stabil-
ity, largely attributable to its conventionalempennage design.
When powered hang gliders arrived, Eipper began an
the era of
exhaustive series of tests of power plants, propellers, landing gear
systems and various airframe mods. The result was what Eipper
considers the best combination of power-on and power-off handling
characteristics.
Says Eipper: “Our philosophy in motorized design has been to
reduce flight to its essence. We have found that through continual
and refinement of our designs, safety,
simplification reliability and
cost reduction can be greatly enhanced.”
Ground handling the Model M
Quicksilver, says Eipper, is
relatively simple. Prop wash over the rudder in combination with
the lightly loaded nosewheel make rudder inputs very effective
upon directional control. At rotation speed (16-20 mph) the pilot
simply pushes his weight back to lift the nosewheel and commence
the climb-out. All pitch control is accomplished by means of pilot
weight shift, eliminating weight and balance problems that might
occur with the pilot accounting for half the gross weight.
Lateral control is achieved simply by the pilot shifting his

weight in the direction he wants to go. The pilot’s harness is

connected through control lines to the rudder. A weight shift to the

left turns the rudder yawing and rolling the aircraft into the
left,

turn. Quicksilver’s generous dihedral gives a light and quick roll

response and also provides a high roll and spiral stability.
The main wing is rectangular in planform and is single surface,
keeping the wing as light and simple in construction as possible.
Wingtip washout in combination with the wing’s taperless planform,
says Eipper, makes the stall extremely gentle. There is no ten-

dency to drop a wing or enter a spin.

In flight, the engine could be shut down for soaring or climbing
in lift and then restarted by pulling on the starter cord. For landing,

power is reduced and the approach speed adjusted to between 20

and 25 mph. Landing in a headwind of from 10 to 12 mph, touchdown
velocity is little more than fast walk. This allows for extremely
short-field landings.

Quicksilvers make good transition trainers for pilots planning

to move on to conventional aircraft. Owners of the earlier Model C

62
Quicksilver hang gliders can now purchase retrofit powerpack and
landing gear kits to convert to the Model M powered hang glider
configuration.
The complete Quicksilver M, ready tb fly and factory flight
tested, comes with detachable landing gear for foot or wheel landing
and launching and comes complete with heavy duty nylon storage
covers for $3495. The Model M kit required only from 20 to 30
hours construction time using basic tools. It includes assembly
instructions and all required materials, including a supine pilot har-
ness. Also included are all tube cutting, drilling, anodizing, tube
bending where required, cable swaging, and completely finished
wing and tail surface covering.
The engine, a Chrysler 82026 two-cycle, dual carburetor with
137cc displacement and 13 horsepower output, has a thrust rating
of 110 pounds. A 1. 7-gallon fuel tank is provided. Fuel consumption
runs from one to two gph, depending on power setting. The kit price
is $2995.
Quicksilver M’s wingspan is 32 feet, wing area is 160 square
feet, aspect ratio is 6.4, empty weight
130 pounds and the pilot
is

weight range is from 120 to 220 pounds. Performance with a

160-pound pilot, no wind at sea level, is: 20-25 mph cruise, 35 mph
Vmax, 17 mph stall, takeoff roll 100 feet, landing roll 50 feet and rate
of climb 350 fpm.
Eipper-formance Inc. is located at 1070 Linda Vista Drive, San
Marcos, CA 92069.

A Foot-Launched Air Cycle

Five years of research and development work went into one of

Ken Striplin’s 156 pound,
the later entries in the ultralight arena.
chainsaw-engined, tricycle-geared flying wing pusher is called
FLAC— for Foot-Launched Air Cycle. First flight took place Oc-
tober 25, 1978, at El Mirage Dry Lake north of Los Angeles (Figs.
6-6, 6-7, 6-8, 6-9). The pilot was Ken’s teenage son, Paul. Results
encouraged the Striplins to go ahead and put the craft into a produc-
tion run. Their goal was one a day.
Paul’s initial test hop proved the craft was a stable, responsive,
easy to fly powered hang glider with three-axis controls. He circled
the dry lake bed for half an hour at speeds up to 45 mph and at one
down the McCulloch 101 engine, glided a bit,
point deliberately shut
then restarted with two pulls on the starter rope.
It appeared to Paul that the center of gravity was a bit far

forward, resulting in a nose-wheel-first landing that bounced him

63
 Test Paul Striplin, 1 9, flies the FLAC ultralight from El Mirage Dry
Fig. 6-6. pilot

Lake in California.

back into the sky for a go-around. Next landing was perfect.
Back in
their shop in Lancaster, they moved the wing
forward three inches
and then Paul took her up again. This time it flew fine hands off.
at 25 mph for
After liftoff at an estimated 21 mph, FLAC climbed
some stall tests. Paul found the nose eased down at 20 mph IAS. At
cruising speeds from 25-30 mph, FLAC was easily controllable.
When it wouldn’t come down due to a too fast engine idle, Paul killed
theengine and made a nice deadstick landing. The engine
was
readjusted and the wheels moved back a bit for better three-

pointers.
Other modifications followed, particularly in the power
reduc-

tion unit. An enclosed chain and oil clutch lashup

was developed that

Fig. 6-7. FLAC has wingtip rudders, elevons and tricycle gear.

64
Fig. 6-8. A modified FLAC with extended nose gear for faster takeoffs.

is Soarmaster power pack. Soft engine mounts were

similar to the
used to cut down vibration. An expansion chamber muffler pointed
up and cut back the noise level appreciably. Later, Ken installed a
coupled twin-engine powerplant driving a single prop.
Although FLAC has a tricycle landing gear, there are clamshell
doors that open to permit foot-launching. This makes it a non-
airplane by FAA definition, says Striplin. Recently a longer-legged,
retractable nosewheel gear was used to permit the craft to take off
at a slightly higher angle of attack on the ground run.
At one point, was not enough
the Striplins decided there
elevon control at low airspeeds.They lowered the control surfaces
a bit below the trailing edge to keep them in harder air on ap-
proaches. This was similar to the Mitchell Wing design.
To further improve the control response, they decided to
reduce the area of the wingtip rudder plates by roughly 50 percent.
The extra surface was found to be unnecessary and produced drag.
The FLAC wing sweeps back gracefully with a constant chord. A
“special” German airfoil, says Striplin, develops high lift with low
drag and pitch.
Controls are three-axis and operated by the pilot just as in a
roll is achieved by a side stick linked
conventional aircraft. Pitch and
through a mixer to operate the control surfaces together as
elevators or differentially as ailerons. Twin tip rudders are control-
led by foot pedals linked with cables to activate them independently
or together as air brakes. The rudders also serve as span airflow
control fences. Striplin says they increase lift further and reduce tip

drag.
The FLAC cockpit has been modified. It is made of fiberglass
fitted with a large windscreen and side openings to give 180-degree

65
visibility. Recently, the side openings were covered with Mylar for
better streamlining. The pilot sits in a hammock seat so that he can
swing his legs down for foot-launch. The main wheels are enclosed
in wheel pants, while the nose wheel retracts after takeoff.
Earlier, the Striplins two craft with conventional tails
had built
and three flying wings, plus numerous RC models. More recently,
they experimented with the development of an ultralight based on
the flying wing sailplane design of Witold Kasper and rights were
obtained to construct a prototype. However, it was abandoned as
being too unstable.
By February 1978, the Striplins had built and flown half a dozen
RC models of one-third scale, seeking a design to freeze with good
pitch stability and directional control. In deliberately tumbling the
RC models, they determined that recovery was immediate and that
adding extra power was a no-no, without a major redesign of the
flying wing.
Their fourth design confirmed their RC work. By auto-towing
go ahead with a fifth design— FLAC. The
that one, they decided to
prototype was completed in one month.
FLAC’s wing is easily removable by taking out six bolts for
road transport. Plans are shaping up to add skis to turn the air cycle

into a snow cycle or floats to make a water cycle.

Kits are available from the Striplin Aircraft Corp., P 0 Box
2001, Lancaster, CA 93534, at $1895 for the economy model or
$2895 for the “quick flight” version. Engine is not included, but
Striplin recommends a Soarmaster powerplant. An information
booklet is available for $5.

Fig. 6-9. Designer Ken Striplin folds the wings of his FLAC ultralight after an
airshow at Chino, California.

66
Fig. 6-10. These two Fledgling Pterodactyls flew coast-to-coast in 1979.

Pterodactyl Fledgling

Big news at the Oshkosh 79 EAA Fly-In ultralight arena was

the arrival of a pair of Californians who had flown all the way from
Monterey in Pterodactyl Fledgings (Figs. 6-10, 6-11, 6-12). It was a
barn storming tour that reached altitudes in excess of 14,000 feet
crossing the Tetons and took just under 74 hours flying time. The
intrepid pilots, Jack McComack and Keith Nicely, stopped when
and where they pleased. They landed in vacant lots or on golf
courses and saw America roll by quite like no other airmen ever had.
After a week at Oshkosh, they took off once more and continued

Fig. 6-11. A powered Fledgling at the Oshkosh EAA Fly-In.

67
Fig. 6-12. A Pterodactyl lands on bicycle wheels for use on rough strips.

east to Kitty Hawk, NC. They traveled that distance on an alternate

fuel— grain alcohol.
A wild adventure for sure. But their arrival at Kitty Hawk was
preceded by another Pterodactyl Fledgling, in which Jack Peterson
completed a coast-to-coast jaunt from Los Angeles. Peterson’s
flight was reminiscent of the first west-to-east transcon flight by

Bob Fowler, in a Wright biplane, in 1911.

To understand the beauty of these adventures, you have to
understand that a Pterodactyl Fledgling is a sort of evolutionary
derivative of an earlier maverick— Manta Products’ early single-
surface Fledge. The Fledge was developed from a design created in
1974 by Klaus Hill, Larry Hill, and Dick Cheney.

Fig. 6-13. The Mitchell Wing B-10 is designed with folding wings for easy
transport.

68
 Manta Products spent three years developing the Fledge. The
goal was to combine the simplicity of the Rogallo wing with the
better performance advantages of a rigid airfoil hang glider. The
Fledge was designed for better penetration and speed for best
minimum sink and LD by utilizing preformed aluminum ribs and
control surfaces instead of weight shift. The stiff ribs meant you
could shape and maintain the sail's form, camber and reflex without
further adjustment or rigging. A lower surface was added to im-
prove low-speed handling.
The result was called Fledge II, which not only offered better
low-speed performance, but allowed faster turns, a better LD,
higher Vmax and easier ground handling. The original airframe was
unchanged and the first protogype, called the B Model, used an
increased camber of seven and one-half percent at quarter-chord. A
tip-mounted rudder and booster tip were added and the rudder
surfaces raked back 24 degrees to provide a “semi-aileron” effect.
The tip surfaces also served as end plates to reduce span flow and
the associated vortex drag.
The Pterodactyl Fledgling was the next step. It was an ul-

tralight motor based on the Manta Fledge II-B hang glider

glider
design, offered by Pterodactyl, of 847 Airport Road, Monterey, CA
93940. The Pterodactyl Fledge is fully collapsable for transport or
storage. The kit is designed to meet the FAA requirement of 51
percent amateur built construction to qualify for an experimental
license.
Jack McCormack explains that the “steps involved in con-
structing a Pterodactyl Fledgling are, airframe assembly, rigging,
landing gear assembly, power unit assembly and wing cover installa-
tion. It is recommended that you allow a full day for rigging, but each

of the other steps can be done

in an evening or two.

“Though we you how long it will take to build yours, at

can't tell
Manta, a dedicated crew of two builds three Fledgling hang gliders a
day. On the other hand, if you work on it after work and before
dinner, figure a month. No gluing, doping, or painting is required.
The wing covering and rudders are pre-built and all tubing is
anodized.
“
The airframe kit is ready to ship two weeks after we receive
your order. The powerplant and landing gear kit go out in three
weeks. The custom sail requires five weeks— between Pterodactyl
and Manta we've got the sailmaker pretty busy! When you design
the colors of your wing covering, use blue and green sparingly if at
all. Yellow and orange are the easiest colors to see.''

69
 Pterodactyl Fledgling is priced at $2750, including the com-
plete aircraft and Pterodactyl X powerplant. The landing gear uses
shock cord suspension and 16-inch bicycle wheel mains to permit
operation from unimproved fields. The powerplant uses a 242cc
snowmobile engine with a direct-driven 36-inch propeller, quieter
than the earlier reduction-drive 136cc Chrysler engine. See Table
6- 2 .

The Mitchell Wing

The among flying wing, powered hang gliders is
top of the line
the Model B-10 Mitchell Wing and its successor, the new Model
U-2 Super Mitchell Wing (Figs. 6-13, 6-14, 6-15,15 6-16, 6-17)
designed by aerodynamicist Don Mitchell. Flying wings go back to
the 1930s when become interested in them. They
Mitchell first
have included Jack Northrop’s YB-49 bomber design and such
postwar concepts as the SV-45 Fauvel that first flew in 1950.
Mitchell got busy on the concept again in 1974 when he got a call
from a hang glider enthusiast, Dr. Howard Long, who wanted
something with top performance. The result was the Mitchell Wing
hang glider, which George Worthington flew to a world distance
record and Brad White flew to win the 1977 U.S. Hang Glider
Championship. In 1978, Steve Patmont flew a Mitchell Wing at
Perris Valley Airport in Southern California and later flew it to win
the World Ultra-Light Power Meet at Anoka, Michigan.

Table 6-2. Pterodactyl Fledgling Specifications.

Span 33'
Area 162 sq/ft
Chord at Root 5.5'

Tip Chord 4.5'

Sweepback 18 degrees
Dihedral 6 degrees
Aspect Ratio 6.8
Empty Weight 125 lb.

Max Gross Weight 350 lb.

Fuel Capacity 2 V2 gallons

PERFORMANCE

to Drag Ratio
Lift 9:1

Sink Rate (180# pilot) 250 fpm

Climb Rate 300 fpm
Stall Speed -20 mph
Cruise Speed 25-45 mph
Top Speed 50 mph
Assembly Time (No Tools) 20 minutes

70
Fig. 6-14. The B-10 Mitchell Wing has set several world records.

Design of the B-10 is straightforward. It has a 12-degree

s weepback, the center section is flat and the outboard panels have a
6-degree dihedral. The wing tapers in chord from five feet at the
root to two feet at the tips. Span is 34 feet. Airfoil section is the
NACA 23015. Standard controls are used with the ailerons doing
double duty as both ailerons and elevators, or stabilators. Drag
rudders are installed at the wingtips and act independently or can be
used together as drag brakes.
The wing has no reflex. The stabilators are set at a positive 4
degrees with travel only up to 35 degrees, flying in their own
airflow. The result is a perfectly pitch-stable wing. It has been static
tested to 1250 pounds and the design load limit is over 1900 pounds,
positive and negative.
The webbed spars have tapered spar caps, with D-section
construction utilizing a 1-inch foam former every 4Vfe inches, co-
vered with one mil plywood. Ribs are of standard truss construction
covered with Ceconite. The wing itself weighs 70 pounds and the

Fig. 6-15. The U-2 Super Mitchell Wing has an enclosed cockpit and folding
wings.

