Taking the Plunge!

Wow! December is half way done! November just flew by for us here at ScaleBirds. We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Since the last blog in mid-October, a lot has transpired. Most of it good. Some of it was amazing!

After 16 years, I took the plunge and have stepped away from Electric Boat. Well, for the time being it’s a one-year leave-of-absence for the purposes of starting a company. This is a seldom-used feature of the union contract. The clause allows benefits to remain in effect as long as we continue paying our share at our normal rate which makes transitioning to a new venture much less of a burden. Now, I left at the end of October, and so provided we get these kits out the door I won’t have to return to The Boat next October, but it remains an option until then. To be honest I took a few days at the beginning of the month to wind-down: feels good! But not a lot of time spared to rest around here. The rest of this year is dedicated to the task of getting everything squared away.

Finding space around here suitable for what we need to do is tough. So we need to work hard to optimize the spaces we currently have. That means getting rid of a lot of leftovers and scrap from the P-36 build, old components, test articles, as well as generally reorganizing the home office and shop spaces, the hangar, and our machine shop. It comes down to being able to execute. We have a lot of space but it is spread out. I am sure we can make it work with some creativity. We will still be looking for a larger consolidated space in the area, but Southern CT is not overflowing with vacant industrial space. It might be easier to fully relocate in a year or two.

One big reason for the shuffle right now is that we are all-out on gearing-up for production, and that means making proper space for proper tools. After making runs of test parts for the tail kits, we have been struggling with mis-matched holes and inconsistent parts. This sort of thing is OK for some simple one-off parts, but to build an airplane kit, we need accurate and consistent work. These issues have mostly been traced back to our DIY CNC router. After working hard for years to build our prototype, our old machine simply reached the limits of what we could expect from it. After weeks of searching, we found a listing for a used ShopSabre IS 408 CNC router, from a company looking to upgrade their 4x8 machines to larger ones before the end of the year, and so I think everyone made out really good on this deal. The ShopSabre runs on ballscrews and linear guides, the same as used on industrial mills like the Haas, and has an automatic tool changer and vacuum table. This is the class of machine a kitplane company dreams of to make top quality kits, and it just arrived - in time for Christmas! We are busy with wiring and installation efforts including replacing the spoil-board and top surface so it can be trued to be very accurate.

Besides cutting metal, the other thing we must do for your kits is form the metal. There are big industrial presses that can do it, and you can gang up 2 or 3 smaller presses to do the job as well. But none of these options really has the ideal aspect ratio for bigger bulkhead or rib shapes, they tend to be rather narrow. However, we found an ad for a very unique hydraulic press, custom built for a drilling and blasting company in southern Massachusetts, with a huge 2ft x 4ft working area between 4 upright beams. This thing looked big in the pictures; in person it’s bigger. We showed up that day with cash and made a deal, because it’s the perfect size for aircraft ribs. But then had to figure out moving it to our shop. That was a bigger challenge than it seemed due to location in the garage and some sprinkler pipes, but some makeshift skates and an excavator got it done. As mentioned, this beast will be used for forming our ribs, bulkheads, fuel and oil tank parts, canopy frames, and numerous other things that need to be squeezed into shape.

The last major tool we need to figure out is a dedicated 8ft break of our own for bending spars. Up to now, we’ve had ready access to various 6ft and 8ft breaks which has been extremely handy. But they are not ours to modify. For serial production it will be important to set up the tools for our specific bend radii and add gauges and stops to ensure consistent results. These are out there, its just a matter of finding the right one for us.

And then in addition to these big items we’ve been taking stock of our selection of riveting tools, drills, saws, and other shop equipment making sure we have everything we need for clean and consistent results. Need new grinding wheels, fresh shop glasses, heck just more trash cans. Once you start spending all day in the shop for a week, a lot of things start to stand out.

Of course while organizing the shop is important, we haven’t stopped on other fronts. Scott has been making and remaking the sample parts for the P-40 tail feathers for load testing and fitment checks. While there have been some hiccups and mismatched holes, overall it is coming together. No huge surprises. We’ve done this all before. But this time we need to use the tools we plan to keep using and not just whatever we can get to work for one time. Case in point, I am in the middle of making the leading edge press tool for the horizontal skins, to make the process a lot more repeatable.

