Homebuilt Airplane

About 2 ½ years ago I saw an ad for a partially done airplane kit. It was for a Searey. A Searey is an amphibious two place kit built airplane. After talking it over with Sue I decided to buy it and go to Little Rock, AR and finish the project and flying it home. So the day after my 65th birthday I got on an airplane and headed to Little Rock. I rented a car and got a room by the month at the Howard Johnson motel and headed for the North Little Rock airport.

This kit had been purchased by a someone in the Philippine Islands and before he finished it the government grounded all experimental aircraft and it didn’t look like they were ever going to get to fly in their airspace again so he put what he had done in a container and shipped it to the dealer in Little Rock. One wing got loose in the container during shipping and caused some minor damage that was easily repaired. It was all cosmetic and this airplane will never be a show plane but it flies fine.

I had to remove the front cowling so I could get to the frame where the rudder pedals attach. With my long legs I needed to move the peddles away from the seat because the seat doesn’t move. While I had the cowling off I changed much of the wiring. He had inline fuses all over the airplane. They work that way but are not easy to find when you have a problem so I put in a fuse panel. I cut out all the inline fuses and tossed them on the hanger floor as I worked. I had about 8 of them on the floor when Bill walked in. Bill is the owner of the Searey dealership and he is also an FAA inspector. He would be doing my final inspection of the airplane before certification.

Bill asked about the removed fuse holders and I couldn’t resist. I told him that if the fuse burned out what ever it was protection would quit and I didn’t want it to quit while I was in the air. I got the funniest look from him. For a second or two he believed me. He was much relieved when I showed him the fuse panel.

I repaired the damaged fabric on the wings and installed the engine and a new ground adjustable propeller. There was really much more I spent 6 days a week for 7 weeks on this project but finally finished it. Bill had been observing and suggesting all along, which was very helpful, so the final inspection went very well. Bill has many hours of flight time in Seareys so I asked him to make the first flight to make sure the thing would actually fly. It did just as it was suppose to. The FAA has lots of requirements for new home build airplanes, but one of them is that only one person it to be in the airplane for the first 40 hours of flight time on the plane. This meant that I could not take an instructor with me so I could learn how to fly this new plane.

A pilot’s license is issued for life after one has passed all the requirements. A private pilot is required to have a physical exam every two years to activate that license. I hadn’t flown for over 20 years! So I took some flight lessons in a Piper Tomahawk. I thought it would be like riding a bicycle but not so. It took about 7 hours of flights before we felt I was ready. However, my Searey is very different from the Tomahawk. My instructor suggested that I do some fast taxiing several times up and down the full length of the runway. It was good advice. The Searey is a tail wheel airplane and is very different than the nose wheel while on the ground. Imagine driving your car down the highway at 50 miles an hour in reverse. The steering wheels in the rear works really good at slow speeds but can get real exciting at 50.

I went back and fourth several times and things got easier. Then I thought it might be different with flaps. 20 degrees of flaps are suggested for take off so I put the flaps to 20 degrees. Then just all of a sudden I found myself about 50 feet in the air. At first I didn’t want to be up there and started to put it back on the taxiway. Then I decided that since I was up I should just fly around and set up for a normal landing. So my first take off was not from the runway but the taxiway.

Ervin, my long time friend from Montana wanted to come down and fly home with me in my new airplane so he flew commercial into Little Rock where I picked him up. I was delayed a couple days because of a tornado (Another story for another day) that came through the North Little Rock airport so Ervin had to just sit around and watch me fly off the required 40 hours. We planned to fly the southern route through Albuquerque, MN and then on to Reno, NV to visit my oldest daughter and her family, and then up the coast home.

We left bright and early in the morning into a brisk 35 knot head wind. When you only fly at 70 knots that is significant. When you are driving down the highway in a car and you have a head wind you burn a bit more gas per mile because if the added wind resistance. But your tires are pushing directly on the pavement so you are still going the same speed your speedometer says you are going. However, with an airplane the propeller is pulling at the air and the propeller doesn’t know what that air is doing. The airplane still goes 70 knots through the air but if the air is moving at 35 knots in the opposite direction thin you are only covering 35 knots over the ground. So it takes twice as long and you burn twice the amount of gas.

The wind didn’t let up during the day, in fact it got a bit stronger. I ended up spending the night where I had hoped to stop for my first gas stop. The next morning there was frost on the windshield but we could see it was not going to last long as soon as the sun came up. We had gassed up the night before so we loaded up and were off as soon as the frost was gone. We got up to about 3000 feet only to be back in that 35 knot headwind. I also wasn’t able to climb as high or as fast as I thought I should. The ground was getting higher and I was getting nervous. I stopped at an airport and mailed all extra stuff out of my baggage compartment. We got rid of 50 pounds but it took about 3 hours and during that time it warmed up and I couldn’t tell the difference. The next airport was at an altitude of 3700 feet and I was having trouble getting over 5000. Albuquerque is nearly 6000 feet with the surrounding ground between 6000 and 9000 so I just didn’t like what I was seeing. I told Ervin that I was going to have to put a stamp on his forehead and mail him home.

Well, we were already a day behind schedule so I decided that rather than send Ervin home I rented a U-Haul truck and we removed the wings and put the whole airplane in the U-Haul and drove on to Reno and home. We got right back on schedule and the airplane was going 70 MPN backwards right through Albuquerque.