Progress!

Here's the latest news!  I finished sanding to fuselage and began the repairs/upgrades..  The tail structure had a couple loose pieces that I epoxied back into place:

The next couple pictures show some of the upgrades.  I'm converting the plane from a Minimax 1100 to a Minimax 103.  It's the same base plane, but with a couple of cooler features.  The one I'm building now is the round area on top of the fuselage deck.  Behind the cockpit is finished, the front is 1/4 finished.

The engine is temporarily sitting in the plane for measurements.

New Project!

So, after a couple years and projects I'm back!  After doing a bunch of chit chat with some of my buddies and looking around, I decided to get an ultralight!  More specifically, to build one from wood and cloth, kinda like the kayaks.

Here in Illinois a pilots license isn't needed to fly a true ultralight.. a true ultralight weighs under 254 lbs, has a top speed around 70 mph, and a stall speed of just under 30 mph. 

After looking around at a ton of different designs I settled on Minimax.  The plans are free, but after buying all the wood, glue, cloth, engine, etc. I'd be in the hole over to $8,000! It would be way cheaper to buy a used on that is rather beat up and rebuild it..

BarnStormers.com is the place to look for old planes.  After weeks of searching I came across a Minimax 1100R up in Michigan, about 7 hours north of me, for a fraction of the cost.  The planes fuselage was in pretty decent condition, but the wings and about everything else needed rebuilt.. included in the great deal is all the wood, glue, cloth, hardware, engine, prop, and everything I'll need besides paint and a throttle lever!

Last Friday afternoon my dad, brother and I headed on a long road trip, and came back with a sweet project!

Here are some pictures.. sorry the plane is all apart right now, so its tough to get  a complete image.

Fuselage..

 Wings..

  

Other parts..

 

 Since the plans and building manual start with building the fuselage, that is where is started.  The next couple pics are with the old cloth pulled off.

The next step is to lean up the fuselage wood and hardware and then get it ready to re-cloth.