This XP takes wing, literally if not figuratively.
Witnessing a spectacular California sunset from the confines of the hangar, my helper Jim and I nonetheless turn our attention inside and marvel. There it rests, a Pulsar fuselage, wings protruding from each side. For the first time, they defeat gravity unaided by sawhorses, slings, or sweaty palms.
Behind our backs, the drone of airplanes in the pattern at Long Beach reminds us that it's perfect flying weather, unseasonably warm and delightfully clear. But the fullness of the little composite airplane, now spreading out into the T-hangar, has our attention riveted. My mind flashes on some day hence, the sleek XP painted and its flight-test hours flown off. The canopy is open, it beckons me inside. On the runway, the 80-horsepower two-seater accelerates briskly and climbs into perpetually smooth and clear air.
I snap to present tense to Jim's questioning gaze and the unspoken "are you okay?" Again I consider the airplane, now with wings in place and a set of control surfaces resting on the workbench. I could install them on their hinges, slide the horizontal stabilizers and elevators in place at the tail, and pretend, like an adolescent dressing in father's business suit, that we're all grown up now.
"Okay, what's next?" Jim asks, surely feeling, as I do, the momentum of the project accelerate, like a rollerblade rider negotiating an unexpected slope. For the moment, we walk around the hangar, picking up tools and vacuuming bits of fiberglass and aluminum from the fuselage floor, remnants of the drilling operation for the main spar pins just completed. Consulting the construction manual, I discover the next step involves bonding in a fiberglass bulkhead just behind the main spars.
Jim knows by my expression what this means. With little effort — we've practiced this jig dozens of times now — we put the sawhorses under the wings, remove the spar pins, and slide them out of the fuselage. Shorn of feathers, the Pulsar rocks back on the tail stand, once again less an airplane than a collection of airplane parts.
Such are the joys of the endeavor.
Building an airplane presents many such milestones and opportunities to work backward from them in preparation for the next phase. If anything, it's the ebb and flow of the details that sets the tone, creates the experience. Start with a storage shelf full of parts and slowly build them onto or into the airplane. I had in my mind a continuous process, where I would build a part — say the horizontal stabilizer — and it would stay on the airplane for life. A logical progression of completion should have flowed from this, offering hope and support for the builder's fragile ego.
That's just not the way it works. With the tailfeathers, for example, you build them, fit them carefully, make sure they are to the plans, and then put them away for safekeeping. It's the same with the wings, the canopy, and dozens of smaller and less obvious pieces.
It is perhaps this aspect — a discontinuous display of results — combined with the sheer amount of time required, which can gang up on a builder. On pure whimsy and without proper forethought, I compiled the building time from my construction logs into a spreadsheet program — fascinating stuff. In the months of February and June last year, I worked on the airplane only three days, totaling 16 hours' labor. At that rate, the airplane would take more than a decade to complete.
Environment, combined with the requirements from the rest of a builder's life, dictates the amount of time spent on the project. My excuses, anyway: February was too cold to work in the garage, and June saw my previous hangar flooded so often I was concerned about getting electrocuted, or, at least, ruining too many cast-off running shoes.
I and my pile of aeronautical assemblies now inhabit a far nicer, World War II-vintage hangar with a concrete floor and sufficient electrical capacity so that my air compressor doesn't brown-out half the airport. Friends and relatives have questioned the expense of the hangar, but I defend it without hesitation. It's a place where the sole mission is to create an airplane. I am not distracted by a lawn mower in the corner, reminding me that the grass needs cutting. And the neighbors are far more understanding of the noise of power tools, hammers, hacksaws, and unprintable exclamations. Besides, I have a view of one of the active runways, which is a nice backdrop for occasional bouts head scratching.
Just as the hangar is a good investment in the progress of the airplane, so too are quality tools. For a long time, I fought purchasing something as basic as an epoxy pump. Available from several sources, these devices hold and dispense the epoxy resin and hardener in precise ratio. Originally, I had built, from plans included in the Pulsar manual, a simple wood scale. But mixing epoxy this way takes time, and there is a minimum amount that must be mixed to ensure accuracy. With the pump, a $200 item, it is a simple matter of pushing on a lever and watching the sticky stuff run into the mixing cup. Clean, efficient, and tremendously confidence-inspiring. I should have purchased this tool the first day. Take it from me, fellow 'glass workers, buy the pump. You will not be sorry. There's another tool that I would recommend highly to Pulsar builders just now beginning: It's basically a sophisticated, two-tube caulking gun (about $35) intended for the structural adhesive used in the Pulsar kit. Too far along now to make good use of it, I'm nonetheless all for anything that automates and cleans up the mixing of various glues.
