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Paul Dye

Paul Dye
915 POSTS 27 COMMENTS
Paul Dye, KITPLANES® Editor at Large, retired as a Lead Flight Director for NASA’s Human Space Flight program, with 50 years of aerospace experience on everything from Cubs to the Space Shuttle. An avid homebuilder, he began flying and working on airplanes as a teen and has experience with a wide range of construction techniques and materials. He flies an RV-8 and SubSonex jet that he built, an RV-3 that he built with his pilot wife, as well as a Dream Tundra and an electric Xenos motorglider they completed. Currently, they are building an F1 Rocket. A commercially licensed pilot, he has logged over 6000 hours in many different types of aircraft and is an A&P, FAA DAR, EAA Tech Counselor and Flight Advisor; he was formerly a member of the Homebuilder’s Council. He consults and collaborates in aerospace operations and flight-testing projects across the country.

Countersinking Block

1
Get perfectly countersunk holes in thicker material.

Which Control Stick?

3
Refining the control stick for the F1 Rocket—a balance of comfort, clearance, and decades of piloting perspective.

The Master’s Kiss

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Make your flush rivets fit perfectly.

Just a Little Squeeze

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The horizontal stabilizer on our F1 Rocket (like most RV-type aircraft) has a very thin profile—a symmetric airfoil with a finely pointed nose. Getting...

Polished or Unpolished?

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An unpolished rivet set will leave a mark.

Model What?

3
You see, it's all in the “suffix.”

The Process

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To the uninitiated, it looks like it’ll be done soon, doesn’t it? But “The Process” still has a long way to go.

Fear Not the Rivet Cutter

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Kits these days are pretty good, as are their instructions. When they tell you to use an AD4-7 rivet in a particular hole, it's...

We Have a Fixture!

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I needed a fixture – and I decided that I’d just “Go Big” ad make it out of steel. This baby isn’t going anywhere!

Crew Coordination, Working the Weather

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Having a reliable and well-trained partner can help to evaluate not only a course of action—but the decision-making process that goes into that plan.

In Case You Missed It

The Creative Homebuilder

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Make your own specialty wrenches.

Easy Hole Spacing

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One of the curses of modern CAD technology is that designers can draw something...

Archive: June 2013

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Sonex’s blazing yellow Onex was on our cover this month—proclaiming “half the seats, twice...

Second Chance Six

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Part 3: My fuel tanks are sloshy. What can I do?