While fabricating the test parts, Scott and I have been trying to work towards wrapping up the retractable landing gear and all the cascading changes that requires. i.e.: fuel tanks are now different, most of the center section ribs are different, etc. We are still working it, but it is looking good! As part of the center section update I am also incorporating the aluminum fighter/bomber bucket seat that we always intended to incorporate. This seat sits lower and more square to the frame which allow us an additional 1-1/2 inches of head room for the tallest folks - I don’t have that problem. It will also look more authentic to the WW2 fighters. In fact, we may use the seat build as a practice assembly you can order by itself, and adapt it for a great chair in your hangar/shop or even your bar at home. The seat in our P-36 was a fiberglass unit we bought, used in Stardusters and the like. It works fine for the prototype, but not what we intend to use going forward.

So spending a lot more time at our shop at the Groton airport industrial park has some repercussions. I had a neighbor boat repair guy back a boat and trailer into my truck. Well, it happens, but a boat??? Well you don’t know how much you need your truck until you go without for a week and a half while its at the body shop. So the week I’m working siding and trim - arrrrgggghhh. Those hardware box store rental trucks are a really good deal! Conversly, while looking for space at Windham airport, I met a nice guy taking pics of the P-36. He was sending them to a friend. Later, we actually met his friend Robin Foote who is a local guy that flew warbirds with his dad in airshows up and down the East coast - Canada to Florida. They had several of the Tora Tora Tora birds, a P-51, a FM-2, T-6 and a few other aircraft. Robin also started the Quonset Air Museum in Rhode Island. His dad actually flew about 25 hours in P-36’s in the Aleutians in WW2 - but he was a Navy pilot. Figure that one out. They needed all hands in case the Japs invaded. So the Army allowed a Navy pilot to train in their planes. Robin stopped by and liked our P-36 replica so much, he wants one.

We are making steady progress. The plan is to push the tail group thru to test. If you are interested in a tail kit, please contact us. We are getting very close to kitting them up.

I hope each of you will have a wonderful Holiday Season. Make time for the Christmas parties, services and friends and family gatherings. Stay safe!

Crazy Good

Hello folks. We are alive and kicking! Sorry, been a long time out of comms. Our week at Oshkosh was tremendous and we accomplished all we were hoping for. We sold one Verner 9S and have several more lined up for when the projects are ready to order an engine. We ended up taking a deposit for a tail kit for our next LiteFighter - the F6F Hellcat. This is something we were planning to do early next year, but decided we get the ball rolling on the Hellcats. P-40 and P-36 beta kits are top priority for ScaleBirds. We are designing the airframe to be modular and have been laying out the F6F to work with the primary structure all-along. So we will be ready to go right after the Hawks. We did have a great week and met so many awesome people and customers. Including Ty Ferkin, Trent Palmers buddy. Loved our plane.

On several evenings, we met with the Mini Eighth Air Corp (mini8th.org) and the family that is sponsoring their half scale B-17. Wanting very accurate loft lines, we settled on 60% scale using four Verner 9S engines. We are going to write all about it shortly. Don’t worry, we will be pushing hard on the beta kits and we feel this will be a win-win. The bomber project is going to allow me to leave my day job and Scott and I will be working on aircraft full time. We already are working ScaleBirds on nights and weekends and Electric Boat is getting the best 10 hours of my day. We will be able to concentrate on the aircraft build and kitting much better. More focus. Also, from talking with other kit companies, we will need an additional funding stream during the first few years - until the first customer built planes fly. Then the orders roll in. The bomber project helps us to stay afloat.

There was some tragic news we heard during the show that we had to process and even comprehend. Adam Plummer, one of our early Beta builders was killed in a weather related aircraft accident with two other guys in a Cherokee. Tough stuff. His friend stopped by and told us. Talking with his widow over the phone was heart-breaking. He was so keen on starting the P-36. Then, we also heard that John Williams of Titan Aircraft was killed in a crash of his T-51 with a new propeller that over-sped and then disintegrated. Several of his customers stopped by our booth to discuss it and see what we were doing.

Hearing directly from them, it confirmed our design philosophy for the LiteFighters. Use common sport aircraft engines and propellers. Keep it to normal hp and safe speed range. Gentle stall characteristics. Safe and fun to fly vs high performance and high skills to fly. Our booth at AirVenture was right next to Stewart 51. That aircraft is amazing, but it is a thoroughbred racing machine. You need high skills and excellent proficiency with that hardware. The engine and propeller is a project for an air racing shop team. We are staying way away from that. Titan was incrementally pushed into higher and higher performance and power. The prop was just some of the issues with that direction. There is a market for high performance, but we think fun flying is when you don’t have to worry about being able to land the plane. We hope we are right and that there is a great market for fun replicas.