Likewise, I'm happy with my investment in pneumatic tools, essentially just a drill and orbital sander. These items, together with a good pop-rivet gun and a drill press, are not strictly necessary for construction of the Pulsar, or many other airplanes, for that matter. But it's the issue of how much you're willing to spend to make the task simpler and to do it to a higher level of accuracy. Plus, I'm something of a tool junkie anyway, mere possession being justification enough. Maybe that's why the entry in the "tool expenditures" column says "$1,200."
Most airplane kits contain all you will need for basic construction, including hardware. But if you've ever assembled something like a barbecue grill and cross-threaded one of those silly little square nuts, you know that you will need more than one of everything. Mistakes happen, bolts get ruined, AN nuts seek asylum beneath cans of body filler. For this reason, you will want to become familiar with an aircraft supply house. Names like Alexander, Wicks, and Aircraft Spruce roll from builder's lips like the names of their children.
Fullerton, California-based Aircraft Spruce and Specialty, a half- hour ride down the freeway from me, has received a substantial boost from the Cook budget. Whether it's hardware I've destroyed or slight changes I've made to the airplane — like substituting castellated nuts for plain locking fasteners — Spruce has been the source. More often than not, I realize that I have run out of some supply only a day or so before I need (or want) it. Ordering it from the factory would entail several days' wait, and when you're ready to build, well...you just can't put it off. Amazingly, Spruce has been able to fill from stock in all but a small fraction of my needs.
So much for the ancillaries; how is the airplane coming along? I had been looking philosophically upon my relative sloth in completing the Pulsar — you just can't rush some things. It turns out my timing offered other benefits. As my airplane was slowly taking shape, plans at Aero Designs, maker of the Pulsar kit, had been progressing more rapidly. Announced at last year's Sun 'n Fun gig in Lakeland, Florida, the fully composite wing skins were ready for me. (Originally, the Pulsar had wood skins that require substantial post-construction preparation for painting.) What's more, the company has been concocting a quick-build kit, now all the rage in the industry. Essentially, the builder gets, for an additional $1,995 over the basic kit cost, the fuselage halves glued together at the San Antonio factory and considerable construction performed on the wings.
Because my fuselage had already been made whole by me, but I was still waiting for wing skins, I elected to take the second option. Aero Designs will now sell you the wings complete save for the installation of control systems, wiring, and bottom skin. In other words, the leading edges, ribs, top skins, and spars are all built up for you. This option requires the composite skins. Alone, the skins are estimated to cut 150 hours off the 1,000-hour claimed build time. Opting for the quick-build parts will slash a total of 300 hours from the estimates. Of course, neither time nor airplanes are cheap. The composite skin option adds $1,550 to the Pulsar XP (with the 912 Rotax four-stroke) base price of $26,500, and $1,850 to the $20,500 starting point of the 582 model. Also, hydraulic disc brakes are now a $700 factory option on the 912. What all this means, of course, is that a full-house 912 will take a $30,745 chunk out of your bank account.
A funny thing happens, though, when you're faced with a fuselage taking up space in a hangar. Worrying about finding the extra cash becomes secondary to wanting — really, really badly — to have a set of wings requiring a minimum of ministration to be complete.
I began to notice something else, too, while completing the wings. Where in the early stages of the airplane, I would pore over the manual and read every instruction a dozen times, I now have the background and confidence to look at what needs to be accomplished and nearly guess how to do it. Thanks to a production delay, I received one wing months before the other was ready. So I set about installing the pushrod and torque-tube control systems and building the aluminum flap and aileron. It all went well enough, and working with metal, if only briefly, presented a pleasant change of pace from the usual glass-and-epoxy procedures.
Then the second wing arrived, and much to my surprise, it went together in about half the time of the first. In fact, much time was spent making sure each side matched the other, miscues and all. I now realize how someone can build one of a particular model and go on to construct another down the road. At first, the concept of reliving the early stages of the kit seemed as disheartening as dropping an ice cream cone on the sidewalk.
With about 450 hours in the builder's log, I think that I am beginning to see the end. In fact, in the early weeks of spring, there should be a gleaming new Rotax 912 engine in the corner of my hangar, its year-long warranty tick-tick-ticking away as I continue to toil with glass and glue. Upon ordering the final of the three kit segments, Aero Designs' Mark Brown said, "If that doesn't motivate you, nothing will."
I genuinely believe he will be proved right.
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