KITPLANES

A person can only have so much fun, even aviation fun in Oshkosh.

Aircraft Specialty Flightlines, an AirVenture Veteran, has been innovating safer, more capable and easier to use components for experimental amateur aircraft builders for years.

A 70% scale all-metal P-51 built to be powered by a 500(ish) horsepower big-block V-8.

Inside the uninviting exterior may lie the confidence you need to tackle the primary skills holding you back from building an airplane.

Sport Performance Aviation (SPA) is showing their 2-place Cougar project, which will shortly undergo load testing.

It’s not a line for the bathroom, donuts…or cheese curds.

Imagine your surprise to walk the grounds of the AirVenture Ultralight field to see what appears to be an 80% scale Schweizer 300 parked right there among the ultralights and powered parachutes.

Tom Swearingen has been making hose assemblies for homebuilders for quite a few years now and is well known for quality custom work done very fast.

Expect to see an increase in the emphasis on AoA usage.

There has been a line of about 50-100 people waiting each day when the hangar door open and the slots fill within minutes.

The Gweduck is a hero-class Experimental three decades in the making.

Lockwood’s Rotax-powered RV-9A is more than just fancy rhinoplasty.

Kitfox’s Super Sport gets more than new pep from Rotax’s turbocharged 916 iS.

Can a modern replica actually be better than a classic original?

Getting a multi-engine sea rating in the always-entertaining AirCam.

Rotax’s spunky 916 brings new tech and international appeal to a venerated design.

We visit Visalia and find California engine builder Ly-Con going strong.

With a new Corvair engine, an old Stolp Starlet returns to the skies.

From conception to execution, Evoke Aviation aims to be the one-stop paint shop.

A full-immersion Cub-oriented backcountry course.

Sure, you can buy intercoolers off the shelf but sometimes you have to DIY it. Here’s how.

Exhaust valve lapping, in place!

Part 8: Brakes, Faeth’s and a fuselage on the freeway.

How to add panels to already-molded skins.

There’s only so much we can do to eliminate risk, so it becomes more about risk tolerance, which is usually different for everyone.

See those little nicks in that fuel line?

The F1 Rocket has an ultra-deep baggage compartment, why not light it up a bit?

It can be a royal pain to get any sort of a wrench onto the rear nut of a toggle switch.

There isn’t a pilot alive who doesn’t know what a checklist is. There are, however, pilots no longer with us who failed to use one.

Publisher Dennis Shattuck took a flier on a growing segment of aviation back when...

Never one to revel in the practical, recently I found myself expounding to a colleague on why the general aviation world moves at 2700 rpm.

A major part of any Experimental kit will be hundreds of products that the kit supplier didn’t manufacture or fabricate but simply sourced from the open market to supply with their custom kit components.

I was chopping firewood under a dead ash tree, whiffing deep, ax-head-shaped divots into my lawn, when I remembered the time, once upon a takeoff, that a living oak tree nearly got the best of me.

Forget about all those sharp corners, the quantity of fuel aboard and the fire extinguisher you threw in the baggage compartment without tying it down. It is always important to at least consider the fact that the most dangerous thing to have in the cockpit when things go wrong is the owner of the airplane.

Aircraft Specialty Flightlines, an AirVenture Veteran, has been innovating safer, more capable and easier to use components for experimental amateur aircraft builders for years.

Tom Swearingen has been making hose assemblies for homebuilders for quite a few years now and is well known for quality custom work done very fast.

One advantage of arriving early to AirVenture is that you may have the opportunity to preview deals before others arrive and the tents fill.

Because few new products get announced at Sun ’n Fun, there’s often a dead zone between April and the big intros at AirVenture in July. But that doesn’t mean it’s total dullsville. A couple of new bits have caught my eye recently.

Nobody likes trying to remove dried bug residue. Unless you catch them while still, um, moist, insect remains will dry to have an impressive attachment to your airframe.

Not everyone is strongly “handed” and there are some applications where a grip that feels right in either hand is, um, right for the job. That’s the thinking behind Pioneer Control Grips’ new ambidextrous grips.