Question about Christen Eagle/ acro planes

[chacalextreme]

I woul like to start building an acro airplane next year (scratch build, from plans). So I wrote to aviat aircraft asking for the Christen Eagle plans and they told me that they don't sell plans, just the kit... (which is very expensive for my budget... they sent me the price list...) Does anybody knows if I can build this bird from scratch? where I could find the plans? If it is not possible, which two seater with a flat four do you recommend? Maybe a Pitts S2? where to find plans? cost? (scratch build...) I will build the plane with my father, so he deserve a ride on it when ready... the last shot will be a DR107...

Any recomendation?

Thanks!!

[martymayes]

The only way to build a Christen Eagle clone or 2-place Pitts clone would be to reverse engineer one and draw up your own set of plans. There are a number of 2-place plans built airplanes suitable for recreational aerobatics. Since everyone has their favorites, I'll give you mine - Steen Skybolt.

[chacalextreme]

Its a shame don't have the opportunity to build a 2s or a eagle, but the skybolt looks good. I would like to have a IO-360 on it, since it is cheaper to buy and maintain... do you think it will perform good with 180hp and two 150 pounds guys?

Thanks a lot!!

[JimRice85]

I've flown a 180hp Skybolt several hours and thought it performed quite well.

[chacalextreme]

Pretty interesting! I'm going to continue investigating on this plane. Any other suggestion? 2 place acro with 180 hp? could be mono or biplane... hoping to have it ready with 2500-3000 hours in 5 years...

[WLIU]

The important question is what type of acro do you want to fly? And what is your pilot experience?

If you want to doo simple loops and rolls for fun you have a lot more choices than if you want to fly at some level of competition. If you fly loops and rolls to +6G and -3G every week now you will look at different choices than if you have had your hands on the stick and rudder for only a couple of loops and rolls in your entire pilot logbook.

If you have 1,000 tailwheel hours your choices are different than if you have zero tailwheel hours.

The Eagle is a great airplane for someone who wants to bolt together parts and fore go learning to weld, bend wood, and build jigs, figure out systems from scratch, etc. The Eagle comes with the most comprehensive set of manuals ever written for building an airplane.

A skybolt is a great airplane for someone who has all of the skills or seriously wants to learn them. You start by puzzling over blueprints and work up from there.

But what kind of flying are you looking for? There are easier airplanes to fly that you can do the one loop and roll a month in.

Bud Davisson has written great articles about picking an airplane to build. You can find them in the EAA Sport Aviation archives or he has good stuff on his airbum.com web site.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

[FlyingRon]

I've got two neighbors who have/have had acro homebuilts. One had a Starduster and the other now has a RANS.

[Neil]

Lots of discussion of this nature on <BiplaneForum.com> Skybolt, Acro Sport, Starduster and Acro Duster seem to be the primary discussion but there are others. Raven is selling plans for a 2 place I think (not sure) but pretty sure it would use a 540.

[Eric Witherspoon]

I too was going to suggest biplaneforum.com (recognize some of the responders on this thread from there). Though you don't specify biplane in your original posting.

So it would go back to - what acro, exactly, are you trying to do, and what is your background/experience with building and piloting?

There's plenty of one-wingers that can do anything from the occasional loop & roll all the way up to - well, as far as you want to take it.

Having built a cantilever-winged riveted-metal monoplane and now building a tube-and-gusset aluminum-structured biplane, I can tell you the biplane is a MUCH more complicated machine to build. Right off the bat, it has twice as many parts as the stressed-skin riveted-metal monoplane. And that's not only because there's twice as many wings - tube-and-gusset is much more parts-count-intensive than frames, stringers, and stressed skins. The biplane offers more to love if you're in it for the building hobby moreso than the flying hobby.

[WLIU]

To address the original questions...

* I have never seen a scratch built Eagle. Never heard of one.
* For two seats and the occasional loop and roll, the RV's are great.
* You won't find any plans for a Pitts S-2 either. They sold some kits but that was quite a while ago.
* As a Pitts driver I will offer the advice that without 100 hrs in something like a Decathlon, not a Cub,
and the desire to fly every landing until the airplane is stopped, and I mean every landing,
you will not enjoy being a Pitts owner. To paraphrase, I fly a Pitts because I can. Not everyone
enjoys that every landing is challenging. You can learn the skill, but you won't ever be able to
relax. I have friends who will fly a competition program to +6G and -3G, and then they put just as
much effort into the landing.
* I agree that you will build a monoplane faster. Biplanes have twice as many wing ribs to build, etc.
* What kind of flying does your father enjoy?
* Any previous building experience? Woodworking skills? Cars? Been to a Sportair workshop?
* Connected with an EAA chapter? Getting started by helping another builder can be very
educational.

Spending time up front thinking about what you do with an airplane right now and what you will, not might, do with an airplane you build is very worthwhile. There are a number of Pitts out there that were built because the builder thought that they are cool, and then after 10 hours total time they get sold because the reality of flying the airplane overwhelmed the builder.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

[chacalextreme]

Well, I'm not an expert, I'm a mechanical engineer, my father and I have worked in some small projects: we rebuilded a quicksilver MX, a crashed quad city challenger, and painted another one... I have around 50 hours of flight in the challenger that we rebuild and that's it... and I have been designing and building RC models since I was 13 (now I'm 30.. :)). I want to get into aerobatics, and I'm going to start with my private pilot license in January, so I get it ready with and acro course at the same time I finish the project... (5 years I think...)

So I want a plane that let me get into the acro world and take it seriously, probably be able to get into the advance category or more... I feel that is a big project, so I want a plane that can give me a lot of years of fun!!

I would like it to be a two place, but the far I would like to invest is around $30-$35k...

And sadly I don't have any EAA chapter next to me, I'm in costa rica :(

Thanks everybody!!!

[WLIU]

I hear from friends that Costa Rica is a very nice place to vacation for Americans. Sounds like you need to vacation up here as often as you can.

So it looks like if you are interested in building a biplane, you can talk to the Steene Aero folks in Florida, http://www.steenaero.com/
If you might think about 2 seat monoplanes you might look at the York Enterprises Lazer Z-2300 or the DR-109. I know nothing about the Z-2300 but I have seen an acquaintances DR-109. Based on his comments and a leisurely walk around his airplane, the DR-109 looks like a pretty good aircraft with a 6 cylinder engine in it.

Since you are an engineer you can take a look at the plans and figure out whether the construction and performance numbers make engineering sense and whether the airplanes will work with the skills you can build and the airports that you will operate from.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

[chacalextreme]

Thanks a lot for your inputs Wes, whenever you want to come here you are welcome, so I could be your tourist guide and maybe we can take a ride in our challenger :). And that is true, I have to save some money and go up there, I'm pretty sure that I would learn a lot sharing with some EAA chapter. The DR109 is a very nice airplane, It is another one that I'm going to investigate...

Thanks a lot!!


Esteve.

[Vetteman89]

Check the ads in Barnstormers.com, under Experimental and you will see a wide variety of partially finished kits for sale. There are Christian Eagles on there also. They are generally 200 hp with a constant speed prop.