Builder Spotlight

Builders share their successes.

Lancair Aircraft is revolutionizing its already successful turboprop line of kits with the new Evolution, a 750-horsepower, Pratt & Whitney-PT6A-powered, carbon-fiber composite, 380-mph four-seater to be available later this year.

Builder Rick Lindstrom’s Zenith Zodiac 601 XL project continues as the Corvair engine is installed and the panel takes shape. Lindstrom selects instruments and avionics for his project and uses templates to plan the panel.

Ultimate experimenter Paul Lipps has used his own homebuilt, a Lancair 320, as a test bed for his many innovations, which include reflexed flaps, an ultra-long pitot tube for more accurate readings, a solar-powered fan for the cockpit, a cowl scoop for ultra cooling of the magneto, extremely close clearances between the spinner and the prop, and a one-of-a-kind propeller.

In this series installment, author Bob Fritz takes you through the basics of building a carbon fiber tank, including measuring, layout, patterns, cutting, epoxy-flox application, sanding, sawing, epoxying and finish work.

Whether portable handheld or panel-mounted, GPSes are the wave of the future in avionics, and these units can store and display a remarkable amount of detailed information. With nifty docks, handhelds can perform much like the panel-mounts in the cockpit, yet be removed for use in other vehicles.

This brand new power management system harnesses CPU power to eliminate the need for much of an aircrafts wiring by consolidating major electrical functions into a single box. It comprises three units: a display, controller module/panel housing and mag controller. Bundled into the setup are radios, instruments (including GPS, EFIS and engine monitoring) and lights. Each flight phase is broken down into the tasks normally performed manually by the pilot, and the VP-200 addresses them more or less automatically, while also providing override capability in the event of a system failure.

Extreme Simple Green - Aircraft is a new product designed to clean your aircraft safely without damaging finishes. Its effective in removing oil and other dirt from the exterior surfaces as well as the interior, and is used by Boeing on its family of airplanes. Its available at specialty stores and aviation supply houses.

Builders share their successes.

Welcome to the first of what we expect to be many web-based updates on KITPLANES big project for the year, the construction of a...