Hi,

Designed and first flown in 1980, the two-place, foam and fiberglass Dragonfly plans were owned and sold by Viking Aircraft. I bought a set in 1996 but had no time to build. Later, Viking was sold to Dart Industries of South Africa. They had started a project but a severe accident ended that effort. There was a report of sale to an unknown buyer in Italy but no one has 'stood up', yet and this is several years ago. Meanwhile, life moves on.

I fell into a sweet deal and bought a low hours, hangared Dragonfly. Now my plans are a roadmap to my rebuilding project as well as the plans and construction material of N19WT. Needing a secure backup, I've digitized the plans and am working on converting the images into text and traced, vectors, of a drawing package. This is how we save legacy documents in a digital age. But this begs a number of copyright questions:
  • How long of a period does a copyright exist?
  • If the copyright 'owner' disappears, who can enforces or defends a copyright?
  • Subsequent publications such as newsletters start a separate copyright clock, right?
  • Does "free" constitute "fair use?"


After 33 years of flight experience, we've learned a few things about this airplane (some would say relearned) the problems of this design. Since I'm not building a Kevorkian, I'm working on some original changes; a better engine (where have we heard that before!); possibly tri-cycle landing gear, and; modern instruments. But to do these right, I'm following engineering practices to minimize risks. Along the way, I had to digitize the plans to get accurate metrics to do the engineering. But I am not alone.

Burt Rutan is retired and his plans have built a lot of airplanes. But other designs predate Burt's work, Jim Bede's projects come to mind. Time and age, we pass on but what happens to the orphan plans?

Are copies kept in the Library of Congress?

Bob Wilson