71
Fig. 6-16. Dick Clawson of Visalia, California, took this photo of himself in steep
climb in a Mitchell Wing.

foot-launch hang cage weighs 11 pounds. The cage, with a McCul-

loch 101 engine using direct-drive and one gallon of fuel, weigh in at
47 pounds. In the “airplane” configuration, the tricycle gear, engine
and gear-reduction unit swinging a 42-inch propeller and 2 gallons of
fuel, weigh 150 pounds.
The
Mitchell Wing can be assembled for flight in 10 minutes in
any of the three configurations. Any of the cage arrangements are
attachable with four pins. Assembly is simple. Remove the wing
from the top by removing the four pins and two cable
of the car
tiedowns. Set the wing on the flying cage and stick the pins back in.
Then unfold the wings and install the tip rudders and pins at the wing
joints. After a thorough preflight safety check, you’re all set to fly.

When rigging the wing, says James Meade, general manager of

the Mitchell Aircraft Corporation, the stabilators are set to a posi-

Fig. 6-17. Dick Clawson loves to buzz along rivers in his Mitchell Wing.

72
tive setting of 4 to 36 degrees. With no negative setting, the wing
washout prevents any tendency to tuck under. This rigging also
results in the wing’s center section always stalling first. This leaves
the outer panels still flying and provides solid roll control at all flying

speeds.
Seated snugly in the trike gear cage, the pilot has complete
control in all three axes with no need to use body swing for either
pitch or yaw control. The throttle is operated with the left hand, the
right hand manages the stick control and the feet work the rudders
either independently or together.
The engine instrument panel, mounted to the pilot’s left, in-

cludes cylinder head temperature, tachometer, ignition switch and

throttle.

The Mitchell Wing comes in kit form with the spars, fittings and
stabilator D-sections complete. An assembly manual is included
with step-by-step directions.
Wing kit are precut and the drawings
All parts of the Mitchell

are Wood-to-wood bonding is done with aircraft epoxy.

full-size.

Dacron covering is supplied but you buy the dope. All you need for
tools are a one-fourth-inch hand drill, pop-rivet gun and such hand
tools as a screwdriver, a hacksaw, a crescent-wrench pliers and
C-clamps.
Mitchell Wing kits sell for $2700 complete. Several hundred
kits already have been purchased. Close to 100 Mitchell Wings are
now flying.

The
popularity of the Model B-10 Mitchell Wing led the com-
pany to get Don Mitchell to develop a high-performance version.
The Model U-2 Super Mitchell Wing was introduced at the 1979
EAA Fly-In at Oshkosh. Using a 125cc engine, the U-2 attains a
cruising speed of better than 60 mph and stalls under 25 mph. It gets
off in 150 feet and lands in 75 feet. Weighing under 140 pounds

empty, the U-2 is stressed to more than 10 G’s. The cockpit area is
enclosed.
Some modifications are being made to the initial U-2 design.
Included are different tips, with rudder control by spoilers located
aft in the outboard wing panels. A fully retractable tricycle gear is

used, the nosewheel is steerable, with brake. A swing-arm control

stick has been added for comfort and ease.
For details write to the Mitchell Aircraft Corporation, 1900 S.
Newcomb, Porterville, CA 93257.

73
Chapter 7

Flying Wings

Dale Kramer, 21, was a university dropout with a major goal in life.

His explanation:
“I had two and one half years of education in aerospace en-
gineering at the University of Toronto, but I left when I saw it

wasn’t leading where I wanted to go. My goal is to be self-employed

in a business that will let me stay close to flying.
Another year and a
half has gone by since then and hope I’m on my way!” Some
I

education obviously did rub off on Dale. With his youthful en-
thusiasm and imagination, he and a friend, Peter Corney, have
become real trailblazers in the fascinating world of ultralights.

The Lazair
There’s no formal classroom in the high sky. No blackboard
jungle substitute for and error development of a fresh idea.
trial

Instead of sitting through dry lectures about theories of LD and all

that stuff, Dale and Peter hammered out a brand new design and had
it flying in just two months. Lazair (Fig. 7-1) made its first public
appearance at the Lakeland Sun ’N Fun EAA Fly-In in Florida in
1979.
Lazair is a neat little 136-pound, twin-engined, fixed-wing,
inverted-V tailed ultralight that shows some brilliant insights in

design and engineering. It is a growth machine that is not rigidly

fixed in concept. The two Canadian youths aren’t the kind to sit back
and enjoy their initial success. The challenge of the future, as they

say, lies ahead.

Lazair actually is Kramer’s second design. His first was a fine
little flying wing. Even before that Dale had built a Super Floater
from a Klaus Hill design. Dale’s Super Floater was built after he

74
 a

Fig. 7-1 . Canadian designer Dale Kramer’s lively Lazair has an inverted V-tail.

bought a set of plans at Oshkosh 77. Believe it or not, two and a half
weeks later it was flying.

Kramer’s Super Floater was all that the name implied. He and
Corney auto-towed it off his brother’s 2000-foot grass airstrip. On
its first flights it had soared up to 600 feet. It was difficult for Dale to

keep his mind on university lectures. Three months later he knew

he had to get busy on a design that had loomed big in his mind—
flying wing ultralight.
Dale and Peter worked long hours to get their flying wing ready
to show off at Oshkosh 78, but time just ran out. It was just as
well— at Oshkosh they were exposed to all the latest good stuff in
the booming ultralight movement and their heads were crammed
with new ideas.
Back home in Port Colbome, Ontario, they completed their
flying wing. It was a thing of real beauty. Its fully cantilevered wing
had a thick airfoil and was slightly swept forward to keep the center
of gravity at quarter chord position. The pilot is positioned up front,
where he could foot-launch with a running jump. A PVC covering
was taped onto the wing, which featured tip rudders, with pitch
control supplied by body shift.
“It has flown well as a glider,’’ says Dale, “and I still believe in
flying wings.”
However, the day of powered hang gliders had dawned at
Oshkosh, when John Moody unveiled his powered Easy Riser with a
Mac 101 engine.
At Oshkosh 78, Dale bumped into Ed Sweeney, the Reno, NV
designer of the Gemini twin-engine power pack for PHG’s (Fig.
7-2). Sweeney had come up with an unusual innovation in power
packs by linking two SV^-horsepower modified Swedish A. B. Part-
ner chainsaw engines that direct-drive two-bladed propellers at

75
5000 rpm. The rig weighs 26 pounds and bolts directly onto the cage
ofany rigid- wing or flex- wing hang glider.
"After Oshkosh 78, ” says Dale,“Sweeney dropped in on us on
hisway to the East Coast. He flew my wing in its test rig, but when
he saw the Super Floater (Fig. 7-3) he said, ‘My engines will fit on
”
that!’

A Powered Super Floater

In no time at all, they had the Gemini engines installed on the

Super Floater. Since then the flying wing has been in mothballs. The
Super Floater with power had a real potential, says Dale, and it was
flown a total of 15 hours before Sweeney left. Dale recalls: “It was
great fun, flying just above the water along the shore of Lake Erie,
practically walking on water and still knowing that if one engine quit,

we couldstill make it to shore!"

As it turned out, Sweeney went back to Nevada with the Super

Floater and left them with the two engines to install in a new design
they hoped would get all the faults they found in the Super
rid of
Floater. In a bit over two months, Peter and Dale had a new
machine flying— the Lazair. There were still many changes to be
made to the engine mounts and the control linkages, varying from
(would you believe) hydraulic cylinders to spring-loaded controls,
before they decided to go back to pushrods and cables.
“I also went through five different engine mount designs, " Dale
says, “and with the Lakeland EAA show only a month off, we had
yet to build a trailer."
Build the trailer they did. By virtue of working almost around
the clock, they finally shoved off and arrived at Lakeland three days
before the midwinter show opened. They’d flown Lazair only four

Fig. 7-2. This Lazair ultralight uses a Gemini twin engine powerpack designed
by Ed Sweeney of Reno, Nevada.

76
Fig. 7-3. This Super Floater is an earlier Klaus Hill design.

hours prior to leaving Canada and then put on another two hours in
Florida by the time the festivities began. When the show was over
they’d run the total time up to 11 hours.
They didn’t feel it was time to freeze the design yet, as they felt
a single-engine version might be better than a twin. Once they
settled on the final design, they would decide on kits and prices.
Initial plans were to supply the leading edge D-cell complete, the
ribs capped, and all tubing cut and bent. The only tools required for
assembly would be general shop tools.
The Lakeland demo flights taught Dale and Peter a few things.
Three noseovers occurred on ground runs and resulted in some
broken tubes. “They were caused by two things, ” says Dale. “Lack
of anose skid for one thing. If the aircraft hit a ground obstruction it
stopped abruptly, causing the pilot to swing forward and go through
the front tube. The solution was to add a nose skid and pilot
restraints. Another addition will be larger wheels. We’ve been
thinking of using bicycle wheels for a smoother ride over rough
”
ground.
Most of the Lazair development time was consumed by per-
fecting a control system, starting off with the hydraulic lashup they
quickly discarded. From their experience in flying the Super Floa-
ter, they decided against using the rudder/elevator only system.
This system had a tendency for the craft to slip in entering turns and
Dale and Peter, both licensed power pilots, instinctively tried to

correct by coordination.
As a result of their dissatisfaction with the Super Floater
control system, they went to ailerons on Lazair— retaining all con-
trol functions in the stick. This required some fancy mixing. Dale’s
final version of Lazair ties rudder and ailerons together for coordi-
nated turns, while retaining separate elevator control for pitch. You
can’t cross-control rudder and aileron to execute slips, which also
makes crosswind takeoffs and landings memorable experiences.

77
 The control mixer unit is installed in the wing root above the

pilot’s head. It is actuated by an overhead stick linked to pushrods,

mounted in PVC guides, running back to the inverted- V rudder-
vators and through bellcranks and pushrods to the ailerons.
The Lazair pilot sits in a sling seat. This permits the operator’s
legs to hang down for foot-launch. The seat is attached to a pilot
cage of 606 1T6 aluminum tubing that is held rigid with nylon plugs
where the bolts pass through. The Gemini engines are mounted to
each side of the pilot with the blades shielded for protection.
Sweeney modified the standard A. B. Partner Swedish chainsaw
engines by turning down the crankcases, reversing drive and
flywheels, and attaching the propeller to the back end where the
starter formerly hung. At 5500 rpm, the engines put out their
maximum torque. The propeller tip speed is subsonic and delivers
38 pounds of thrust from each engine. This is sufficient to haul a
160-pound pilot skyward easily, if not thrillingly.
Rate of climb for Lazair is from 200 to 300 fpm and it stalls at 17
mph. Cruising speed is 35 mph and it gets off the runway (paved) in
200 feet. Fuel consumption is one U.S. gallon per hour or 35 mpg!
Wingspan is 36 feet 4 inches, wing area is 140 square feet and when
empty it weighs 132 pounds.
Lazair’s D-cells are 7 inches deep by 10 inches wide with 4-inch
rib spacing at the root and 6 inches at the tips. Skin is 016 of an inch .

2024-T3 aluminum. The wing spar is a C-channel, .025 of an inch

with U-channel caps. Ribs are held in place with vertical U-channels
not glued to the skin. Fittings are 7075-T-6.
The rear ribs are one-inch polystyrene foam with aluminum
caps, the fuselage is all 6061-T6 tubing except for the boom.

Fig. 7-4. The Weedhopper uses a Chotia 460 single-cylinder powerplant with
tuned exhaust.

78
Covering is 2-mil Mylar taped on. Two people can cover both wings
in under six hours.

Weedhopper
John F. Chotia began building model planes a quarter century
ago at the age of nine. He was the terror of the school playground
with a special combat flying wing model powered with his own
specially modified engine. He made many of the components him-
self. 1964, he’d designed a man-powered aircraft which he
By
claimswas a dead ringer for Dr. Paul MacCready’s prize winning
Gossamer Albatross which flew the English Channel. In 1965, he
was interested in hang gliders, half a decade before they caught on
in America.
Like other glider-riders, Chotia held the dream of building
something a little better in the ultralight aircraft field. It wasn’t so
long before he had turned out no less than 24 full-size ultralights. At
that timehe was working a four-year apprenticeship as an experi-
mental machinist at NASA/ Ames Research Center. By late 1977,
he’d moved to Utah, a state noted for its soaring and ultralight flying

machine activities.

Ultimate Fun

Quite naturally, he set out to design and build what he called

the ultimate fun machine. And he came pretty close with Ultralight
Number 22. He admits it flew only marginally, powered with a
Chrysler 820 outboard motor and a 4: 1 cog-belt reduction unit that
swung 45/12 propeller. He switched engines and
a installed a 242
Chaparral snowmobile powerplant.
By installing a tuned exhaust pipe and finely tuning the engine,
he managed a few good flights. Number 22, had a double-surface
wing span of 22 feet 8 inches and held 190 square feet of sustaining
surface. There were no ailerons, just a rudder and elevator, and he
rode in a reclining seat mounted on a tricycle gear. On to Number
23, where Chotia went to a single-surfaced wing. It was strictly a
flying wing configuration which, he discovered, had excess control
drag in tight turns. This was attributed to an excessive pendulum
effect. So in Number
24, the present Weedhopper, Chotia added a
group and designed a new fuselage.
tail

Then Chotia began a search for a good engine and propeller.

But none seemed quite right to him. He tried the Yamaha 292 and
And he logged some 80
the Chaparral 242 with comparable results.
hours flying time with them. The engine was mounted up front in

79
tractor fashion. This is unlike most other powered hang glider
installations. It permits the pilot to sit back on the center of gravity
with the engine weight keeping it in trim.

