Tag: Vintage

In this new column, Steve Ells shares his background as an A&P mechanic and offers tips on keeping your homebuilt aircraft running smoothly.

In typical fashion, Van’s Aircraft refused to rest on its laurels after the RV-12’s prototype debut last year, and sought to improve on an already good design. The new production airplane has changed (beyond its color), with a castering nosewheel, toe brakes instead of a grip, reshaped control sticks for better clearance, ground-adjustable seats fore and aft as well as in tilt, and the list goes on. Best of all, this day/VFR machine is still a delight to fly; by Ed Kolano.

The word “redundancy” is often heard in aviation, and with good reason. But a well-thought-out backup plan involves more than just having two of everything.

The way to reduce or eliminate excess cooling drag in cruise is to use a variable-geometry cooling system that can change shape to control the amount of air flowing through the cowling.