[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Kitfox Model IV Construction Timeline

This is basically the rough timeline of construction. It also contains entries from my Dad's logbook. Logbook excerpts will appear in quotes and italics.

4/10/93 -

Trip to Idaho to pick up Kitfox Fuselage Kit

"Started at 12 noon head for Portland thru Columbia River Gorge to Idaho to p/u the frame."
     

This is truly the start of the project. My Dad decided to go down to Idaho to pick up the first kit. This is the heading off on the beginning of a 10 year adventure.

Here we are with our old Toyota van packed and ready for the trip to Skystar in Idaho to pick up the fuselage frame kit.

  
 

We towed the trailer behind us to carry the fuselage frame. Since it was going to be a several day trip, we also build a rooftop camper that mounted to the top of the van.

 

4/11/93 -

Car water pump breaks en route to SkyStar

"Water pump at van broke (shaft). Stuck at Exit #168 at Hwy 84."
     
 
Unfortunately, one day into our trip, the water pump on the van broke and we had to be towed into the nearest town to get replacement parts. This put a 30 hour delay into our trip, but considering that the project took 10 years, this isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things.

 

4/12/93 -

Picked up Fuselage Kit at SkyStar Aircraft facility in Idaho

"Started visit at 9:30 am. (3) Seperate buildings. 90 employees, sales, customer support, engineering (head by Frank Miller), R&D, wood shop, welding shop, raw mat'l cutting, shipping, parts packaging, tech/manual writing. Operation is quite organized..."
     

We finally arrive at the SkyStar factory and take a grand tour of the facility. Dad even went flying in the 582 Mk IV.

The plant was an impressive place with a lot of good facilities. It was my and my brother's first tour of an actual small airplane construction facility. Get a load of how young all of us were back then.

  
 
 
Here is Dad sealing the deal which would start the 10 year construction project. He's shaking hands with the president of SkyStar, Phil Reed. The funny thing is the that Phil Reed is actually from Mercer Island as well. My little brother actually had classes with his son.
     
After chatting with everybody, we had to load up the frame for the long trip back home. You can get an idea for the size of the entire plane from this photo. The frame comes prewelded and powder coated.
  

 

 

4/25/93 -

Installed control stick and seat
     

"Temporarily pinned all ctl. aileron and flaps together. All operating smoothly except flap bolt is hitting the frame"

Here a right side view of the fuselage with the control sticks and seat installed.

  
 

 
Its starting to look like a plane. Here's me and Tim sitting in the cockpit and playing with the control sticks. Its fun to make plane noises and pretend you're flying, when you're only 13, you can fool yourself into believing anything.

 

 

6/29/93 -

Pick up Wing Kit

"At SkyStar, met up with Phil Reed, Morris and Harry w/ Chris Jon, Tim and Mom's help, wrapped parts up w/ foam protective wrapper. Slided long pieces into motor home thru rear bathroom window."
     

Here's another trip to the Skystar plant to pick up the next kit. I'm starting to see why they call it a Kitfox. Each kit by itself isn't very expensive, but you've got to buy a couple of them. Here's Dad sliding one of the flaperons (aileron + flap) through the bathroom window of the motorhome.

  
 

This time, we took our old motor home down to plant. We kind of made a vacation out of the trip and stopped to visit Yellowstone park on the way home.

The wing kit consists of the flaperons, wing ribs, wing spars, and pretty much every thing you need to build the wings themselves minus the covering.

 

 

 

10/1/93 -

Aladize main wing spars
     

We needed to aladize the main wing spars. This is basically a process which prevents the aluminum from reacting with the oxygen in the air and forming an oxide on the wing spar.

  
 

 

 

10/31/93 -

Finish Wing Contruction
     

"Finished setup and drill and cleco left wing together. First trail flaperon. It worked good!!"

Here's Gid working on the wing replacing the clecos with rivets to mount the bracket which holds the wing struts.

  
 

 
Here's me helping out as well on the fuselage frame.
     

Its starting to really look like a plane now!

Jon has to hold up one side of the plane with his shoulder to keep it from tipping over like a cow.

  

 

 

 

1/16/94 -

Mount wheels and landing gear

"With Jon's help, filled hydraulic lines with jack petroleum base hydraulic fluid using syringe and tubing from the bottom up starting from the left side then from the right side. Took about 40 cc or so. Tried it on the slope driveway. Worked pretty good. Now it needs control springs and chain to steer the tail wheel."
     
 

Here the plane about 250 hours into the project. Both wings are mounted and the landing gear is on. The brakes even work now as well.

Also performed some preliminary weight and balance calcs. with the wings folded.

 

 

6/15/94 -

Pick up firewall forward kit
     

This time, we didn't go down to Idaho and pick up the next kit directly from SkyStar. Instead, he had it shipped up.

Here's Jon working mounting the bracket which is used to align the false ribs on the wing. He looks pretty intent on his task. I hope he knows what he's doing.

  
 

 

6/??/94 -

Exhibit plane at EAA show at Museum of Flight
     

 
Here's Dad with his exhibit of the Kitfox. There were a lot of other partially finished homebuilt planes on exhibit that day.
 
     

Here's the plane with both wings and moving control surfaces. We loaded it onto the trailer and towed it with the motor home down to the Museum of Flight for the show.