After AirVenture, we got back home and promptly got a good case of The Oshkosh Crud. My wife Karen and then her work mates came down with Covid-19. I had all the same symptoms, but tested negative twice. My situation with that is it took a month to be done with it. I felt good again every 4 or 5 days for a few days, then wham, back into it again. Kinda felt like Groundhog day every day or maybe like a circular firing squad. That was August - pretty much just sick and the reason I didn’t write anything after AirVenture. Although we did have a phone interview with Hal Bryan, editor of Sport Aviation magazine. Sport Aviation came around multiple times during AirVenture to take images and video of our plane and booth. Hal says we will be in the November issue of Sport Aviation. Yippee! The pinnacle of our industry!

Then, in September we finally got the plane back to flying status after having a sticking exhaust valve. I did manage to get some flying time on her. Then Paul Dye, editor-at-large of Kitplanes magazine called and we made plans for him to come to our place and fly the P-36 the last weekend of September. Awesome! Then the realization sank in that we had Kitplanes coming for an interview, flight report and air to air photo shoot of our plane, shop and hangar. Oh boy. We spent three weeks of September getting ready. We were straight out - again, I didn’t have time to write about any of it - cleaning and organizing both spaces and making sure everything was perfect. I think it was, cause Paul had high praise for our efforts and the plane. He was not sure which issue it will be in. Said it was most likely Jan or Feb issue. I have no idea what he will write, but he did say it was a fun airplane to fly and that it was a joy to fly it in formation.

His comments to us about the flying qualities were in agreement with what Steve Wolf said and my own experiences. Mainly that we need to add offset to the vertical or add rudder trim - right foot pressure pretty much the entire flight. The other comment was aileron force was very light and neutral in the middle. So adding some stick force to it would really make it a joy to fly and very much like an RV-3. Paul says the RV-3 has the best control harmony in sport aviation. Not sure if he will say this stuff or not in his article. But I want you to hear it from us first! We are addressing these things in our Beta kit version of the aircraft.

It was a great day. Paul arrived to some low scattered thin clouds and light winds. Sunny on top. We prepped the plane and I took it around the patch to see how the clouds were going to affect him or not. They were scattered and 400 to 500 ft and easy to miss. Paul took the plane up for about 40 minutes and made a full stop, taxied back and went around again for a final landing. Both landings were perfect. He gave us his initial impressions about ailerons and rudder. Said it was a fun airplane to fly. He took some images and we put her away in the hangar.

We then went to our shop at the Groton airport industrial park. He took some images there and we talked for a while about designing and building the P-36 and what we are working on with the kits. We then went to lunch at Mystic Pizza - were Julia Roberts worked in the movie of the same name. Paul has had a fascinating career at NASA and we learned all about it and how he got into that gig.

We headed back to the airport and got ready for the photo plane and crew to arrive. They promptly did and it was Mark Scott and his son, flying in Marks amazing Bearhawk and the EAA chapter’s RV-12A. They are from the EAA chapter 27 in Meridan, CT. They briefed and harnessed up the photographer after removing the rear seat door. Then both planes flew off into the late afternoon sun and clouds for about an hour. When they came back, the photographer was saying how photogenic the plane was and the break-away that Paul did was sick! Awesome in other words! I did get to see one image of the break-away and the P-36 was at a 90 degree bank and pulling. The US ARMY stencil and roundels were front and center. Cool! I can’t wait to see the other images she took.

Then we took a trip to Watervliet, Michigan with our trailer to pick up a donated Hawker Hurricane project. It will be the second aircraft in the future Mini Eighth Air Corp museum of replica aircraft, after our P-36 prototype of course. We stopped by the Air Zoo aviation museum and what a treat that was! We also stopped by our customers Rick and Kathy Shultz in New Carlisle, OH. They won a gold Lindy for their red Hatz Classic with one of our Verner 9Ss on it. Stunning airplane.

During all this time after AirVenture, we have been finalizing design and cutting out parts and form blocks for the vertical and horizontal. We went back to the drawing board for the rudder to lighten it. Several comments were made during Oshkosh about it being very heavy. We did manage to lighten it up, but have to make another one for testing. We can re-use most of the parts we fabricated for a second rudder, so it wont take too long to do. It will be slightly heavier than the normal simple, light aircraft rudder because of the replica shape and scale. The original P-40 rudder is a very complicated structure and we are making a similar, but simplified, version of it. I am planning to finish our test tail and test it in early November. Tail kits will be right away after that - in mid to late November. We also have room for an additional Beta builder, so if interested, please email or text me. swatrous@gmail.com 860-941-6410.