The Chotia 460

Chotia saw the handwriting on the wall. People were buying up
all snowmobile engines and he already disliked the
available surplus
high rpm Yamaha and Chaparral powerplants.
inefficiencies of the
So, being a trained machinist, he designed his own engine— the
Chotia 460 (Figs. 7-4, 7-5, 7-6). It is the world’s first powerplant
specifically designed for use in ultralights. It delivers 18.5 horse-

power 3500 rpm, permitting use of a direct drive propeller with

at
larger blades turning at half the speed of the Yamaha and therefore
with higher efficiency. Efficiency is from 50 percent to 55 percent or
9.25 horsepower actual thrust.
Weedhopper’s basic structure is of seamless drawn 6061
aluminum tubing that is reinforced at all attachment points with
larger tubing or with wooden dowels. Pre-machined brackets or
gussets are used to join the tubes. All bolts and hardware are of
aircraft quality.
Covering is 3.8-ounce stabilized Dacron sailcloth, pre-sewn to
slip into place, with no additional sewing, gluing or doping neces-
sary. You have a choice of mixed colors including black, white, red,
orange, gold, yellow, two shades of green or blue, and purple for a
touch of regalness.
Completely assembled, Weedhopper weighs 160 pounds. Its

28-foot wing with 168 square feet of area provides a wing loading of
around .95 pounds per square feet. Where other flying wing ul-
tralights, such as the Mitchell Wing and Striplin FLAC, use elevons

Fig. 7-5. John Chotia’s single-cylinder engine with two types of propeller blades.

80
for pitchand roll control in combination with tip rudders, Weedhop-
per has dispensed with any control surfaces on the wing. It relys on
a rudder-induced yaw and wing dihedral to achieve a positive roll
force and coordinated turns. A side stick is linked to the elevator on
the tail for pitch control.
Ground handling is easy due to the wide tricycle gear’s track
and the low center of gravity. Optional cast aluminum rudder pedals
or the standard rudder bar welded to the nosewheel yoke provide
positive steering through the nosewheel. This is useful in making
tight turns on the ground, as in parking. Due to the small amount of
weight on the nosewheel, the rudder is the only control required
during the takeoff roll. Incidentally, using the nose fork steering,
the pilot resorts to “bobsledding.” But with the rudder pedals
installed, normal aircraft-type rudder use is achieved. This permits
faster transition for experienced pilots.
The pilot reclines comfortably in flight with good forward
visibility. Goggles are recommended due to prop wash on takeoff.
In level flight attitude, the wash passes above the pilot’s head.
According to Chotia, a warning comes at roughly three mph
stall

prior to actual wing stall— with slight elevator buffet. Power-on

stalls in straight flight are mushy, with minimum altitude loss of

10-15 feet. A power-off stall loses about twice that amount of sky.
In a banked turn in excess of 15 degrees, the inside wing drops
and a sidelip to the inside ensues. This increases the angle of attack
on the inner wing. Therefore, the wings level on their own. Spin
testing had not been completed at this writing, but, says Chotia,
Weedhopper appears to be spin-resistant.
The inherent stability of Weedhopper comes from its wing
dihedral and low center of gravity. Overly sensitive control forces
and power changes do not noticeably affect trim, says the designer.
Weedhopper can carry a maximum load of 220 pounds at a redline
speed of 50 mph or cruise at an easy 30 mph. With a 160-pound pilot
aboard, it stalls at about 22 mph. A standard one-gallon plastic fuel
tank will get you over 30 miles with the Chotia engine.
With a 190-pound pilot aboard at Chotia’s home base in Utah, at
4500 feet elevation, Weedhopper demonstrated a takeoff capability
at 190 feet on a 90 degrees Fahrenheit day. Rate of climb was in
excess of 300 fpm. Its short-field capability and tight maneuverabil-
ity make it an ideal off-airport craft, Chotia says
He describes flying the Weedhopper this way: “Imagine
yourself floating through early morning mists, climbing out over
the trees, soaring along a ridge, engine off and with only an eagle

81
Fig. 7-6. John Chotia’s Weedhopper ultralight has a ruggedly simple design.

for company. Picture yourself skimming along over open fields on a

bright summer day, out in the open, low enough to enjoy the
scenery— just like flying should be!"
If Chotia sounds a bit poetic, he is also a very practical person.
Consider the development of the little Chotia 460 engine. He says:
“Its performance is outstanding, with over 650-fpm rate of climb at
sea level.Add to this a lower noise level, lower fuel consumption,
lower vibration levels, comparable weight to other ultralight pow-
erplants and it is easy to see why we decided to build our own
engine."
The Chotia 460, he says, “is much lighter for its displacement
than normal, high-horsepower-per-cubic-inch two cycle engines.
The low rpm means longer life and we expect a TBO to run
between 800 to 1000 hours. Timing is adjustable from the cockpit,
so you can retard it for easy starts and smooth idling and peak it for
maximum performance simply by watching your tachometer."
The crankshaft is extended and a third ball bearing is added in

the extension case to carry the propeller loads. The direction of

rotation is reversible and the engine is easily adaptable to other
ultralights.
In designing the Chotia 460 engine, care was taken to elimi-
nate excessive vibration common to single-cylinder powerplants.
Piston weight was considered the critical component determining
mass vibration. Therefore, Chotia made the piston very light-
weight, at 12. 5 ounces, with an 88mm bore. Therefore, a light-
weight connecting rod was possible. It was machined from bar
stock 7075-T6 aluminum and fitted with needle bearings and hard
steel braces at each end. A low 5: 1 compression ratio also was used
to minimize vibration, providing a soft “push" on the power stroke.

82
 Chotia also decided to design the low-rpm two-cycle engine
with small ports for good ring support and mild timing for good
low-speed torque. This, coupled with the rod needle bearings and
triple ball bearing crank, is expected to ’yield a long life. The
crankshaft is of 30mm diameter, heat-treated 4340 steel.
“One thing I added while making the patterns," says Chotia,
“was the use of four bolts to hold the exhaust flange rather than the
normal two, them shaking loose."
to avoid the possibility of
On on some
a recent visit to Southern California, Chotia put
demonstration flights at Santa Susana Airport for a TV crew
brought in by commentator Arthur Godfrey. Godfrey is a 17,600-
hour ex-Navy pilot and the film was for a national spot. As it
happened, a cold front was approaching that day and Chotia de-
monstrated Weedhopper’s ability to take off and land in a 10-knot
direct crosswind. appeared to fly well in moderate turbulence at
It

pattern altitude. Banking and turning was done gracefully over the
field as he skimmed a nearby grassy hillside.
At Weedhopper presents an unusual appearance. Its
rest,
wing sail droops like wet laundry on a clothesline. The moment it
lifts off and total circulation fills out the wing, it becomes trans-

formed into a thing of beauty that is eager to play with the birds and
explore the countryside low and slow— the essence of natural
flight.

Noted Bob Hoover flew Weedhopper on September

test pilot
8, Oklahoma City. He did no aerobatics, but he
1979, at Page Field,
did land with a big grin. The ship had been built by Reklai Salazar
and was the 79th Weedhopper to fly of more than 300 kits sold at
that time.
Weedhopper kits sell for $2495, including all tubing, hardware
machined components, wheels, engine, propeller and controls.
The engine is available separately. Optional equipment includes a
nosewheel fender, upholstered seat, 3. 5-gallon fuel tank, storage
bags and a double-surface wing for higher performance.
Weedhopper is considered a true airplane by the FAA and not
a powered hang glider. It uses a conventional tricycle gear for
takeoff and landing maneuvers. A Weedhopper pilot must obtain a
second-class medical certificate and hold a student pilot license to
fly it legally.
Kits are available from Weedhopper Utah Inc. Box 2253,
of ,

1965 S. 1100 W, Ogden, UT 84404. Information on kits are availa-

ble for $5.

83
Chapter 8

Powered Sailplanes

When the Westerly slope winds blow up and cross the awesome
Wasach Range east of Ogden, UT, things start to happen at Morgan
Municipal Airport. The airport is nestled in a lovely valley at 5020
below the 9000-foot peaks surrounding it. Winter
feet elevation, far
or summer, hangar doors slide open and strange looking ultralight
homebuilts emerge looking somewhat like happy dragon-flies.

Mountain Green Ultralights

Morgan is home base for the late Klaus Hill's Mountain Green
Sailwing operation, a sort of three-man outfit that specialized in
designing and building flying machines that weigh barely more than
do their pilots (Fig. 8-1).
Environmentally compatible with their surroundings, these
lovely craft mark a new departure from traditional homebuilt design
and construction. They are not meant to go fast. Rather, they
perform like graceful butterflies in a summer zephyr, flitting from
peak to peak on the free energy of the wind and sun.
The Mountain Green craft are similar to, but not quite like
sailplanes or hang two related movements that have given
gliders,
special impetus and meaning to the ultralights.
Visitors to the EAA Fly-In at Oshkosh in the summer of 1977
first saw Klaus Hill’s foot-launched Super Floater, and searched in

vain for the location of the ailerons. There were none. Super Floater
is strictly a two-control machine. It utilizes rudder and elevator only
and it is controlled by a single side stick.

84
Fig. 8-1. Mountain Green Sailwing’s Humbug at the Oshkosh Fly-In in 1979.

A high performance aircraft, it proved easy to build in under

500 man-hours, including design time. The materials cost only
$545. Performance worked out at roughly 14:1 LD at 26 mph,
minimum mph, and stalls under 20 mph.
sink 3.0 ft/sec at 23
There was no buy plans. A foot-launched ultralight
big rush to
then seemed just a bit too new for most EAA members to grasp.
But in Morgan country, the winds were right and a whole new
movement was soon to be born— one apparently destined to go
places.
In the Mountain Green ultralights, Hill gave you the option of

taking off by running into the wind and landing on a skid after a
comfortable flight sitting down chasing thermals. A step beyond
hang gliding, for sure, but still not the ultimate design.

The Honeybee
So now let’s look at a Morgan ultralights— the
couple of newer
Honeybee, designed by Roland H. Sinfield, and the Hummer,
another Klaus Hill production number. First to fly was the Hon-
eybee (Fig. 8-2) described by its designer as half airplane and half
hang glider, with signs of being part snowmobile. Wing construction
is cable-braced aluminum tubing with a single-surfaces airfoil. Tail
surfaces are of aluminum tubing with fabric cover. The fuselage is

built of four wooden stringers covered with thin plywood. The

result was a bunch of nicknames like Preying Mantis, Flying Rail-
road Tie, Pogo Stick and Flying Pencil.
“Main design goals were simplicity of construction, low speed,
low cost and something that would give the pilot the same thrill we
all got on our first airplane ride,” says Sinfield. All four goals, he

says, were achieved nicely— especially the last. “Also,” he adds,

“after several modifications, the handling characteristics are better
than we had hoped for.”

85
 Since the craft is mostly tubing, cables and bolts, it can easily
be broken down into small components for transportation or stor-
age. For transporting only small-distances, you simply remove the
wings. .Only two parts require outside fabrication— the welded
landing gear and the sail (cloth portion of the wing), built by a
professional hang glider manufacturer using a heavy duty sewing
machine.
The control system, like Super Floater’s, is rudder and
elevator only. Sinfield says it is plenty adequate for a slow ultralight.
“With the rudder mounted low in relation to the longitudinal center
of mass and the fact that the wings have considerable dihedral,” he
says, “turns are surprisingly coordinated, not skidding as you might
expect.”
Initially, they connected the rudder to foot pedals. Later the
hookup was changed to link the rudder cables to the control stick,
which is moved sideways in turns. The result, says Sinfield, is a
more natural feeling for experienced pilots.
Crosswind landings might be a problem. In that case, the pilot

simply moves off to an open space and lands into the wind rather
than using the wrong runway. Morgan Airport has only a single
gravel strip, 3800 feet long— Runway 3-21.
Powerplant is a single cylinder 395cc JLO engine, which Sin-
field feels develops power at a lower rpm than most two-cycle
engines, providing greater propeller efficiency. It also has a high
power- to- weight ratio and the cost is low. He says you can scrounge
many out-of-production snowmobile engines at around $100 to
$250. Although Honeybee’s engine has performed well so far, the
JLO is a real Shaky Jake due to its large single-cylinder design.
Sinfield expresses some concern over the rear mounting of the
pusher-engine configuration. In the event of catastrophic engine
failure, the small fuselage could be sliced off. For this reason, he
recommends using a husky tapered crankshaft and a strong propel-
ler and prop hub.
There are other pros and cons in the pusher arrangement. It

severely limits the CG range fore and aft. Yet, as Orville and Wilbur
learned, the propeller efficiency is improved because the air it

thrusts rearward doesn’t have to flow over the whole craft. The tail,
however, must be built ruggedly to withstand the higher blast
forces of the airstream.
Honeybee is not exactlyIFR equipped. It carries a hiker’s
altimeter and a Hall windmeter, mounted to the pilot’s right knee
with a Velcro band to avoid engine vibration.

86
Fig. 8-2. The Honeybee is another Klaus Hill design from Mountain Green
Sailwings in Morgan, Utah.

In its first winter of flight tests, between snow storms, Sinfield

got Honeybee up to 7200 feet and logged close to 10 hours flight

time. Not quite enough time, he feels, to offer plans for sale. But
sufficient to offer an information booklet showing construction de-
tails,component photos, address of engine, propeller, and other
parts suppliers, plus updating on Honeybee— which by now could
well be on its way as one of the newest of the breed. Send $5 to
Roland Sinfield, PO Box 513, Morgan, UT 84050.

The Hummer
The second new ultralight to appear at Morgan was the Hum-
mer (Fig. 8-3), Klaus Hill's newest design. Klaus started building
primary gliders in Germany 25 years ago. Among his earlier craft
were his Hobby sailplane, Fledgling hang glider, and the Super
Floater.

Fig. 8-3. The V-tailed Hummer is a graceful ultralight designed by the late Klaus
Hill.

87
 Hill got busy designing Hummer following successful flight
testing of Honeybee, which he worked on with Sinfield and Larry
Hall. In just three weeks he had Hummer humming all over the

mountain valley at Morgan, where it generated so much interest

that a number of local pilots kits. See Table 8-1.
ordered
Similar in construction to Honeybee, Hummer has a double-
surface wing, a V-tail, aluminum tubing fuselage, smaller, smoother
engine, a recoil starter for air restarts and an instrument panel with
a tachometer, ROC, airspeed and altimeter.
Powered with a 22 horsepower Chaparral snowmobile engine,
Hummer turns in considerably better performance than the lower-
powered Honeybee. It has a faster climb, better LD (10: 1), lower
sink rate, better penetration, less drag at high speeds and less
engine vibration— about like that of a J-3 Cub.
Klaus followed up his initial flight testing of Hummer with a
production run of 10 kits to be sold at $1800 each, complete with
engine and propeller. Hard-to-make parts are prefabricated, leaving
only the simple operations like drilling, pop-riveting and rigging to
the homebuilder. He felt that future kits will hold the price at that
level.

