DFW Lite Flyers Club 393

Archive for the ‘Club Members’ Category

Joe and I are rebuilding the Aerovee Engine from our Sonex that we bought from Avis (Wayland’s widow). The block developed a crack and either needed to be replaced or broken down and welded. Since either option required a complete engine tear down, we opted to buy a new case ($950), and put the engine back together ourselves.

Remember that Sonex does not sell a fully assembled engine. You order their kit for $7k, and get the engine in pieces which you must assemble. They state it takes roughly 12 hrs. We have reviewed their assembly manual, and DVD, both of which are excellent. We have also reviewed the Great Plains VW assembly manual, and the book, How to Rebuild your VW. I think we are educated and ready to go.

You can see photos and info on our progress at our Sonex website below. Don’t grade the website yet, I haven’t touched it since I set it up

http://ereksonfamily.org/sonex/aerovee-engine/rebuilding-an-aerovee-engine/

Unfortunately, our Sonex is down for an engine rebuild. We took it to an A&P this week to find our mysterious oil leak and learned of a cracked case. We have an Aerovee engine that has a magnesium case which can’t be welded. A new case is $950, plus another part that was needed, plus shipping, and soon a bunch of labor hours for an engine rebuild. Should be less than $2k. Still not a happy day for Joe and I.

Cracked case

Our fellow club member, Bob Carson, who finished his perfectly built Sonex and flew in September 2009, is shown on the builders completion page of Sport Aviation this month. See page 71 of October 2010.

Great job Bob!

It’s always fun to learn the history of the plane you own. Right now Joe and I are partners on a Sonex that we enjoy a whole lot (except for the normal oil leak). Recently I located a story in Experimenter about the original builder of our Sonex, and what he was doing then, and what he is doing now. He’s back to building another one!

http://www.eaa.org/experimenter/articles/2010-06_womb.asp

The Pitts Pedal plane that I’ve been working on for a year and half is nearing completion. I just need to paint the wheel pants and I’ll be done! This WILL be at the upcoming September Pancake Breakfast. I won’t delay again.

Not my plane, but what is should look like

Here are the wheel pants after being carved and sanded...awaiting paint.

This week I will “finally” be transporting my weedhopper project to propwash. It’s pretty much done. I’m still down a few bolts, but my hope is that I can bring it out there and meet up with Jeff Mountain to get a few bolts, and have others take a good look at it to make sure everything is in line. The photos below don’t show a whole lot as the airplane doesn’t really look like an airplane without the wings installed.

After months of racking my brain I finally figured out what was slowing down our website so much. I had a plugin installed that did content protection, basically making it impossible for people to copy and paste text from our site to some other place. It was slowing us down a huge amount. It’s now GONE! There really is no need for such a function, who cares if people copy our site.

Anyway, I also updated our website to WordPress 3.0 – You won’t notice the difference unless you are a member and are logged into the administrative back-end of the site. A few things now look different.

Hopefully the increase in speed will help our the website traffic and bring in more people, which equates to more members.

As discussed at our last club meeting, we have added our “paid” membership list to the website. It is “password protected.”  I will be providing passwords to individual members. This page will not be open to the public. If added security is requested, we can take it to another level. However, I believe at the present time it is safe from public view.

If you are a member and still wish your information to not be included behind the password protection, please contact me (Jeff Erekson) or Jeff Mountain.

jeff(at)ereksonfamily.org