So we also just said our good byes to our crew member Shin Sasakura. He is leaving us for at least 1-1/2 years. He took a position for Electric Boats’ sister company in Pearl Harbor, HI. He will be doing tech insertions for Virginia fast attack submarines. Basically upgrades to the electronic equipment. One of those once in a lifetime opportunities you just have to go for. Shin has the blue lei in the photo below. We are all envious and proud of Shin. Aloha!

So to sum it up: Oshkosh was awesome, August was terrible, September was CRAZY GOOD!

ScaleBirds is Oscar Mike

We are on the move - Oshkosh bound! I just got an update that the Watrous team just passed Toledo. Shin and I are heading to the airport to fly commercial in a few hours. All of us will be in Oshkosh by late this evening. All of us are excited for another great week at EAA AirVenture!

We we will be back in the Homebuilt area, albeit in a new spot this year. This year we will only have our P-36 LiteFighter in our booth, showing off both the rugged Verner motor and taking deposits on kits (no Hatz’s or KitFoxes to confuse potential customers this time around). Speaking of kits, we are well on our way to kitting out the first set of tails for our beta builders, so thank you to all of you who are taking this huge next step with us. We obviously had to put the tools down this past week to get packed up for Oshkosh, but we are going right back to work when we return in August. Speaking of Verner Motor, we are still busy taking orders and providing aftermarket services. The New 3VLA is stronger and better than the old model, and a welcome return to the ultralight market after a few years of Verner putting the small engines on hold to burn down their back log. The best part about homebuilts is you can do as much or as little of the work as you want, so if you need help on your Verner build, let us know.

Other than the obligatory thunderstorms that look to be roaring through on Tuesday, it looks like its going to be great flying weather the rest of the week. We can’t wait to see all of our old friends and make new ones. See you all at Oshkosh!

Hard at Work

Time flies when you are having fun! And boy has it been a fun two months. When last I updated you all, we were all heading down to Sun ‘n Fun, and it did not disappoint. Other than the one obligatory afternoon of thunderstorms, it was all sun, and all fun. We had a great time at our awesome booth location. We were in the far corner lot of the exhibit, but right off the flight line, so close in fact, that the cones they put out to mark out the airshow perimeter had to go around the front of our plane during the show!

We had three great displays all week. We had our P-36A, of course. Brian Kelly was showing off a Verner Scarlett 9S on his award winning RV-8R, and Steve Wolf brought the firewall forward of his newest project, a one-off scale P-47 with another 9S. Needless to say, we were always busy! Thank you to all of our fans, beta builders, depositors, and engine customers who stopped by to say hello and enjoy the prime location to watch the world class airshow. Also, a big thank you to all of our new fans, new friends, and future customers whom we met in April. We had hundreds of people sign up for the mailing list, and if you haven’t seen it yet, we have a link for our MailChimp account in the contact section.

Most excitingly, we got to fly in the Showcase on Saturday! After a few casual conversations and talking to the right people, we were able to fly not one, but two airplanes in the show. We shut down the booth in order to take both the P-36A LightFighter and the RV-8R in up the morning Showcase. Air Show Legend Steve Wolf (its official, his picture is hanging in the Hall of Fame) loved flying the P-36 so much the week before Sun ‘n Fun, he volunteered to fly it again in the Showcase! He was also able to get permission to have Brian fly his RV-8R. Sam provided the announcing to the tens of thousands in attendance, while we got to demonstrate both the LiteFighter prototype, as well as both a 7U and a 9S Verner radial. We totally were not prepared to be demoing at Sun ‘n Fun, and forgot to pack the good cameras to capture the moment. Cell phone pics don’t do it justice, so if you have any good shots from Sun ‘n Fun, let us know.

As for the past two months since getting home, we have been hard at work. We are working on kitting out the first set of tails, rudders, horizontals, and elevators for our beta builders. We are calling it our ‘vertical slice’: a microcosm of the overall kitting process. While bespoke aircraft parts are great on a one-off homebuilt, they aren’t so great when it comes to kits. Even though our beta builders are all competent builders, we didn’t want to just send them a stack of cut sheetmetal, some tubes, and a drawing and tell them to figure it out. We want to ensure we can scale up quickly and efficiently while maintaining our self imposed high standards for quality. This means we have been formalizing our part numbering system, optimizing fixtures and jigs, developing build instructions, identifying which forming and sub assemblies we should do, and constantly improving the design. We are also wrapping up the engineering and design changes to improve and optimize other parts of the aircraft based on the lessons learned from the prototype. And yes, there will be retracts on the future models.

Lastly, I’ve been wearing the bucket hat pretty much daily for the past two months, it fits great and looks slick. You can buy your own over at the PX.