Says Sinfield: “We are continually learning new things, such as

the large changes in aircraft performance that result from small
changes in propeller design. Also, the greatest difference between
flying small airplanes and flying ultralights is the latter's unusually
slow airspeed. The first few flights may be shocking to the average
lightplane pilot, yet it is just this very slow flight speed that makes
these craft so enjoyable. Flying ultralights in turbulence is a chal-
lenge, one we do not recommend attempting.”
It was not a matter of turbulence, but of an apparent pitch
instability that took the life of Klaus Hill on a test flight of a new
ultralight, th eVoyager, on October 2, 1979. Originally, Voyager had
been built as an oversized hang glider with 40-foot wings for a
250-pound pilot who was not satisfied with its performance. Hill
took it back and began modifying it into a powered hang glider by
installing a Chaparral engine in tractor fashion. He put wheels on the
control bar and a tail wheel behind. It was similar in appearance to a
Pterodactyl and in taxi tests it worked fine. A harness was added to
protect the pilot from lunging forward into the propeller in case of a
crash landing. Finally, Hill decided to take it up.
The first flight, a low sortie, was successful. However, Hill’s

partner, Larry Hall, recalls it appeared to be a bit “squirrely.” On

the second flight, Hall remembers, Hill took off and climbed to

88
 Table 8-1. Hummer Specifications.

Wingspan 34'
Length 17'

Chord 51"
Wing Area 1 34 sq ft

Engine 22 hp ChaparralSnowmobile
Propeller Klaus Hill Special
Top Speed 50 mph
Cruise Speed 35 mph
Stall Speed 24 mph
Empty Weight 170 pounds
Gross Weight 340 pounds
Wing Loading 2.6 Ib/sq. ft
Power Loading 2.6 Ib/sq. ft
Load Factor +6 G’s calculated
Climb 250 fpm (at 5000')
Ceiling 8200'
Fuel Consumption 2 gph

roughly 200 feet altitude. It pitched down, recovered, then climbed

back and repeated the pitch oscillation in roller coaster fashion. Hill
apparently cut power at one point, then returned to full power in an
effort to stabilize the craft. On the third dive, the Voyager did not
recover— it struck the ground, killing the pilot.

Meanwhile, Hall elected to carry on the Mountain Green Sailw-

ing operationby producing Honeybee plans and kits. He can be
contacted at 771, Morgan, UT 84050. The Hummer, says Hall,
Box
was taken over by Dennis Franklin of RR 2, Glen Rock, PA 17327.

The Backstrom Flying Plank

For the past quarter-century, a talented aeronautical engineer
named A1 Backstrom has followed a dream— to design, build and fly

the ultimate inexpensive, easy-to-fly, self-launching sailplane. Now

that powered hang gliders have come along, a fresh look at the
Backstrom WPB-1 Plank (Fig. 8-4) is in order.
What Backstrom had in mind was not one of those things you
tuck under your armpits and rise to the occasion by running and
jumping into the air. The Plank is much much more.
You sit comfortably in the Plank’s reclining seat inside a
smoothly contoured cockpit. In Backstrom’s dream for a flying
Plank, a tricycle gear with permanently retracted mains, like in
other sailplanes, makes ground handling super easy. A pusher
propeller behind the tailless flying wing is driven not by rubber
bands, but by any one of many available two-cycle engines in the
10-horsepower range such as the Chrysler West Bend or the
McCulloch 101.

89
 Backstrom, a veteran sailplane driver, has described his con-
cept for a Self-Launching Plank Sailplane (SLPS-1) as his personal
solution to lower cost soaring with a light weight, semi-homebuilt
design that eliminates the expense of hiring a tow plane.
Self-launch also is made practicable by foot or hand launch from
ridge sites, he says, but he prefers the powered self-launch concept
where you drive off level ground into the sky in maybe 500 feet (sea
level) and climb like a homesick angel.
Described as phase II of the Auxiliary Powered Plank Sailplane
design, this version would have a span of 34 feet 8 inches and a
constant chord of 4 feet for a wing area of around 138 square feet. It

would have a length of 9 feet 6 inches, empty weight of 130 pounds

and a design gross weight of 370 pounds using a Mac 101 engine. It
would knock down into four pieces for trailing (three-piece wing plus
the pod) and would be built from wood and PVC foam/glass
sandwich materials.
Preliminary performance estimates by Backstrom called for a
rate of climb of 400-500 fpm (standard day, sea level) and with the
engine shut down an LD maximum of about 23: 1 or over 25: 1 as a

pure sailplane minus engine and propeller. What makes the Plank
different from other motor-gliders is its utter simplicity of design
and ultra-light weight.Backstrom built his first Plank in the 1950s,
with the help of two friends, Jack Powell and Phil Easley. In 1969, he
undertook design studies for a powered version. Construction got
under way in 1972 with the main work done by Van White, an EAA

official from Lubbock, TX.

Backstrom and White intended to install a Sachs
Initially,

Wankel or OMC snowmobile engine in the 20-horsepower range.

But when none was available, they settled for a Kiekhaefer
Aeromarine 440 fan-cooled, single-ignition, reciprocating pow-
erplant.
“Therecip feature sort of did us in, ” Backstrom said. That was
because such engines require shock mounting instead of hard
mounts like the Wankels use. The Kiekhaefer also was bigger and
too heavy.
White worked on the powered Plank for about two years, doing
the entire construction job on a 4 x 8 foot plywood work bench.
Initial taxi were made at Lubbock, where they
tests and short flights
found the power output critical. By means of some fancy exhaust
tuning, they got the rpm up to 5400. However, they found the Lake
injector carburetor required considerable adjustment.
More recently, Backstrom has installed a conventional car-
buretor. With a geared belt drive system, he got 6500 rpm at the

90
 ,

Fig. 8-4. Al Backstrom’s Flying Plank has a sleek look, an enclosed cockpit and
wingtip controls.

engine and 2500 rpm at the prop— a two-bladed, wooden 54/52

club.
Backstrom designed his own airfoil. It featured a rather heavily
reflexed trailing edge, a steep curve at the leading edge and a
thickness of 15 percent that was excellent for low speed flight.

When he first started working on the Plank design, Backstrom

took the position that something radically new had to be done to get
away from the early standard homebuilt designs which he called
“strictly adaptations of the simple light plane designs of the Twen-
ties and Thirties, modified for a 65-horsepower engine.”
From there, Backstrom said, EAA’s movement has progres-
sed from the early designs to sophisticated craft “that rival the
complexity of current production aircraft of the same weight categ-
”
ory.
In April, 1973, writing in Sport Aviation Backstrom expressed
the thought that it was about high time that “some of us in EAA
should look into the possibilities of really flyable ultralight airplanes.
These designs should be based on currently available materials and
equipment and not a rehash of what had been done in the past.”
The challenge has been met in various ways with the proliferat-
ing number of ultralight designs, particularly those using modern
composite construction materials and methods— fiberglass, Dynel
cloth and styrofoam blocks.
But Backstrom stayed with aluminum sheet, steel tubing and
Dacron fabric for covering in the Planks. He strove for ways to
make individual parts serve more than a single function in order to
save weight. Besides weight saving, his goal was to minimize drag,
hence the flying wing Plank design.

91
 “It would be of little use to build a light airframe and then use all

the power available trying to drag it up to flying speed, ” he said.

“Put your helmet and goggles back in the closet and forget the wind
whistling in the struts and wires. Drag items such as these can't be
”
tolerated in an airplane that is to fly on low power.
In the spirit of making parts do double duty, Backstrom went to
elevons for pitch and roll control, and drag rudders on the tip fins for
directional control. The tip fins were meant to provide some end-
plate effect to increase the effective aspect ratio as well as provide
better directional control stability.
Backstrom went to the constant chord wing because it was
simpler to build than a tapered wing. However, it did give a weight a
and drag penalty. After initially flying the Plank with two tandem
wheels, he decided on a trike gear arrangement. He also con-
templated changing the thrust line by lowering it since the effect of
power changes was quite noticeable.
In 1976, Backstrom made initial flight tests of the Plank with
the trike gear. At Oshkosh 77, he flew the Plank repeatedly in the
flyby pattern and attracted much interest among the thousands of
builders who had read about the Plank but had never seen it fly.

Next, Backstrom went to a two-place design with a staggered

side-by-side seating arrangement to cut down frontal area. He felt

the craft could easily tote two people. Unfortunately, Backstrom did
not plan on selling plans or kits because he was an FAA engineering
service representative for the Southwest region, it could be con-
strued as a conflict of interest.
Therefore, he put the Plank design up for sale and looked for
some group or individual to take over the design development and
kit production for his SLPS-1 Self- Launching Plank Sailplane.
Simplicity of the design is evident in the specifications. The
shoulder-mounted constant-chord wings have cambered tips and
tip-mounted fins and rudders, with identical ribs spaced at 6 inch
intervals. Leading edge is of molded plywood and the rest of the
wing fabric is covered and glued. Wing control surfaces are elevons.
The fuselage is built of tubular steel and fabric covered with
Dacron. Flush engine air-ducts are forward of the wing's leading
edge. Gear is the non-retractable tricycle type and the powerplant
is the Kiekhoefer Aeromarine 440, driving the two-bladed wooden
propeller as a pusher. Plank has a span of 21 feet 8 inches, a
constant chord of 4 feet 6 inches and a wing area of 97. 5 square feet.
Empty weight is 390 pounds, including a radio and battery. The
battery is used for ballast in the pod.

92
 Performance figures are: 109 mph maximum velocity, with a
takeoff speed of 50-55 mph and a climb of 400-500 fpm SL. Plank has
a charisma all its own and eye-stopper appeal that makes it not only
the predecessor to today’s ultralight movement, but suggests the
shape of things yet to come in the future of the homebuilt action.

93
Chapter 9

Very Light Planes

It's been called the moped, an airborne snowmobile and a

flying
sky-high trail bike. It’s so tiny its initial test pilot, 235-pound
Lowell Ferrand, had to go on a diet to fly it. But it’s one of the
earliest and more successful of the modern day fleet of ultralights
that sprang into existence after OPEC began sky-rocketing crude
oil prices.

The PDQ-2
Long before aerial sports began hanging McCulloch chainsaw
engines on their hang gliders, Wayne Ison’s PDQ-2 (Fig. 9-1) was
buzzing around Elkhart, IN like a mad hornet. After a few years of
showoff at Oshkosh’s annual EAA Fly-Ins, it has been accepted as a
tried-and-true, plans-built, do-it-yourself escape machine that gets
you airborne for under $1000.
PDQ-2 is a sort of strap-on flying machine with shoulder high
monoplane wings, a tiny tricycle landing gear and a pylon-mounted
JLO snowmobile engine that swings a two-bladed pusher propel-
ler. The propeller blasts air backward over a swept T-tail hung at

the end of a boom borrowed from a Bensen Gyrocopter. A 2-inch

square beam of one-eighth inch thick 6061-T6 stiffened with guy
wires is used.
The up front biting bugs at a maximum of around 80
pilot sits
mph, enough for sure for this kind of open-air aviating. PDQ-2
fast
climbs about 400 feet per minute on a cool day. Every pound counts

94
Fig. 9-1. Pilot Bill Jones flies his PDQ-2 over the Mojave Desert.

when you’re flying with a Rockwell JLO LB-60002 engine of some

40 horsepower or with an alternate VW engine.
A few PDQ-2 builders use off-the-shelf 6 gallon outboard
motor fuel tanks slung beneath the pilot’s seat. They are also
eyeing such other alternate powerplants as the BMW motorcycle
engine and the Hirth 280-R. “Any engine that can put out a
minimum of 36 horses at 70 pounds weight would work fine,” Ison
says.
While you should not consider flying the PDQ-2 in a
snowstorm or through a fogbank, it rates high as a VFR fun aircraft
that could be classed as a minnie recreational vehicle of the air.
Whatever you want to call it, PDQ-2 is a real flying doll, one I had
the pleasure of photographing from my Cessna 170 as flown by a
West Coast PDQ-2 builder, Bill Jones. It is not disrespect that
caused Jones to sell his PDQ-2, as well as a fine little Pietenpol Air
Camper, and switch to an Ercoupe recently. Fun is fun, but taking
the family flying puts the little beauty in a different category from a
family flivver.
Wayne Ison, designer of the original PDQ-2 who sells plans
and information kits ($5) from 28975 Alpine Lane, Elkhart, IN,
formerly was active in the go-kart craze. When that movement
became too sophisticated and expensive, he found a way to get back
to basics by forming a beginner’s category called “West Bend
Class— Bushings Only”. That was like going back to the old Soap
Box Derby days.
Success of the West Bend movement stuck in Ison’s mind
when he turned to flying for recreation. For a while, he flew a
restored Rearwin. Then he started to build a Bowers Fly Baby, but
neither effort really turned him on to a way to create a “West Bend
of the sky.”

95
 He scrounged around his garage, and being a sharp mechanical
engineer, started putting things together in his head. He had the
completed wings of his unfinished Fly Baby— he’d sold the fuselage
to a friend— and a VW engine in a corner. Ison got out his tools and
began getting his act together. The wings were joined to a bare-
bones fuselage consisting of a couple of booms that went back to the
tail. He sat up front with the VW engine virtually in his lap. It was

allgreat fun, driving it up and down the runway at Elkhart, and

mushing along in ground effect. The machine was given a name—
the PDQ-1.
Ison felt he was on the right track. By mid- 1973 a second ship,
PDQ-2, was finished. In a way it was even simpler than PDQ-1.
There was only a single tail boom sticking back from a vertical mast
and keel, which passed for the airframe. Everything else hung on
it. He paid a professional welder $20 to join the tubing to make it

lighter than if he’d used nuts and bolts and gusset plates. Cleverly,
he designed it so that two frame members joined at every stress
point.
The landing gear was designed around a chunk of 2024-T4
aluminum 30 inches long by 2 inches by one-half inch, bolted to the
frontend of the keel and carrying a short rudder bar at the front end.
For a nosewheel, he scrounged a 6-inch stock aircraft tailwheel.
The mains were a carryover from his early days— a pair of 5- inch
go-kart wheels with 3.40/3.00-5 double ply tires.

Jack Cox, editor of the EAA’s Sport Aviation, took one look and
shook his head. He quietly suggested to Wayne that he glue a layer
of brake lining to the soles of his shoes for ground control.
Ison next put the Fly Baby wings back in storage and designed
a new set made from Styrofoam bonded over plywood ribs at the
root and the tip of each panel, with another seven foam ribs in
between. He provided a set of four spruce spars— a one-fourth inch
thick leading edge spar, a one-half inch main spar and rear spar and
a one-fourth aileron spar.
The foam sheets, three-fourths of an inch thick by 4 inches by
8 inches, were cut with a saw roughly halfway through to allow
bending over the curved which were shaped to the NACA 63
ribs,
2 A 615 airfoil. The foam was covered with Dynel, bonded at the
edges and heat shrunk, with resin squeegeed into the cloth and
lightly sanded. Microballoons were applied next and low spots
filled with automotive putty before sanding and painting.
final

The ailerons were Dynel covered foam built

full-span, of
around a one-fourth inch thick spruce spar with inboard plywood
ribs and gussets. The tail feathers were similarly made.

