ETLB Squawk Forums — Archive

I'm so happy to be building an ultralight MiniMAX from scratch rather than building one of the "real" airplane kits. A friend of mine is building one of the hole-matched aluminum planes (bet you guess which brand) and has had more than his share of frustration, hold-ups, and price increases along the way.

He is one of the lucky ones since he had most of the kits but had to wait a l-o-n-g time for the firewall forward kit, but that came only after a hefty price increase. Along the way there were updates that required a fair amount of re-work of what was already built to correct for parts that had shown problems on finished planes of the same design. Then the firewall forward kit finally arrived. But, within a week of receiving it a recall was announced that will require him to take the engine to a authorized service company to check for a manufacturer's assembly problem. That should only cost him another 2 or 3 days of his life and several hundred dollars in travel and lodging to wait for the check for his engine to be completed. He's only one of 4000 people out there that might have the problem.

Then there's me, muddling along building in my basement with just a few hundred dollars worth of 1 X 6 Northern White Pine and some aircraft plywood, building at my own pace, not having to deal with a DAR when it's finished, no registration, no mandatory 1st phase test flights, and eventually the condition of my plane will be in my hands with no involvement of the FAA. (We're not happy until you're not happy)

Yup, I'm happy to be scratch building a MiniMAX ultralight in my basement. When I'm done I won't be able to do a cross-country at 120+ MPH, but I will have the pride of doing a scratch, from plans build of my unique MiniMAX and will be all-in at about 4% or 5% of what he's spending on his tab-A-into-slot-B kit plane. Don't get me wrong, my friend is meticulous in his work and it will be a work of art when he's done, but then he's still going to have to get a license to fly it.

Just my opinion....

Lynn

Right you are!   In the early 90's I discovered "Sportplane Builder" by Tony Bingelis in my college library.  I had long "dreamt" of building an airplane but thought it was done only by "special people" like engineers.  The discovery of that book made me realize that it was done by "ordinary people" and that there were plans and material suppliers to support my dream.  The only problem is that I was in college and had no "spruce (or N White Pine) budget. Within a couple years that changed. I graduated, got a job, bought Pine and was building a Z Max. The Zenoah turned out to be hard to sort out and before long I was building a V Max.  Oh how fun building them both were and Oh how fun flying the V Max was.

Years passed, I started my own business, sold the Oh so fun V max for more capital, and stayed really busy at work for too long.  Eventually came the purchase of a an already flying RV4 (I guess it was the plane I thought I wished I was building when I was building each of the Max's) and eventually a turbo prop.  5 years ago I still missed the V Max and decided selling it was not an unsurmountable mistake because all I had to do was simply build another one.  So for 5 years I've been itching to build another V Max (I ordered and recieved the enging a long time ago and a while back respectively). But maintaining and modifying the RV4 and keeping up with business and upgrading the avionics in the turbo prop have all pushed back the start of construciton on the V Max.  As noted above the time between discovering that it was possible (finding Sportplane Builder) and cutting wood was only a couple years.  Now the time between deciding to build another V Max and beginning has been 5 years.  I have a turbo prop but what I really want is a V Max (also).  When I was in my twenties and basically broke this evaded me for 2 years.  Now money is not the barrier and yet it has evaded me for 5 years.  An honest assessement indicates I will finally begin the V Max sometime in 2025!!

That I didn't know how lucky I was when I was building "Max's" has been prevalent in my mind for 5 years now.  The fact that you realize how lucky you are to be building a Max makes me smile.  I hope to join you soon!

Thanks for sharing your background and experience. Enjoy your next build!

Lynn