SonexBuilders.net

Hi Kip,

I know it has been a couple of years since this trip, but I was wondering how your plane handled the DA around Flagstaff. I am building a Sonex tri-gear with an Aerovee, and one of my ambitions is to fly to AZ to visit family there. I think I will be wishing I bought a Jab trying to take off from 7500' :shock: The elevation at my home field is 11' so I think the Aerovee will be fine around home.
Awesome pics, and a beautiful plane.

The Jabiru 3300 is the only option for very high DA's in my opinion, Steve. This summer, I experienced 9500' density altitude takeoffs with little trouble with regards to climb. Oil temp was another matter but any engine would have been hurting on the 92F days where temp at cruise altitude was nearly 80F! What saved me in this situation was that one can pull the power back quite a bit with the 3300 to cool it and still have an excess of power to climb.

With 80HP you had better be VERY light and that's probably not an option if your hauling stuff (clothes ect.) that far from home...:)

I recently flew my jab3300 waiex to Leadville CO, 9936ft. It was cool that day so DA was just under 11,000ft. Glad I had the Jab but was able to get almost 500ft/min climb out of the valley. Not sure I would have done it with an Aerovee.
My home field is 6900ft. I did some touch and goes on a very warm summer day with DA around 10,500. Same performance.
For info on flying an Aerovee at high DA, seek out Gary Motley. He has an Aerovee Sonex in Denver. He's told me that his Sonex is really a single place up here.

I haven't talked to Gary in much depth about it, but he is based at BJC with a field elevation of around 5700' MSL. I believe he special ordered a Prince prop from Lonnie Prince that has around 2" less pitch than the standard AeroVee prop. This allows him more climb performance from the high elevation areas but will certainly cut into cruise numbers a little. Either way, I know Gary has had his AeroVee Sonex well over 10,000'.

As much as I enjoy flying behind my AeroVee, if you are really thinking about operating out of Flagstaff, you're going to really want the Jabiru 3300. It's always better to have too much power than not enough!!

I took off from my field right behind Gary on my final Phase 1 flight test. My first time flying loose formation with an 80 HP Sonex. I've flown several times off the wing of my hangar mate with his Jab3300, that was pretty easy to match speed and climb. One thing I noticed right away was I had to pull throttle way back to keep my position off Gary's 4 during climb out. The performance difference between the two engines is huge.
Gary's new Prince prop is pretty cool. Its not a P-tip, but a beautiful elliptical one.