96
 A curved stick throttle attaches to PDQ-2’s keel behind the
vertical mast and ends where the pilot can grip a motorcycle twist-
type hand throttle. It is spring-loaded to return the engine to idle if

released. The complete power train, including the JLO engine and
propeller, weighs 70 pounds. The direct-driven prop, a 44/17
design that delivers up to 180 pounds static thrust, was carved by
Ison.
Lowell Farrand, the test pilot, flew PDQ-2 in ground effect

until he got used to its feel. After a half hour’s fun on May 1, 1973,
he found himself flying — two feet off the deck. Initial runs proved
the nosewheel steering was super-sensitive and the engine a bit

under-powered. Ison redesigned the nosewheel steering.

“This redesign really saved me,” says Farrand. “I was enjoy-
ing flying PDQ-2 so much on takeoff I almost ran out of runway to
set her back down. So I’d slide around in a fast turn at the end of the
strip. It was then I realized how good that gear really was!”
At this time, says Farrand, he flew with starter, flywheel,
generator, exhaust stacks and a lot of other heavy items he didn’t
really need. “I was also overweight at 210 pounds and with my
leather flying jacket, helmet, and so on, I weighed in at 225 pounds.
We couldn’t have that, so I went on a diet.”
Later on, Ison lightened the engine weight and carved a new
prop with less pitch. The power came up to where it belonged and
Farrand was really eager to fly. “I didn’t tell them I was going for
high,” he recalls. “But away I went. Then— shortly after leaving
the strip, there was a bangl The linkage to one of the two car-
buretors came off,went through the prop and down through one
fuel tank into the wing. The engine kept on running smoothly, but
the rpms dropped off with the one carb out.
“I was over I could see a newly
a mile-square cornfield, but
cultivated bean field. If only I There was a row of
could reach it!

trees to get across, but I found a low place between two trees and
lined up for a landing with the rows. I was soaked in gasoline, which
was being sucked out of the top of the wing right onto my back. But
I made it across the trees and landed okay.”
The PDQ-2, he says, “is one airplane you can just pick up and
carry back to the airport.” With the carb linkage repaired, he was
off and flying again.
Ison kept on working on the wing design. One winter day
when the field was closed due to a blinding snowstorm, Farrand got
the PDQ-2 out and flew it down the runway about 10 feet off the
deck. He noticed something weird— the whirling snow flowed

97
forward around his body and the center section and then back at a
wide angle that put the wing in disturbed air. With this “flying wind
tunnel” demonstration as a guide, Ison found a simple solution to
the problem. He added inner end plates, or flow fences, at the roots
and the flying characteristics improved dramatically.
On the ground, PDQ-2 handles easily in a crosswind because
there’s no fuselage surface for the wind to blow on. The gear works
equally well on hardtop, grass, mud or snow, Farrand says. The
open framework also makes visual inspection simple and should
make a gyrocopter pilot feel right at home. The view from the pilot

position is the same.

On takeoff, comes up almost at the start of the roll and
the nose
liftoff occurs at 35 to 40 mph.Then you fly level to build up speed to
55-60 mph and climb out. “The landing is the greatest,” Farrand
says. “You just throttle back a little and come down where you want
to, then bring the nose up a little and its all so smooth you can’t

believe it. Again it’s that wonderful gear— set her down crooked and
whe straightens all by herself.”
The high pusher prop, he warns, is a good brake. Don’t throttle
down too much in flight “or you’ll kill your airspeed now. But it’s fun
to fly down into ground effect on your approach, then add power and
fly it a few feet off the deck right up to where you want to park. It’s

all so slow you think you could step off and walk faster than you’re
”
flying!

Bill Jones got into the act in 1974 when he bought himself a set
of PDQ-2 plans and had it all together by September, 1975 when he
made his first hop. He’d put on 78 hours of fun flying when I ran into
him at Mojave Airport north of Los Angeles. A former Rogallo hang
glider pilot, he’d simply decided he wanted to do more than just slide
downhill.

98
 Jones’ checkout in the PDQ-2 was about like Farrand’s first
hop. There he was on a high-speed taxi run when all of a sudden he
was airborne at the dizzy altitude of three feet. The Jones PDQ-2
has a wingspan of 20 feet, or 18 inches more than Ison’s prototype.
He has climbed to 5000 feet MSL over Mojave on a day when the
density altitude was 8000 feet. But if he’s abandoned the low-and-
slow regime for a store-bought machine, don’t worry— there’s a
plane for every pilot and vice versa. He’s had his fun, and you can
too, in a PDQ-2. Plans are available from PDQ Aircraft Products,
28975 Alpine Lane, Elkhart, IN 46514. See Table 9-1.

The Birdman TL-1A

The idea of flying like a bird has intrigued man since early
times. Leonardo da Vinci was among the first down on paper
to put
the mechanics of bird flight, but only recently have ultralight
aircraft designers and builders come close to realization of the old
dream. One such effort is the Birdman TL-1A (Fig. 9-2). The story
is related here by Jim Welling of Birdman Aircraft Inc., 480 Mid-
way, Daytona Beach, FL 32014.
Imagine a quiet Saturday morning. The breeze is barely rustl-
ing the fallen leaves. The fields are ablaze with the rising sun and a
lone dove silently and slowly glides along. As a witness, you slowly
become aware how awesome an experience this is. Your pulse
of
quickens as you realize how soon you will cease to be a witness, but
rather a participant.
Unhurriedly, you get out of your car and begin to assemble
your Birdman Aircraft. About 30 minutes later the last bolts have
been tightened and the safeties are in place. Leisurely you con-
clude your preflight and take your place in the cockpit. Satisfied

Table 9-1. PDQ-2 Specifications.

6”
Span 18'
Chord 42"
Airfoil NACA 63 2A 615
Wing Area 64.75 sq/ft
Wing Loading 6.5 Ib/sq. ft

Span Loading 22.7 lb.

Empty Weight 218 lb.

Gross Weight 421 lb.

Top Speed 80 mph

Cruise 70 mph
Rate of Climb 400+ fpm
Stall Speed 46 mph
Engine Rockwell JLC LB-600-2

99
with the response of your control surfaces, you set the throttle at
idle and start the engine.
Advancing the throttle, the aircraft begins to roll. In a second,
the tail is up and the sod beneath you begins to pass more quickly.
At a trot, your aircraft lightens and as it gathers speed you can't
keep it down. At 50 feet you begin a 180-degree turn. When you’ve
turned completely you once again survey the fields.

This time the dove is not alone.

Dreamlike? Perhaps, it might seem so. Yet this dream
at first,
was transformed by Emmett M. Tally III. In 1970
into a reality
Tally began the long and laborious task that was to end tragically
for him on May 3, 1976.
Tally dreamed of creating a machine that would enable man to
“fly like a bird. " He felt that the world of aviation was lacking an
aircraft capable of linking man and machine in a total expression of
flight. By February, 1975, he had succeeded partially with comple-

tion of his first prototype, a T-tailed version of the TL-1. How-

ever, because of its size and sluggishness, it did not satisfy his
dream.
Design and testing began almost immediately on a new pro-
totype. This time the aircraftwas to be ultralight and V-tailed. In
December, 1975, the Birdman TL-1 made its maiden flight during
what was meant to be a simple taxi test. The airplane yearned to fly
and Emmett had boyhood dream. He had created a
fullfilled his

machine for the purist— for those who enjoy the wind-blown exhil-
aration of an open cockpit and for those who have always longed for
the thrill and freedom of flying like a bird.
At the Sun’N Fun Fly-In at Lakeland, FL that winter, the
Birdman TL-1 was an unqualified success. By April, 1976, Emmett
had sold several hundred airplanes and was determined to show his
airplane to the world. He journeyed to California where, on May 3,
1976, he departed Corona Municipal Airport in the TL-1 for the
parking lot at the Anaheim Stadium. A big sport show was under
way there.
Upon arrival, he circled the lot three times to the left, then
reduced power on the last downwind leg. The aircraft initiated a

left turn at about 250 feet. Loud snapping and popping noises were

heard. The aircraft apparently inverted and pitched straight down.

National Transportation Safety Board accident investigators
Birdman TL-1 had experienced
of the fatal crash concluded that the
Whichever came first, the failure
structural failure of the left wing.
of the leading edge or the tail-feather attach points, the Birdman
was gone. And with it, Tally’s dream.

100
 Or was it? To revitalize an organization that had been inspired
by a man with a dream would be a tremendous undertaking. A new
prototype would have to be designed, tested, researched and
developed. To be fair to those who had shared Emmett’s dream, it
would be necessary to provide well over 200 airplanes. However,
the challenge was there and in June, 1976 the project began with
vigor.
First, a replica of the TL-1 was constructed, then shaken,
tested, broken and improved. Prior to any engineering changes,
the airframe was dynamically tested at four times the amplitude
modulation of our engine (14 hz-cps). The engineering numbers
were run through computers and at the higher frequencies they
occasionally approached yield points. But at no time did they near
ultimate or breaking points.
Yet this would not be enough. To insure the safety of the
airplane, there are now eight stringers running fore and aft— the
entire length of the tail cone. At the attach points of the tail feathers
to the tail cone there is now an external saddle patch which
distributes the aerodynamic loads from the tail feathers over sev-
eral bulkheads. Internally, bulkheads were added. Attached to the
bulkhead, stringers, and skin there is now a three-fourth inch by 1
inch by 4 inch laminated buildup of sitka spruce. The forward
tail-feather attach bolts now bolt through the buildup, skin and
saddle patch.
The original aircraft had uncovered styrofoam leading edges.
Therefore, became necessary to find a way to protect this critical
it

area. Two were discovered which, when applied to the

materials
foam, reduces all deterioration due to ultraviolet radiation. As a
bonus, this covering also added increased strength to the leading
edge and D-cell. Other substantial improvements include:

• A new tripod floating engine mount system which re-

duces airframe vibration by 98 percent.
• A new, spring-mounted landing gear.
• A new control box which combines pitch (elevators) and
roll (sequentially activated spoilers) control onto a single
stick. This device, which uses nylon and teflon through
2024 T3 channel aluminum, insures smooth stick opera-
tion in flight. These changes and others have kept the
people at Birdman rather busy. But after close to a year
spent in re-engineering the TL-1 A, a 1000-hour static
test was made.

101
 At 122 pounds, the new Birdman is much stronger than its

predecessor. It is designed to load factors of plus or minus 6 G’s.

Birdman TL-1A measures 19.5 feet from nose to its V-nail and 34
feetfrom wingtip to wingtip. It separates into four parts— wings,
center section and tail cone/mepennage— for easy transport.
Birdman TL-1A (Figs. 9-3 and 9-4) is sold in kit form complete
with the engine for $2,495. A color brochure is available for $5 from
Birdman Aircraft Inc., 480 Midway, Daytona Beach Regional Air-
port,Daytona Beacb, FL 32014.

The Windwagon
Small is beautiful, small is inexpensive and small is sheer fun!
These thoughts occur when you watch Gary Watson’s wonder-
ful little 273-pound Windwagon (Fig. 9-5) take off in gusty air, track

outbound stable as a far heavier aircraft and return to land like a

feather on its rigid tricycle landing gear. The gear is made from
simple tubular legs with no shocks other than the tires.

Gary got the idea for Windwagon after converting a VW Beetle

engine by sawing it in half, utilizing the best parts and scrounging a
different case that was in better shape. It is a real junkyard pow-
erplant that displaces about 900cc and delivers in excess of 30
horsepower.
Gary already had built and flown a Cal Parker Teenie Two. It

served as inspiration for much of the aerodynamic design to carry

the engine tractor-mounted. The engine has no electrical system.
It is fitted with a single Slick magneto and a Posa carburetor and not
much more. The gas tank holds four gallons.
In fitting the fuselage to the VW engine, Gary went the easy
route in building it small, building it light and building it simple.
The fuselage has a circular cross section. The bulkheads were bent
up over plywood form blocks with a plastic hammer. All bulkheads
fit in upright except the one that serves as the pilot’s back rest.

That one is slanted rearward to permit a semi-supine seating

arrangement. There are no compound curves involved— all the
fuselage skins are flat-wrapped.
Wind wagon’s wings are of constant chord using the Clark Y
airfoil, built in The center section carries the main
three sections.
gear and the two outer panels can be removed quickly and easily for
trailering. The spars are built up using strips of flat aluminum sheet
for the web and off-the-shelf aluminum angle bars for cap strips.
There is no bending required and the only tools needed are a pair of
2 x 4s, a pair of C-clamps, a plastic hammer, drill, bits, tin shears, a

102
Fig. 9-3. Leonard Roberts took over the Birdman project. He made it very safe
with a beefed-up tail and stronger engine mount. This version is called the

Birdman TL-1 A.

file and pop-rivet equipment. The control system is all pushrod

design.
A center mounted control stick is designed to prevent over-
control by ham-handed pilots on takeoff. The result is that Wind-
wagon is very stable in ground operation. This was evident when I
photographed Gary taxiing down the grass at Oshkosh’s Wittman
Field during a recent EAA Convention. His technique was good but
so was the Windwagon’s performance. It behaved like a much
bigger aircraft. This was proven on its initial test hop on April 19,
1977, a flight that took place in rough air and came off well.

Fig. 9-4. The new Birdman TL-1 A with a spoileron extended for roll control.

103
Fig. 9-5. Gary Watson’s Windwagon is an all metal ultralight with half a VW
powerplant.

According to Gary, the Windwagon wants to fly at 40 mph IAS

and easily at 45. Cruise speed is about 90 mph but it will hit
lifts off

100 mph easily with full bore. Approach speed is 55 mph, IAS
power off, and touchdown is around 40 mph. Gary initially used a
two-bladed, 50-inch propeller carved by a friend, Dick Bohls, but
later went to a 40-inch four-bladed Bohls prop, which provided
more ground clearance.
Today Gary sells plans for $50 and a brochure for $5 from
Route 1, Newcastle, TX 76372. His advertising reads:
“The amazing 2-cylinder VW Powered Airplane that people
are talking about around the world. With the looks of a Jet and more
fun than a Cub. Easily built and flown by beginners for pennies.”
Not an oversell— Gary spent a bit over $1200 on the pro-
totype. Today, more than a hundred Windwagons are under con-
struction around the world. A big incentive of course is the ready
availability of junked Beetle powerplants at low cost. Gary supplies
instructions for modifying them for aircraft use.