  

 

5 Year Break to Build House

 

6/??/00 -

Continue construction after completing house

"Started construction again after finishing the house."

 

5/20/01 -

Mount float assembly to plane

"Put in all bolts to attach float assembly to airplane."
     

 
Here's some of the early work on the float struts that Dad built to mount to floats to the plane. With the floats on, we could take it down to the water and see how stable it is with floats attached.
 

 

8/27/01 -

Engine bracket mounted and tested
     

Here's the engine bracket mounted to the plane as it will be in flight. The weights are used to simulate the weight of the actual engine to see how the plane sits with the engine in.

  
 

 

8/28/01 -

Test assembled frame on water

"Got it on the water. Able to unfolt and setup wing and pinned w/ one person by myself.."
     
 
And the plane floats! Here we are at the Mercer Island boat launch. Dad was able to put the plane in the water and unfold the wings by himself. The plane seemed to work fine and was stable in the waves.

 

8/22/02 -

Covering wings

"Cut leading edge to scallop shape using a template. Go over the whole thing using 225 F iron. Heat shrink bottom wings using 250 F for both wings."
     

Here's our neighbor, Jay, coming over to help with the covering of the wings. He's helping with the application of the poly-tac to the ribs. This is the material that makes the fabric stick to the ribs.

  
 

 

8/23/02 -

Stitching the wing coverings

"Jon, Jaye, and Judy helped to apply poly-tac to finish the other top wing."
     
 

The fabric covering of the wings need to be stiched and laced to the ribs. This is a very long and tedious task, so Mom is helping out as well.

 

9/16/02 -

Finish taping fuselage

"Picked up all taping on fuselage, 3 inspection rings, three round drains and 1 seaplane drain on the vertical stab."
     

Here's the fuselage on its side so that the fabric and taping could be completed.

  
 

 

11/8/02 -

Painting empannage

"Painted rudder, fuselage, horizontal stab, and vertical fin and elevator."
     
 
Dad wanted to have a sunburst paint job. He spent a lot of time getting the paint scheme just right. It looks really good on the finished product. Here's just the rear control surfaces painted.

 

11/9/02 -

More painting

"Painted all hard surfaces w/ red enamel, wing tips (2), (4) flaperon hinges, inspection covers (6). Took in paint booth, re-hung florecent lights and stored all tubings and plastic sheets in storage shed."
     

The painting is a very nasty process. In order to contain all the fumes and overspray, Dad built a paint booth in the garage. This was thermally regulated and isolated from the outside. This kept all the paint spray inside and Mom happy.

  
     
 
Here all the used cans of paint and other chemicals required to do the paint job.

 

11/16/02 -

Finish painting and start to install floats

"Btrought assembled float to under plane. Using 2 9 foot long steel pipe, raised palne to 48" or so high on front fitting."
     

Doesn't the paint job look nice? Now that its all painted and reassembled, the floats need to be mounted back on. We used some steel pipes at the cg of the plane and two engine hoists to pick it up.

  
     
 
Here's the plane all covered, painted, and assembled on the trailer. Its almost ready to fly except for...

 

12/5/02 -

Engine kit arrives

"Picked up engine from Overnite Transportation."
     

The last kit before the plane is airworthy. The engine is a 2 cylinder, 4-stroke, 65 Hp Rotax engine.

  
 

 

12/6/02 -

Hoist engine onto engine mount

"Hoisted engine into place. Bolted on prop."
     
 
Here's the engine installed on the engine mount. There was a lot more work to connect it to the fuel tanks and prepare it for starting up for the first time.

 

12/30/02 -

Engine break-in

"Engine break in all done in a little over an hour. All boys helped. Chris w/ computer as stop watch. Monitor temp on data acquisition ssytem. Jon shot video and monitor engine condition. Tim as fire watch and spotted loose air bleed clamp to fuel pump."
     
Over Christmas break, we broke in the engine. Its a pretty long process where you run the engine at different RPMs for different amounts of time. We had everybody outside working on it. We had to tie the plane to the tree so that it wouldn't fly away on the higher RPM spots.
  

 

    

 

2/1/03 -

Complete instrument panel

"G-meter and compass arrived. Rotate housing for compass to make it mount on the ceiling."
     
 
The last thing to do was to instrument the plane. Dad built the instrument panel from scratch and custom installed all the instruments.

 

2/24/03 -

Obtain Airworthiness Certificate

"Charlie showed up and gone thru w/ inspection and paperwork. Got special airwirthiness certification and operating limitation. Ready to fly. Finally."
     

 

3/1/03 -

FIRST FLIGHT!!!

"1st flight at 4:00pm or so. 3 flights to 1800 ft or so over Lake of Washington w/ Judy, Chris, Jon and Phil. Engine running good, everything in the greed. Flown at 60-75 mph. Landing at 45-50 w/ some power upon flare. Airplane was rock steady. Did shallow 5-10 degree bank turn. Right hand traffic wind from NW about 3 mph. Did a few 10-15 feet above water short hops."
     

 

 
   © Christopher W. Lum 2010 Updated December 02, 2009 | Contact Webmaster    
Alison Lum Events
[an error occurred while processing this directive]