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Wonderful update, Mike! Your Phase II should wrap up way before OSH.

Heck, I may even do a bit a polishing for you at OSH as a welcoming gift...:)

You don't need to worry about polishing...just getting the plane there is gift enough! I'm still hoping but thus far I'm still being a wimp on crosswinds...I'm still sticking with 10 knots total wind and 5 crosswind. So I'm keeping fingers crossed for good weather to continue...

So have you found an engine for the Pitts yet? :)

Remember, if you have an excessive crosswind to land with the stick full aft..full stall. Chances are you'll be OK. Keep the tail pinned down with those right crosswind takeoffs, too. It's when you roll out with the tail up when you get into trouble.

Engine? Yeah, I'm always looking but that's a ways down the road. I keep pinching myself for the "deal of the century" that I got on my factory-built fuselage...!

MichaelFarley56 wrote:You don't need to worry about polishing...just getting the plane there is gift enough! I'm still hoping but thus far I'm still being a wimp on crosswinds...I'm still sticking with 10 knots total wind and 5 crosswind. So I'm keeping fingers crossed for good weather to continue...

So have you found an engine for the Pitts yet? :)

N111YX wrote: I keep pinching myself for the "deal of the century" that I got on my factory-built fuselage...!

You'll have to fill me in on that story sometime...

Greetings Everyone,

I wanted to post a quick update on the Waiex. First off, I now have a little over 30 hours on the plane and all has been going well. I haven't been able to get quite as much flying in as I was hoping, mostly due to fairly strong winds or storms we've been having. The good news is that, when ever I do actually get to fly, the plane is doing great! I'm now pretty much finished with most of my Phase 1 testing other than whatever acro I actually want to do, and the plane has proven to be rock solid. Yesterday was a good day to try some stronger crosswinds, and like everyone else has told me, the Waiex is good up to around 8ish knots of crosswind component before you need to start being REALLY careful. I do still have a few little tweaks to finish but I'm still hoping for some good weather so I can get up to Oshkosh this year.

Anyway, I was doing some formation practice and got a few nice pics...








Also, I did get my leading edges painted but they will need polished and then cleared here soon...



I hope to see everyone at Oshkosh! Thanks!!

Looks great, Mike! I'm interested in some larger resolution versions of your pics...:)

Looks like OSH will be easy for you flight-test wise. It's gonna be a good time!

Same email address as always? I'll try to send a few but some are pretty big so no promises. I wish Photobucket would stop shrinking my pics!!


And yeah I'm pumped for Oshkosh...I hope it works out for everyone :)

Greetings once more everyone,

I know I've been posting a lot of small updates, but I wanted to send one more this evening to let you all know that my Waiex has officially graduated from Phase 1 testing and is now a real airplane! :mrgreen: After a total of four flights today and a series of additional tests and tweaks, I have ran out of things to check which works out well since the plane now has a little over 42 hours. Recently the only real change was an adjustment of the secondary ignition system, which I had set too advanced and was giving me higher than desired CHTs. After re-reading the Aerovee manual I was up flying and turned the secondary ignition off, and to my surprise the CHTs dropped almost 20 degrees. I adjusted it and now have a much better and cooler running engine than I ever have!

Hopefully later this week I'll be able to take my first passenger, my wife Kristin, for a ride. She wants to fly to OSH with me but since we're expecting our first child in 3 months she's on the ground crew :lol: .

Anyway, I can't be happier with the way the flight testing has concluded and I'm looking forward to start really putting some miles under the wings.

Have fun and safe flying everyone!!

Michael, I just sent you a previous email dealing with flight training question. I know being in Ohio you probably can't help me with that. Now my question is my brakes. I have the better brakes with the shoe & drum but I can no longer hold the airplane beyond about 1900 rpm when doing the run up. That also means I'm not getting the braking I would like on landing if I need it. I used to be able to hold the plane at 2450 rpm. I only have 88 hours on the plane but I have done a lot of landings. Does that suggest I may need new shoes? I have tightened up the cable adjustments inside the cockpit as much as I can. I don't believe there are any other adjustments from what I know. By the way I started flying about 2 years ago and I'm 77 years old, so I'm not a youngster anymore.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks , Ed Perkins, Appleton, WI

Hi Ed, don't know if you meant this to be on a public forum, but it is, so here goes. I'd suggest you pull the wheels off and have a look at the condition of the shoes. My Sonex has done over 600 landings on the original shoes so it seems unlikely you have worn them out already. If they don't look worn it might be that a bit of bearing grease has found its way onto the shoes. Cleaning the shoes and drums with brake cleaner might be all that's needed.
I suspect there are not too many youngsters on this forum.

Peter