Letters
It Floats Your Boat Reader Chet Moen expresses interest in using an outboard powerhead for Experimental aircraft. Back in the late 1960s, when RotorWay...
Build Your Skills: Fabric
The fabric has been applied to the airplane structure, its been tightened properly, and now its time to apply the first chemical coat to seal it. Ron Alexander takes you through the process and also introduces the various ways of attaching the fabric.
All About Avionics: Panel Labels
Avionics wiz Stein Bruch discusses the pros and cons of the most popular ways of labeling your panel including placards, decals, rub-on labels, silkscreens and laser etching.
To Launch a Light Sport
In the third part of this series on building a Jabiru J250 Light Sport airplane, author Bob Fritz installs the elevator, trim and aileron cables, paints some of the interior, installs the master break cylinder, and moves on to the rudder pedals and flaps.
DIY Wind Indicator
Chuck Deiterichs description of a do-it-yourself wind indicator project includes tips, drawings, a parts listing, in-progress photos and a look at the finished product. His experimentation with the highly visible design takes the guesswork out of doing it right.
Unusual Attitude
Oshkosh AirVenture gave Ed Wischmeyer the opportunity to look around at the newest ideas in aviation and to think about the larger implications of what he was seeing. He speculates about what works, what doesn't and how manufacturers and consumers alike could make the world of flying a better place.
The Home Machinist
If your hacksaw has been relegated to the bottom of your toolbox, chances are its because you don't know how to use it properly. Author Bob Fritz offers a primer on the subject that may make you think more highly of this underused tool. A discussion of cam construction and keyless chucks rounds out this installment.
Aero ‘lectrics
Impressed by the quality of the cheap headsets he encountered on a recent commercial airliner flight, Jim Weir dissected the airline unit and has come up with a way to replicate it in your own shop.
Wind Tunnel
Yaw rarely occurs without rolling, and roll rarely occurs without yawing. This month Barnaby Wainfan discusses coupled motion, including adverse yaw, the spiral mode and Dutch roll.
In Case You Missed It
The Big Scare
You look down at the instruments, and instantly energy drains down your body as if bomb bay doors on the soles of your feet had opened and the concrete floor were a sponge.
Wind Tunnel
When is an airplane in trim? At least to the pilot, the airplane is trimmed when no stick force is required to maintain equilibrium. So how do we achieve this? Barnaby Wainfan explains any number of ways to go about it, including the use of trimtabs, spring systems, sparrow strainers and variable incidence tails.
