Isaac's Flying Stories Ep 7: The 2018 Midwest Sonex Fly in!

This Year's Midwest Sonex Fly in was a smashing success, great weather, fantastic food, and 30+ Sonex Builders and Pilots showed up!

My dad and I flew in from our home airport in Mississippi. The flight to Fayetteville only took about 3 hours, with a fuel stop meaning we rolled in just in time for lunch. We signed in and got our raffle tickets for the door prizes. This year there were Sonex T-shirts, 2' sensenich propeller clocks, a 50% off a Sport EX EFIS from GRT avionics certificate, and a certificate for a free elliptical Prince Prop. After catching up with old friends over tacos and brownies, we began the raffle. It was tense as the higher and higher prizes were awarded. One woman won a T-shirt but no one wanted to ask her size for fear of offending her! After the drawing there was a line of storms moving in so we took one final group picture and those who were flying southeast (away from the storm) took off. My dad and I rolled the plane into a hanger and sat back in the venue talking to those who stuck around. Mark, a Sonex Builder and F-16 pilot, generously gave me the 50% off certificate for the Sport EFIS that he won, this will be a great boost to gathering my instruments! Another builder, David Jones, who built his Onex with his father years ago gave me his Aerovee baffle kit, another part I would have needed to buy! There were also various extra parts builders brought to help out the community that I grabbed. Flap and brake lever handles, extra baffle pieces, etc.

after the storms ran their course and passed us by we departed to the north east, towards our new home.

In our final fuel stop we ran into the EAA Ford TriMotor!

This was a great example of the generous nature of the Sonex and aviation community in general! Big thank you's to everyone out there who has helped out their fellow builders, It's that kind of attitude that makes our community the best it can be!

(note on posts: I have several posts lined up to be released soon and I finally have a spare moment to polish them off and perfect them, stay tuned to hear all about the rest of my aerovee!)

Build Update April 5 2018: Dissasembling the Aerovee

The engine I bought was already built, and had not been run. My dad and I planned to take it all apart to give me a better understanding of the engine, as well as to identify any problems before they got bad. The Arovee engine was heavy and awkward to move. at the time it was sitting on the workbench with everything installed. Going into this I had only enough sense to tell you which cylinder is the #1, 2, 3, and 4, and I knew some of the terminology, such as crackshaft. I frequently asked my dad "what do you call that part?" we began unbolting stuff in roughly reverse order from the manual (if you're familiar with sonex plans, you're used to backwards) In under an hour we had stripped many of the external parts off and the engine had lost at least 20 pounds! A box was designated as the hardware box, so it'll be like legos trying to find the right bolts and nuts again when I reassemble it. the important part is that they're all together and no...

Plane Painted

When I flew my plane to OSH23, I saw an artist painting a small depiction of an airplane. She was painting a very small photorealistic scene from a phone image. I could not believe how detailed she was able to make it! She let me watch over he shoulder as she worked. I was so impressed that I commisisoned a similar painting of my sonex. Id like to share that painting with you all. Her name is Rhonda DeGarmo. She has a lot of other work. If you're interested in getting in touch with her please reach out to me and I will pass along her information.

Build Update March 15 2020: Prime Time

So everyone is kinda freaked out over corona lately. My gymnastics competitions have been canceled, and so have my classes. This has been great for building, I've got all week and maybe more to get some great work in. I have been doing all the last things on the cowling before it's time to prime and paint. The final few things were adding my quarter turn southco fasteners, finishing the air exit cutout, and doing a final sand. (if you can ever even say final and sand in the same sentence) Then it's time to prime. The southco process started by going to southco's website to order an assortment of different sizes. When I completed my order the shipping cost came out to like $40, which was clearly wrong. I was ordering less than 20 studs. It would fit in a flat rate envelope easily. So I scrapped my southco order and went to Aircraft Spruce to order my cheese platter of sizes. The shipping there was much more reasonable and I combined it with some other items I n...

Isaac Shultz's Sonex Project

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