The Micro-IMP
Molt Taylor, who gave us the Taylor Aerocar, Coot amphi-
bian, IMP and Mini-IMP, has joined the ultralight movement with
something new— a “paper” plane he calls Micro-IMP (Fig. 9-6).
But let Molt tell it:
The prototype Micro-IMP has been designed to bring builders
a modern, efficient, easy-to-build featherweight light plane that
can be constructed by anyone reasonably handy with simple shop
tools. The Micro is constructed basically from glass-reinforced
paper. This new building material greatly simplifies construction
since it is easily cut, shaped, drilled, riveted, bonded, sawn,
sheared and finished.

104
 The material is readily available and is far less costly than
usual aircraft building materials. It is far easier to work with than
metal, wood or composites. We plan eventually to have a full kit of
all materials and parts to build the Micrcf-IMP.
A unique feature of the future kit will be that all parts that the
builder must fabricate will be printed full-size on the basic con-
struction paper. Therefore, the builder only has to cut the parts out
with a sharp knife, using a straight edge. Parts are then suitably
glassed using furnished glass fabric and resin. They are then joined
mainly by use of simple triangular wood battens and a hand staple
gun.The corners are then glassed with glass tape on both sides to
make beautiful, workmanlike corners and edges.
The kit will contain all instruments, hardware, engine, shaft
system, propeller, landing gear, canopy and the beautiful exterior
molded fiberglass skin. All structure is of the basic glass-
reinforced paper, including the boom, tail surfaces and wings.
tail

The wings are easily removable by one person and are so light that
they can easily be handled once they are off the fuselage.
Wind covering will be ripstop dacron, similar to that used in
many hang gliders, over the structural paper wing frames. The tail
surfaces are similarly framed and also covered with lightweight
fabric. This type construction is not only much lighter than metals
or glass-covered foam, but also is far easier to make and finish. The
reinforced paper is suitably protected from ultraviolet radiation in
sunlight prior to covering and painting with any colors desired.
Micro-IMP has many unusual and useful features not to be
found in other featherweights. An example is a fully retractable
landing gear. The retraction is achieved by a simple mechanism of
cables operated by a single handle in the cockpit. The landing gear
is positively locked in both up and down positions.
Another feature is its GA(PC) NASA airfoil which provides
full-span “flaperons” serving both as flaps and ailerons. These
surfaces are moved to a reflexed position for high speed cruise with
a simple cockpit control. The fully trimmable horizontal tail sur-
faces permit the pilot to obtain an optimum trim condition for any of
the infinitely variable wingflap conditions and give Micro-IMP
minimum drag for fantastic cruise performance on minimum horse-
power.
Micro-IMP is fitted with the Citroen 2CV engine normally
rated at 37 horsepower. However we are limiting the modified
engine to 3000 rpm redline and about 25 horsepower for aircraft
use. This engine will bum only 1.2 gallons of fuel per hour and

105
Fig. 9-6. Molt Taylor poses with his Micro-IMP.

Micro-IMP is equipped with a 7-gallon fuel tank built into the

structure.
The engine drive-line features the Taylor developed
Flexidyne dry fluid coupling. It has been FAA certificated in similar

shaft application for the past quarter century, as in the early

Aerocar, and eliminates any vibration problems. The Flexidyne
has been modified to permit hand-cranking through the shaft sys-
tem if desired. But a starter can be used along with an alternator.
The modified engine also is equipped with a condenser dis-
charge magneto type ignition system. uses no points or dis-
It

tributor. The new mags feature electronic spark retard for easy
starts and smooth idling. The ignition system is fully shielded for
good ratio reception and the solid state magneto gives an excep-
tionally hot spark for quick starts. In place of common spark plugs,
the engine uses surface gap igniters.
The four-stroke engine is extremely light and is completely
disassembled, magnafluxed and dye-checked prior to reassembly.
The crankshaft is modified for the output flange. The engine is tom
down and a special intake manifold and exhaust system is fitted

along with an injector-type carburetor featuring automatically

compensated adjustment for high-altitude operation.
A two-position propeller has been developed to give Micro-
IMP maximum optimum
takeoff and climb performance as well as
cruise. With an empty weight of only 250 pounds, Micro-IMP will

still equal the performance of a Cessna 152. A more detailed report

on actual performance will be available following completion of

106
flight tests with the first flying prototype, which should be in the air
by the time you read this.

The Micro-IMP is the pilot’s seat. It is

structural heart of
designed so that upholstery and arm rests are simply snapped in.
The flight control system of Mini-IMP, with the side controller,
rudder-vator mixer and flaperon systems, were further simplified
and lightened for Micro-IMP.
Due to its light empty weight compared with its useful load
(about 250 pounds), Micro-IMP has been fitted with high aspect
ratio wings (27 foot span, 3 foot chord). This, coupled with its

exceptionally clean aerodynamic configuration, is responsible for

its anticipated excellent flight performance.
We estimate the Micro-IMP Deluxe Kit will cost in the area of
$3,000, available in a progressive purchase plan. For further de-
tails contact M. B. (Molt) Taylor, Box 1171, Longview, WA 98632.
The Bi-Fly

On the West Coast, a fellow named Robert C. Teman has

come up with an interesting ultralight design he calls Bi-Fly (Fig.
9-7). Here is his report:
Bi-Fly took less than a year of weekends and evenings to
build, but several years were put into testing various configura-
tions and coming up with solutions to the many problems of a new
design. Safety, weight, cost and function had to be considered for
each part.
The one-dimensional fuselage structure is 6061-T6 X .090
wall aluminum tubing, 3 inch diameter, bolted together with
2024-T3 gussets. Although the simplest part, it was the most

Fig. 9-7. The Bi-Fly is a new biplane ultralight designed by Robert C. Teman of
San Diego.

107
 *

difficult to design since it fixes the location of all components— the

wings, seat, landing gear, engine and tail. This frame must also
transmit all primary loads.
All-flying empennage surfaces and four ailerons are conven-
tionally controlled with a yoke mounted on a pedestal and a rudder
bar.
Tricycle landing gear with a steerable nose wheel provides
good ground handling characteristics and is forgiving in landings.
The main gear has a rubber donut type compression suspension and
the nose wheel uses a coiled spring. A control pedestal is located
between the pilot's knees and provides a mounting for instruments
and controls.
An Onan 18-horsepower engine swings a 46 inch diameter by
26 inch pitch propeller at about 3200 rpm. The modifications to the
off-the-shelf engine were relatively simple. Thirty pounds were
pared from the 100-pound powerplant. The steel cooling shrouds
were replaced with a lighter version and the cooling fan was
removed along with the electric starter, governor and mufflers.
The flywheel was turned down for substantial weight saving. New
exhaust pipes were made. After 50 hours running, the engine
proved to be economical and reliable. Fuel consumption was run-
ning about 1.5 gph.
Taxi testing began on the first of the year 1979. The first flight
came as a surprise during a high-speed taxi run at 28 mph. A series
of short flights down the 4000-foot runway at Ramona was used to
determine flight handling.
The roll axis proved very stable, owing to the high dihedral
angle of 6 degrees 30 minutes. This was changed later to 3 degrees
in favor of less washout and more lift. Control is responsive but
rather slow.
The Bi-Fly will fly straight and track nicely without rudder
yaw adjustments. The rudder is sensitive to small movements
because of its location in the propeller slipstream. Gentle turns can
be made with rudder only by putting the aircraft into a slight yaw
and letting the outboard wing pick up automatically, aiding coordi-
nation in the turn.
The stabilator provides generous pitch control. But it is also
slow to respond because of the low flight speeds, in a 35-mph
cruise mode. Takeoff requires about 2 inches of aft yoke and power
landings can be flared neatly with about 4 inches aft yoke travel at
25 mph.
The Bi-Fly has at this writing undergone more than 10 hours
of logged flight time in preparation for expected FAA certification.

108
Fig. 9-8. The composite construction Quickie flies on an 18-horsepower Onan
engine and gets up to 100 miles per gallon.

Weight-saving improvements and design modifications are, of

course, on-going as in any new design. Upon completion of the
program,
flight test it is anticipated that construction plans will be
offered. See Table 9-2. An information package costs $5 and is

available from Robert Teman, 10215 Ambassador Ave., San

Diego, CA 92126.

Quickie
On August 4, 1978, a strange little biplane— or canard mono-
plane, depending on your point of view— called Quickie won the
coveted Outstanding New Design Award from the Experimental
Aircraft Association at their annual Oskosh convention. Reasons for

Table 9-2. Bi-Fly Specifications.

Description Experimental, Single-Place

Pusher Biplane.
Engine Onan 18-hp
Wing Modified Clark Y
Wing Construction Fiberglass Expoxy
Span 24' 3"
Area 124 sq/ft
Chord 31 " (Constant)
Stabilator All-Flying, 16 sq/ft
Rudder All-Flying, 10 sq/ft
Empty weight 235 pounds
Gross weight 500 pounds
Fuel Capacity 3.2 Gallons
Fuel Consumption gph
1.5
Takeoff roll 50 feet
1

Stall 25 mph
Top Speed 45 mph
Cost to Build Approx. $1700

109
the award were given as the pioneering work done on the Onan
engine together with an exceptionally efficient' aerodynamic design.
This combination permitted a iow-cost aircraft with top perfor-
mance for its horsepower.
Quickie reminds me of a dolphin playing in the
In flight,
sparkling waters of the Sea of Cortez, with agile leaps and
splashes. I followed it around the sky one day taking pictures and
noted that even its canard wing resembled the flippers of the sea
mammal.
Quickie Enterprises of PO Box 786, Mojave, CA 93501, con-
sists of two inspired fellows named Gene Sheehan and Tom Jewett.
They decided to build an ultralight aircraft around the rugged little
four-stroke, direct-drive Onan engine that operates at a relatively
high rpm (3600) continuously. It is used primarily in such applica-
tions as recreational vehicle generators. Stripped for flying, the
Onan weighs only around 70 pounds and has an overhaul require-
ment of about 1000 hours.
Jewett got the idea of converting the Onan to aircraft use,
because it had more than a million sales to back up its reliability
factor. Though a bit heavy for its power output, it became a

challenge to design an aircraft to match it. The pair turned to Burt

Rutan, designer of such exotic composite aircraft as the Var-
iViggen, VariEze and Defiant. Rutan got busy and worked out a
design to offer good performance and construction simplicity with
an empty weight of 240 pounds.
Rutan went to the tractor/canard/tailles concept to put the
pilot right on the center of gravity and combined the canard and
landing gear to offer low drag and less weight. The canard carries a
full- span elevator/flap system with inboard ailerons on the rear main

wing. The tailwheel fairing substitutes for an aerodynamic rudder.

On November 15, 1977, after 400 manhours work, Burt, Tom
and Gene all test flew the prototype Quickie at Mojave Airport.
They logged 25 hours on it in the first month. With the design
frozen and proven, Rutan went back to work on his Defiant and
other projects. He stepped out of the Quickie program to help
VariEze builders with their projects.
Flight characteristics of Quickie were good— little adverse
yaw, good stall recovery and improved visibility. Hands off flight is

stable, even in rough air. Takeoff is unique— there’s no rotation.

With full aft stick or neutral stick Quickie just levitates. With full
forward stick, the tailwheel lifts at 50 mph. But you have to get the
tail back down a bit to fly. Fast taxiing is fun with no groundloop

110
 Table 9-3. Quickie Specifications.

Engine 18 hp Onan
17'
4”
Length
16'
8"
Wingspan
Total Wing Area 50 sq/ft
Empty Weight 240 lb.
Gross Weight 480 lb.
Useful Load 240 lb.
Baggage Capacity 30 lb.
Fuel Capacity 8 gal.

Cockpit Length 64"

"
Cockpit Width 22
Takeoff Distance (SL) 660 Feet
Landing Distance (SL) 835 Feet
Stall Speed (power off) 53 mph
Stall Speed (power on) 49 mph
Top Speed 127 mph
Cruise Speed 121 mph
mpg at 100 mph 85
Normal Cruise Range 550 sm
Rate of Climb (SL) 425 fpm
Service Ceiling 12,300 Feet

tendency due to the wide gear trend. The mains are at the outer
ends of the canard.
Construction is basically of sandwich type using high strength
fiberglass and a foam core. No expensive molds or tools are
needed. Building time runs about half that of a VariEze. Tom and
Gene flew their prototype Quickie back to Oshkosh from Mojave,
taking turns over two and a half days, covering 2025 miles in about
19 hours and averaging 65. 1 miles per gallon. Total fuel cost was
only $30.
A number of other homebuilt Quickies are now flying. Kits are
available including engine and electrical system in an incremental
program with prices starting around $3000. See Table 9-3. Plans
are available for $150, and an information pack for $6. The address
is Quickie Aircraft Corporation, PO Box 786, Mojave, CA 93501.

Ill
 »

Chapter 10

The Flying Bathtub

In 1931 the nation was still reeling from the shock of the Great
Depression. Gasoline was 7 cents a gallon and sirloin steak was 23
cents a pound. Few people had enough loose money to send a letter
by airmail. Nevertheless, the country was air-minded and Henry
Ford saw a golden opportunity to put an airplane in every garage. An
inventor named Harry Brooks induced Henry to pour a bunch of
shiny new dimes into a tiny low- winger that promptly was called the

% Ford Flying Flivver. But it crashed, killing Brooks. Ford went back
.
to making Model Ts.

