REFLECTOR: SWRFI

[Christopher Barber]

Dang, if I knew Velocity was gonna be at SWRFI I may have made and effort to attend.  Oh well, I have a plane to finish building.

All the best,

Chris
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Douglas Holub 
  To: reflector at tvbf.org 
  Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2007 1:12 PM
  Subject: REFLECTOR: SWRFI


  I spent the day yesterday at the Southwest Regional Fly-In in Hondo, Texas. I went there yesterday because I figured it wouldn't be nearly as busy as it will be today Saturday, and I wanted to be able to talk with the vendors for a few undistracted minutes. When I was at Oshkosh a few years ago, the vendors were so busy that I wasn't even able to talk to some of them at all.

  I was right. The sales people were doing a lot of standing around wishing someone would stop by. I was able to spend as much time as I needed to. Of interest to me:

  1. The P-Mag will be 10 - 32 volts later this summer. It's 12 volts only, now.

  2. ECI's cold induction plenum can't be turned around yet. The throttle body faces the propeller now. They're working on a reverse mount, but it's not high on their list of things to do. The engineer thought that the geometry on a pusher doesn't lend itself to ram air, anyway. At any rate, the new plenum will be retrofittable with the sump and the intake pipes, so if I want to add ram air later, I could always do that.

  3. The Dynon 10A has a 12 week lead time now, so I'd better get in the queue.

  One of the busier booths was Velocity's, though. They had a gorgeous demonstrator with a turbo-charged IO-540 that will do 250 kts.  Whenever I would tell someone at the show that I'm building a Velocity, they would say, "cool airplane."

  Scott Baker gave me a good piece of advice that made the 5 hour one-way drive worthwhile. If you're not very good at sewing or upholstery or crafts, don't do your own interior. The $3,000 you save in labor expense will result in an airplane that is worth $15,000 less than it would have been with a professional interior. Even though the airplane may be designed and constructed very well, if the interior looks "homemade", it doesn't inspire confidence in passengers or potential new owners. If the upholstery is not sewn straight and has frayed edges showing, they wonder if you know how to install a main spar, either. 

  Back to building...

  Doug Holub




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