Ramsey’s Tub
The idea caught on, though. A whole bunch of pocket planes
appeared briefly— the Alexander Flyabout, the Curtiss Junior, the
C-2 Aeronca and an unbelievable flying machine called the Ramsey
Flying Bathtub. Plans appeared in the 1931 and 1932 editions of the
Flying and Glider Manual, granddaddy of all current periodicals
devoted to homebuilts.
The Ramsey Bathtub did not make a clean sweep of America’s
skies,much as we’d like to believe, but a few handy farm boys did
get Tubs flying. They had two side-by-side seats with a joystick in
between. There were two sets of rudder pedals, but the heel
brakes were hooked up only to the outboard pedals— left and right.
In the event of an incipient groundloop, say to the left, the pilot
would lean over and shout: “Okay, Charley! Push with your right
heel!’’
Time marched on, the Depression ended and folks got to flying
bigger, faster and more expensive airplanes as World War II broke
out. The Ramsey Tub was forgotten. In 1969, a couple of college
students in Gilroy, CA working for their airframe and power plant

112
licenses, saw a copy of the F lying and Glider Manual on the desk of
their instructor, Moe Mayfield. The students, Jonathan Teeling and
Jose Gonzales, knew right away that would be their dream ship.
They got busy building it at the Gavilan Cbllege aeronautics depart-
ment at Hollister Airport. By 1971 it was ready to fly.
They’d made a few changes in the interest of survival and
added a Revmaster 1834cc VW conversion for power. Their Tub
weighed 550 pounds empty and 910 pounds loaded with Jon and Jose
flying. They played around the California countryside for a while,

until Teeling got a job as an FAA traffic controller in Panama. The

Tub went into Jose’s garage in Fairfield. Only recently, withTeeling

back home, did they begin to resurrect their toy.
Meanwhile Bob Said, an aviation writer, looked up Teeling and
Gonzales to do a story and that caught the eye of a fellow named
Ellis Moncrief, in LaGrande, OR. Moncrief contacted Teeling and

Gonzales and then wrote to the Experimental Aircraft Association

to get a reprint of the 1932 Flying and Glider Manual.
He spent a couple of years building most of it, but a job change
forced him to put his unfinished Tub in storage. Enter G. Irvin
Mahugh, a civil engineer with the U.S. Forest Service. A family man
with five children and an aeronautical background at Boeing,^
Mahugh had worked as test director on the 737 certification prog-
ram and conducted flight tests of an automatic instrument landing
system for the Boeing SST that was never built.
Mahugh was in LaGrange coordinating work on some new fire
bombers, when he bumped into Moncrief. “Wanna buy a Ramsey
Flying Bathtub?” Ellis asked.
“A what?” Mahugh replied, thinking maybe it was a joke.
Moncrief showed him snapshots of the work he’d done— a complete
fuselage and empennage all ready for covering, with a basket case
Continental A-75— all for $1500. Mahugh checked Trade-A-Plane
and learned that the engine alone was worth that kind of money.
In February 1977 Mahugh got busy rebuilding the engine, with
a new set of piston rings that came by mail. Carefully and thoroughly
he rebuilt the engine and uprated it to 85 horses. Then came the big
dream— he and his son Jim would fly it all the way from their home at
Baker, OR to the big EAA Fly-In at Oshkosh in the summer of 1978!
There was plenty of work remaining— making the metal cowl-
ing, engine cooling baffles and shrouds, design and fabrication of the
brake system, plus adding a wooden turtleback fairing over the
baggage compartment. In April, the first shipment of aircraft spruce
and plywood arrived and father and son got busy building a Piper J-3

113
wing with the same planform as the Ramsey wing. They needed
extra lift to carry the beefed-up fuselage and more powerful engine.
Mahugh went to the Clark Y airfoil and built a full-size 63-inch
rib jig, with truss braces and spar spacing following the J-3 rib

pattern. Truss braces and gussets were kept to a uniform size for
ease of building, with each piece numbered and put together like an
assembly line production. The gussets were stapled to spruce
capstrips, with all wood joints glued with Aero-Lite glue. The
staples were removed when the glue dried. All sharp edges were
sanded down and the finished ribs coated with polyurethane var-
nish.
Compression struts consisted of three-fourth inch x . 049 inch
tubing of 4130 steel with .063 inch plates welded to the ends. Drag
wires were of 0. 125 inch semi-hard piano wire, looped around cable
thimbles at each end. Metal fittings were cut from raw 4130 sheet
and tubing stock. Spars were the same size as J-3 spars and made
from Sitka spruce. By September 1977, both wings were ready for
inspection. Ed Elder, from the Portland FAA GADO, looked them
over and signed them off for covering. Press of other matters
slowed the project until January, 1978, when Mahugh made the
mistake of attaching the leading edge metal on a cold day. This made
it change shape later. Now, when he flies the Tub in warm weather,
the sheet metal “oil cans” between the ribs and makes the airfoil a

bit wavy.
By March, they'd begun to skin the Tub with 2. 7 ounce Dacron
bonded with Fab-Tac cement, with the help of Bud Bailey. They
tried to rush the job but, says Mahugh, the old saying, “The hurrier
you go, the behinder you get,” held true. Once he dropped the
spray gun smack onto a freshly painted aileron and had to do the job
over.
Dreams of making the daring flight to Oshkosh faded until
Mahugh learned that the FAA had relaxed its policy of requiring 50
hours to be flown in a local flight test area prior to leaving cross-
country. The FAA lifted the restriction after only 25 hours, because
of the certificated engine.
Mahugh tied the Tub's tail to a neighbor’s fence post behind the
garage and began the engine runup. By May 8, a pretty day, he was
ready to move it to the airport and into a large hangar owned by Jim
Hanley, rent free. Mahugh and his wife worked until 2 a.m. getting
the plane ready for Les Briggs, an
flight. Finally, FAA
inspector,
stopped by for a look. He found only one thing wrong— an aileron
pulley guard installed inside the cockpit needed more clearance.
Five minutes of work with a rattail file fixed the problem.

114
Fig. 10-1. The Ramsey Bathtub was a popular ultralight in 1932. Irvin Mahugh
built this replica.

Next came more ground runups and taxi tests that proved the
plane handled fine on the ground, despite the close-coupled tail-

wheel. The center was located at 33% instead of 25%

of gravity
mean aerodynamic chord, but a few slow flights off the runway
revealed no unusual flight problems.
By May 15, after a rainy spell, the decision was go. The
Mahughs stopped by school to pick up the children and in-laws
arrived from Seattle for the big event. Says Mahugh, “After one last
low, slow pass up and down the runway, I decided to go aloft. Liftoff

from runway 34 was most exhilerating half hour

at 9:27 a.m. for the
of my life. What a thrill! Thank God, dreams can come true!”
The flight testing called for a few minor changes. A left wing
heaviness was corrected with lift strut adjustment and addition of a
rudder trim tab. The wooden 74/78 propeller he’d installed was a
poor match for the draggy open framework and only turned to 2100
rpm. Antique buffs were shocked when he switched to a metal prop,
72/38, but it turned up okay and helped shift the center of gravity
forward a bit.

On to Oshkosh
By mid-July, Mahugh had the Tub all cleaned up and
(Fig. 10-2)
ready to fly to Oshkosh with son Jim. At dawn on July 22, they
headed for Idaho Falls, with a gas stop at Gooding, ID. Mrs.
Mahugh and two daughters raced along behind them in the family
car. Despite headwinds, the Tub averaged 72 mph ground speed.

They got into Idaho Falls a good two hours ahead of the gals.
From there they headed north, climbing the Tub to 7500 feet
to cross the Continental Divide near West Yellowstone. They flew
down the Madison River Valley to Bozeman, MT where Mahugh

115
 *

had gone to college. Clear skies and a brisk tailwind the next
morning helped the Tub along as Mahugh and son wound through
the Big Sky country. Following mountain passes, they made stops
at Roundup, Glasgow and Fort Peck, where the pilot had lived as a
boy and where he’d first soloed a PA- 11, 28 years before.
Eastward across the flat Dakotas and into Minnesota’s lake
country they flew, wide-eyed at the beauty of America as seen over
the rim of their Bathtub. At Olivia, a friendly mechanic helped fix a
broken cowl clip over the number four cylinder and wouldn’t charge

a cent.They finally rendezvoused again with the gals at Winona and

spent the night at a KOA campground. The next day they flew off for
the final lap to Oshkosh.
The was a huge success, the more so when their Tub
Fly-In
won a big prize— the Vintage Aircraft Outstanding Replica Award.
Itwas there I met Mahugh and son and took some photos. When the
day ended Mahugh headed west. The return flight was routine with

only one weather hold. Mahugh flew the Tub back alone, leaving Jim
to visit relatives in Ohio with the gals.

The Wier Draggin’ Fly

There I was at 1000 feet over the green countryside, rain

spattering my face in a cold shower while I aviated around the sky in
a crazy machine that is fondly called a flying bathtub. All I needed
was a cake of soap and the lung power to sing lyrics into the wind
like; “Off I go, into the wild blue yonder!”
Courtesy of Ronald D. Wier, former president of EAA Chapter
14 in San Diego, I was having myself a ball flying the nearest thing to
Amos N’ Andy’s old Fresh-Air Taxi Cab. Officially it’s called the
RDW-2, Serial No. 1, and otherwise known as the Wier Draggin’
Fly (Fig. 10-2). But it’s much much more!

Aerial Simplicity

Now with a new owner, near Los Angeles, the Draggin’ Fly is

aerial simplicity itself— one of the first of the Microlights. It has a

wing to hold you up, a VW engine to make it go, a tail to steer with, a
funny tub-like place to sit, one magneto switch, one go-lever, a
push-pull carb heat control and a stick and rudder. Beyond that,

nothing much except a tricycle gear of three go-kart wheels to taxi

around on and a few rudimentary gauges to tell how high is up, how
fast (or slow) you’re moving, whether you’re slipping or skidding,
and whether the engine room is functioning. Trim tab? Who needs
it? Brakes? What for? Radio? Why talk when you can sing?

116
Fig. 1 0-2. Ron Wier’s Draggin’ Fly has tricycle landing gear, a tractor powerplanl
and it can fly at 60 miles per hour.

I did a double take the first time I saw the Wier Draggin’ Fly. I

became completely fascinated when I watched Ron Martin, a local

certified flight instructor, driving down Ramona Airport with a big
grin and go screaming off clawing for altitude. Another happy chap
standing nearby with a big EAA patch on his jacket wandered over,
and introduced himself as Ron Wier.
Ron Wier is the kind of guy who belongs singing in a bathtub,
pardon the metaphor. A tub with wings yet, a fun loving guy who
simply did what most of us would like to do but never get around
to— giving wings to our imagination with fabric, wire, tubing and a
run-out auto engine.
I asked Wier how long it would take to draw up the plans. I was
mentally figuring how I’d hook up a Honda to an ironing board and go
sailing through the nearest TCA screaming beep! beep! beep! to clear
the area of big stinky jetliners.
“Hah,” Ron replied. “What plans? There weren’t any. Only
”
drawing I did was for the rib jig. Eyeballed the whole darned thing!
When I raised an eyebrow, my left one, Ron admitted he’d
been just a little bit influenced by that funny old flying machine from
back in the Roaring Twenties— the Ramsey Flying Bathtub.
kept seeing these new Volkswagen conversions
“I
everywhere,” he went on. “I’d done some work for Ladisalao
Pazmany and Bud Evans, on their PL-4A and VP-2 machines, but I
wanted something real different. So I dug out an old manual and
flipped through the pages until my eye caught the Ramsey design.
That was it— why not modernize it?”
The Ramsey Flying Bathtub might not be as well known around
airports as the Cessna 152 or Piper Cherokee, but once you’ve seen
one you’ll never forget it. It has a boat-shaped single-holer with an

117
Evinrude outboard motor up front and a converted OX- 5 water
pump hooked up to a water radiator.
The Draggin’ Fly, of course, doesn’t need a water pump or a
VW engine is air-cooled. At first Ron stuck in a
radiator since the
tiny 36-horsepower VW engine. But after eight hours of trying to
get off the ground at a gross weight of 450 pounds on a hot day, he
went to the bigger 1600cc engine.
That turned the trick. The gross rose to 680 pounds with the
replacement engine and some other modifications plus a full tank of
gas and a 170-pound driver. She really flew! Ron left the newer
engine as stock as possible but added a Ted Barker propeller hub
and carved his own mahogany in just three
club out of a chunk of
days. Being semi-retired after 19 years as a Dunn & Bradstreet
stock analyst and two years as a Lt. j.g. aboard a Navy carrier, he
had the time and the background for the big challenge— getting a
bathtub to fly.

“I used to hangar fly a lot with Navy jocks and I learned a lot of
aerodynamics that way,” he recalled. His self-education including
much reading of books on airplane design. Finally, he got busy and
built himself a Stits Skycoupe. Ron started flying at 14, bootlegging

some J-2 time and went on flying on a private ticket, to hell with the
ratings. He considers flying a fun pasttime, not a chore.
What he really had in mind, though, was something simple to
easy to land and drive on the ground, and ultra-safe. With the
fly,

Ramsey Tub in the back of his mind, he looked up the shape of the
Piper Cub wing— a USA 35-B airfoil— which was renowned for its
gentle stall and excellent low-speed characteristics. From there he
was on his own.
Starting at the bottom, he decided on a trike gear for easy
ground baby buggy. Up front, he made the nose wheel
driving, like a
steerable and shock mounted. He bought three go-kart wheels 10 —
and one-half inch diameter 3.50 by 4.00s with no brakes. He did
install a friction parking brake on the front wheel only.
fit him, Ron began welding up
After shaping the bathtub part to
a bunch of chromoly tubing that stretched back to hold up the tail.
Both aileron and rudder action was linked by push-pull rods, with
cables running back to the rudder. The open framework left most of
the control system exposed, excellent for pre-flight inspection-
utter simplicity winning out. The fuselage part was assembled on
the floor of the Wier garage. Ron simply drew himself a chalk line on
the floor and filled it in with one-inch tubing left over from an old
Waldo Waterman Wright Flyer project.

118
 The wing and tail surfaces were all fabric covered
fuselage,
with 2.7-ounce Dacron glider cloth. Wing spar was made from
three-fourth inch spruce plank, the rib cap strips from one-fourth
inch square spruce and the ribbing of one-fourth inch ply. The
engine installation is such that you don't have to wrestle the
cowling off to change the oil— there isn't any cowling.
To fancy things up a Ron stuck on a curved windshield of
bit,

unbreakable Lexam, a DuPont product. Beyond that, you're on

your own in fresh air sitting at midchord under the parasol wing.
Looking left and right, you can see the ailerons stretch out full
span. When you open the throttle to go, you feel the flippers go
solid and effective with gentle pressures on the short stick.

The ease of control is the surprising thing about flying Drag-

gin' Fly— a responsive roll rate, good elevator action and plenty of
rudder. There's no buffet and the stall is Cub-like. It has a break
straight ahead with no roll-off tendency.
“Fly her wide open all the way!" Ron yelled over the bark of
the engine when I taxied out to the runway. I nodded. The tach
wiggled around 3300 rpm and stayed there. The airspeed needle
hung between 60 and 70 mph on climb, cruise and letdown. At
Ron's further suggestion, I left on about half carb heat due to rain
and low temperatures that were the order of the day and I used a
power approach.
I did try a couple of power-off stalls at altitude, got a clean
break 35 mph indicated airspeed and I felt there'd be no problem
at
on landing. There wasn't— I simply flew it onto the deck at 60 mph,
chopped power and slowed to a stop, all in maybe 200 feet. That
convinced me— here was the nearest thing to riding a motorbike
with wings. A compact little job with a span of 24 feet 5 inches with
a 54-inch chord (including 6 inches of aileron), 110 square feet of
wing area, a length of 17 feet 5 inches, height to tip of rudder 6 feet
8 inches and a gross weight of 680 pounds.
Though Ron’s Draggin' Fly has since been sold to a couple of
happy chaps in the Los Angeles area, Ron still sells sets of plans for
$20 per set prepaid. Interested? Drop him a line at: Ron Wier, 6406
Burgundy, San Diego, CA 92120.

119
 1

Chapter 1

STOL Aircraft

“Charley, would you please fly up to the roof and check the shing-
les? I think I heard a reindeer walking around up there last night!”
Far-fetched? Maybe— but you never know what the future
holds for some of the wild contraptions builders are coming up with
in the ultralight field. Like a new “hang helicopter” recently de-
veloped by a veteran helicopter designer, Webb Scheutzow, of
Berea, OH. It is a device he calls a “treetop” one-man helicopter
that is foot- launched. Scheutzow says that it “perhaps opens en-
tirely new vistas in sport aviation, as well as in practical applica-
tions.”

The Stork
Stork is name given the long-legged ultralight
the appropriate
(Fig. 11-1) Scheutzow developed after some 25 years as an active
member of the American Helicopter Society. He also developed
the FAA Certificated Scheutzow Model B Helicopter and a number
of other exciting whirlybirds.
“Stork is controlled by weight-shift,” he explains. “You might
call it a ‘hang-helicopter.’ A first of a kind. Powered by a snow-
mobile engine, it employs a type of main rotor with special gyro
stability qualities. It is foot-launched, like a hang glider, but into a
hover attitude.”
Scheutzow points out, “although many attempts to build a
successful back-pack helicopter have foundered, I made a technical

120
Fig. 11-1. Webb Scheutzow’s Stork is an ultralight, foot-launched helicopter
designed in 1979.

study of the requirements for this type of helicopter. My conclu-

sions were that if we are to have a successful helicopter of 70 or 80
pounds, the engine must weigh not more than 12 to 15 pounds and
have a rating of 20 horsepower. And there is no readily available
engine of this kind.”
Nearest thing to this requirement, he says, is the Herbranson
RPV engine, which is expensive and not readily available for
helicopter use. Expanding his study further, Scheutzow learned
that during the 1950s several successful single-place helicopters
were 30 to 40 horsepower bracket, with empty weights
built in the
in the range of 275 to 400 pounds. These light choppers had been
built in a Marine Corps competition and were referred to as “rotor-
cycles.” Three examples are the Hiller XROE-1, the Goodyear
Gizmo and the Del Mar Whirly Mite.
The Scheutzow Stork development fits between the rotorcy-
cle and the back-pack helicopter categories. It is similar in size and
power to the rotorcycle, but has a considerable lower empty
weight and foot-launch capability compared to the back-pack con-
cept.
Stork is designed to carry a maximum useful load of 250
pounds, but is not power-limited and could prove capable of lifting a
heavier load, the designer says. Final gross weights will be deter-
mined on the basis of safe handling characteristics proven in a
rigorous flight test program that had not yet been completed at this
writing.

121
 Design considerations for the Stork include:

• Weight-shift control.
• Ability to hover by partially loading the rotor and, like a
hang glider, learning its handling characteristics by
“ground flying.” Long fiberglass skids, which are re-
movable, function like bicycle “learning wheels.”
• Important weight savings derive from its being foot-
launched and landed.
• The FAA does not require formal licensing of foot-
launched aircraft or their pilots at this time. However,
that could change in the future.
• During the past five years, thousands of people have
learned to use control hang gliders by shifting weight.

Stork’s main rotor has two blades mounted “rigid-in-plane.”

The blades are mounted on offset flapping hinges with a “delta-
three” angle. This provides automatic pitch control for both
power-on and power-off autorotation flight and also provides a
“flat-tracking” rotor. There is very little change in rotor attitude
during gust conditions, says Scheutzow.
The dynamics of Stork’s configuration provide for stable,
long-period motions suitable for weight-shift control. The control
bar has twist-grip throttle control for the hand and tail-rotor
left

pitch control for the right hand. An arrangement is made so that the
two can be synchronized or controlled separately. Patents have
been filed covering all the Stork’s new features.
“The Stork,” says Scheutzow, “is truly a low-cost
helicopter— something that many have attempted previously, but
which no one, including myself, has until now delivered. Poten-
tially, a quality assembly kit for Stork can be produced and market

at motorcycle prices.”
Webb Scheutzow’s helicopter career goes back to 1944 with
Kellett Aircraft in Philadelphia. There he contributed to the en-
gineering design of the twin-engine transport helicopter— the
first
XR-1. Subsequently he was employed at Hiller Helicopters in Palo
Alto, CA where he participated in design and engineering of the
original overhead stick “A” Model H-23. After 11 years as a test
and development engineer with General Motors’ Cadillac Division,
he formed his own company and developed the Scheutzow Model B
utility helicopter.
The Model B got its FAA Type Certificate in 1976. In 1977,
the Scheutzow Helicopter Corporation was sold and moved to

122
Texas. Since then Scheutzow has turned to design and develop-
ment of ultralight aircraft. An earlier project, the homebuilt Hawk
90 and Hawk 140 helicopter program, also has been shelved. Stork,
his latest project, looks like a real winner because of all the current
interest in ultralight aircraft. An information kit on Stork is availa-
ble for $6 U.S. ($7 foreign) from Webb Scheutzow, 451 Lynn
Drive, Berea, OH 44017.

The Beta Bird

Some guys just aren’t happy to let well enough alone. They
come up with a great idea for a flying machine, and sell build it, fly it

thousands of sets of plans to happy homebuilders the world over.

Then suddenly they make a phone call, like one I recently got:
“Don, hurry up to Mojave Airport this weekend! You gotta see my
new bird fly!”
I recognized the voice as that of Bob Hovey, the aerospace
engineer who took time off back in 1970 to design the delightful
little Whing Ding, maybe the world’s smallest ultralight biplane
(Fig. 11-2).
It is a fun little job that weighs only 123 pounds before you fill

itup with gas. This open-air pusher can go 50 miles per hour on a
calm day.
I wrote a magazine report on Whing Ding and the response

was overwhelming. Bob said he sold some six thousand sets of

plans at $20 a set. He also used more of his spare time to write
several books, on how to make propellers, how to design a ducted
fan and how to run stress analyses on all sorts of ultralights.
It was no surprise to hear that Hovey had done it again and
come up with a new design he called the Beta Bird. It weighs 405

Fig. 11-2. Bob Hovey’s Whing Ding biplane is popular. More than 6000 sets of
plans have been sold.

123
pounds dry, a bit heavier than Whing Ding,, and it only has one
wing. The engine is a converted 1385cc VW that puts out around 45
horsepower, swinging a 54-inch diameter prop with a 24-inch
pitch.
“Carved it myself!” Bob said proudly. “Followed directions
right outa my propeller book!”
So what’s a Beta Bird?
The name seems a bit premature. Or at least incongruous. It
refers to a special propeller that Hovey was still working on, which
was not included in the initial set of plans. It would be big, with
maybe an 80-inch diameter, and controllable— though not
constant-speed. The idea is to maximize Beta Bird’s low-speed
performance to give it an amazing versatility as a short takeoff and
landing aircraft that you can operate off a dime, or at least a quarter.
The idea for Beta Bird (Fig. 11-3) came to him after learning
that Whing Ding had proven highly popular, not as a toy but as a
workhorse he should have called Pegasus. Farmers
practical flying
loved to use it up cattle. In
for checking the south forty, or rounding
Australia, the outbackers were really turned on by the idea of
having a small, inexpensive, easy-to-build and easy-to-fly aircraft
they could fly low and slow while counting koalas in the acacia
wattles, chasing kangaroos or whatever they do down under.
What they really needed, Hovey decided, was a more practical
plane that could fly more easily
better than a mile a minute, handle
and have all that good short takeoff and landing (STOL) stuff. To
achieve the latter, he decided on full-span “drooperons”— a word
he coined to explain their dual function as ailerons and flaps. Hovey
designed a neat mixing setup where the control stick wiggles the
ailerons differentially and a manual lever on the left side of the seat
operates the full-span surfaces together as droopy flaps.

The drooperons have a wide chord of 14.5 inches, or 34.6

percent of the wing’s 3. 5-foot full up position they are
chord. In the
aluminum tubing and fabric covered of
nicely faired. They’re built of
13 percent thickness. Beta Bird’s central pylon structure and em-
penage are both of simple aluminum sheet construction that is
pop-riveted to aluminum tubing. The two are connected by a two-
inch aluminum boom.
Although the pusher engine (a McCulloch 101) of the Whing
Ding is mounted high with the thrust line behind the trailing edge of
the upper wing, Hovey mounted the VW powerplant on Beta Bird
below the single wing. The thrust line is roughly behind the pilot’s
head position. This blows the slipstream nicely back over the

124
vertical tail’s 8.3 square feet of surface. Horizontal tail surface area
is about twice as large— 17.8 square feet. Elevator travel is 25
degrees up and down.
The pilot sits up front with all the world to look at through rose
colored glasses or a windscreen. He found the most comfortable
cruise speed to be an easy 60 mph, although it will do 70 mph wide

open with the VW shaft and prop both turning at 3800 rpm.
When Hovey installed the windscreen he ran some unusual
“tuft” tests by attaching a feather to the end of a long stick and
holding it forward of the craft as he flew, moving it from side to
side. He found that the airflow separated around the windscreen in
a sort of laminar fashion and then came back together behind the
pilot.

When Beta Bird’s beta prop is installed, it will be controllable

with a lever on the instrument panel and have a choice of several
pitch selections— according to Hovey’s thinking. These will run
from flat pitch to takeoff, to cruise and reverse on flareout in order
to permit a zero-speed landing.
On takeoff, the beta prop should wind up from 4500 rpm in flat

pitch and zero thrust, with the pilot smoothly adding pitch to the
blades as required for an accelerated launch. The prop will be
geared to the engine with a belt drive running off a jackshaft. This
way the propeller can turn more slowly and keep the tip velocity

subsonic.

A Simple Ultralight

As part of the ultra-simplicity of design and construction, Beta

Bird uses stock wheels and brakes from a Cessna 150. No tailwheel
springs are required. Rudder pedals are mounted to the left and
right sides of the front end. A faired body houses the instrument
panel with all the dials you’d ever want for a nice VFR flight to
nowhere in particular. There’s a magnetic compass, sensitive
altimeter, airspeed indicator, tachometer, oil temperature and
pressure gauges and cylinder head temperature. Throttle is at the
left side.

The cylinder head temperature is a must, Hovey feels, to

insure that the engine doesn’t overheat when flying low and slow on
a hot day. He initially did have a heating problem, but he fixed it
with a modified oil cooler and aluminum baffles wrapped around the
jugs.
So there I was, at Mojave Airport on a pretty summer day,
watching Hovey flight testing his Beta Bird at the same locale

125
Fig. 11-3. Bob Hovey’s Beta Bird is built largely of aluminum and styrofoam. It

uses a VW pusher engine for power.

where he’d checked out the Whing Ding seven years before. This
time he didn’t carry his airplane out to the ramp over his shoulder.
He drove it out— first-class. There was a mighty-mouse roar from
the VW engine. He was off and flying the pattern low enough for me
to shoot pictures and prove it was for real and not just some dream
machine.
I had the thought that here is Some-
a real ultralight airplane.
thing you’d feel comfortable flying that was sensitive enough on the
controls to behave the way a real airplane should, not just a Rogallo
hang glider with a tiny lawn mower engine stuck on behind. A
genuine, first-class little machine that seemed destined to outclass
the little Whing Ding.
With a design gross weight of 630 pounds, Beta Bird seems
destined also to fly its way into the hearts of a whole new bunch of

builders, not as a toy but as a practical little plane for ranchers,

farmers and just plain outdoorsmen who love to explore the back
country from on high. With its short takeoff and landing capability,
it seems to be a go-anywhere machine. Hovey says it’ll take floats
to add water-flying versatility to its capabilities.
The airfoil is Hovey’s own design and I can assume he got out
his book, Ultralight Design ,
to plot the curve. The design is a
variation of the venerable old Clark Y, of Virginius Clark, modified
to take drooperons. There is a slotted flap arrangement to provide
good low speed control down to flight level zero.
And why is it called Beta Bird? Beta, Hovey reminded, is not
only the second letter of the Greek alphabet and a member of the

126
goosefoot plant family, it also is an engineering term for blade
angle that eggheads use when they get to yakking about propeller
design. And that’s really what it’s going to be all about later on.
I remember well the day Hovey tested his Whing Ding a good
three feet off the deck and later reported: “There was this little
pitch instability. I experienced some buffeting over the horizontal
tail on takeoff, which led to momentary pitch hunting.”
“What did you do?” I asked eagerly.
“ What any test pilot would do,” he replied calmly. “I analyzed

the situation, considered my options and did not bail out. I leaned
”
forward.
In such ways are new concepts, like Beta Bird, turned into
reality instead of remaining a drawing board wonder. To make it all
even simpler, Hovey designed Beta Bird so that the wings can be
folded back over the tail surfaces by one man in order to road-tow it
home.
Plans for Beta Bird are available for $60 a set from: Aircraft
Specialties Co., Box 1074, Canyon Country, CA 91351.

127
 A

Index

A Federation of Australia 23
Aerial simplicity 116 first 14
Aerobatics, unplanned 10 flying 22
Airfoil 44 Mitchell Wing 70
Air navigation order 95.10 18 Mountain Green ultralights 84
Australians on the go 26

B 0
Backstrom Flying Plank 89 Oshkosh, on to 115
Bell, Alexander Graham 32
Beta Bird 123 P
Bi-Fly 107 Para-sail 16
Birdman TL-1 99 PDQ-2 94
Penquin 37
C PHG flying,

Chanute Octave 32 introduction to the public 11

Chotia 460 80 Powerhawk 52

Pterodactyl Fledgling 67
n
u
Demoiselle 35 Q
Quickie 109
E Quicksilver 60
Elevator 42
Engines, snowmobile 48 R
Ramsey’s Tub 112
Rogallo 16
F

Flight, the secret 34

Foot-launched air cycle 63
s
G Scout 27
Gemini system 49 Soarmaster 51
Gliders,modern 7 Stability 41
powered 8 Stork 120
Go-kart powerplant 47 Sun Fun 53
Super Floater, powered 76
U
H
Hang gliders, powered 17 U
rediscovery 16 Ultimate Fun 79
Homebuilt, unusual 30 Ultralight Glider 44
Honeybee 85 Ultralight, simple 125
Hornet 27
Hummer 87 V
VJ-24 55
|
L

Lateral control 43 W
Lazair 74 Weedhopper 79
White monoplane 36
M Wier Draggin’ Fly 116
Micro-IMP 104 Windwagon 102
Minimum aircraft, designing 19 Wright Brothers 33

128
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