-Aaron Ide

P.S. I’m shamelessly putting in a few pictures of my adorable daughter Miriam who absolutely LOVED her first airshow. We taught her the sign language for ‘airplane’ at the show, and now she still signs and points to any airplane she sees in the sky. I’m so proud :-)

The PX and Sun 'n Fun

Hello everyone, it’s Aaron! As I write this, Sam, Scott and Karen should just be finishing up setting up our booth at Sun ‘n Fun down in Lakeland; meanwhile, I am shirking my ScaleBirds duties on the opposite side of the country in Cape Vincent, NY at the mouth of the St. Laurance River and in view of Canada. We came up this way (including a 9 hour car ride with a 9 month old baby) to see the total eclipse. The weather held out and the clouds parted just long enough for us to see the totality. It was awesome in the truest meaning of the term, it inspired awe.

Now that seeing an eclipse is checked off my bucket list, I am happy to announce a second major event: The PX is now open! May of our loyal followers and customers have purchased our key chain bottle openers or patches at the various airshows, but we have never had anything set up to sell merchandise online. We currently offer a few Verner and Scalebirds branded merchandise, and are trying to keep everything relatively thematic with our core business. Take a look around the PX, it’s still small as we build up a catalog and an inventory, but we hope you like it. If there is some we don’t have that you would love to see, reach out and let us know!

Next up on this jam packed week: Sun ‘n Fun. I will be traveling from the north of the country to the south over the next two days, but unlike in the past, I will be bringing the whole family. The Ide Squadron will be joining the Watrous Squadron by Wednesday evening and would love to see all of you some time during the week! ScaleBirds will be outside Hangar D in the north exhibits all week, with some exciting new exhibits, and potentially doing some flight demonstrations of the P-36.

-Aaron Ide

Heading to Sun n Fun 2024

Hey everyone. We are getting ready for Sun n Fun and busier than a one-armed paper hanger! Our booth space has moved. We are in the North Exhibits, N007 in front of Building D - on the runway side that is. We did not realize it when we booked the space, but we are right between Extra with the new NG acro mount and Gamebird with their wild acro machine. So we had to do something to spiffy up our displays. All new tent, new signage and banners. Steve Wolf has agreed to display his FWF for the P-47 project. It will have half the cowling removed so you can see everything about the installation. That will be sweet!

We then asked to have Brian Kelly’s RV-8R join us in the booth space. We could only do that because we got the larger space than we have had. We will have three Verner engines on display in our booth! Then, our customer Curt Hosterman said he would bring his Kitfox Series 7 with the Verner 7U to SnF. There is a chance we can have three flying Verner powered aircraft at the show and then, posibly a fourth as well - if Steve makes it with the SamsonMite. I hope we can do a radial round-up Showcase flight with all 4! That will be an amazing thing to see and hear! Please stop by the booth if you go. We want to catch up with you.

Right now, Scott is busy making the fixturing for the tail parts for our plane. It has taken us a lot longer than planned due to outside forces blocking our schedule. Mainly, additional contract work on Scotts part and Electric Boat pushing heavy overtime on me and the rest of the crew. We have all the metal parts cut out for the two sample rudders we intend to build and document. They are proof parts before we begin the Beta parts run. The fixturing is now ready to be cut out, but we are running out of time to do a proper job of building the rudders. They will not make it to this show.

Our weather has been terrible for flying. Mostly raining and then windy/gusty all of March. I was hoping to fly her down to FL this week, but we have three days of rain and two more of gusty conditions forecasted. Our most prudent option now is to trailer the plane down and assemble her before the show. So we are just about to get started on that big job. Plan is to leave Friday evening and get through NY City area just after rush hour traffic eases. Make it as far as possible, then get to FL Sat night or Sunday morning. Assemble the plane Sunday and setup the booth on Monday. The show starts on Tuesday the 9th and goes to the 14th.

We should be able to see partial eclipse on the 8th as we setup. Some of our crew have plans to travel to NY locations for the eclipse. Aaron is going way North all the way to the boarder with Canada. They then will join us in FL later in the week. I hope you get to see it where you are. Be sure to take all precautions - you can burn your eyes as the corona is as intense as the whole sun for damage.

Will try to blog and make a video or two while at the show. Our plan is to get some good air to air shots while there. Talk with ya soon.

Let's Roll

We are nearing the end of February and the weather is slowly improving. I’ve managed to put 2.5 hours on the plane a couple weekends ago. My three landings were pretty good, so at least I’m not getting too rusty. Hoping the weather in March gets to over 50F and less choppy air. I am already looking at flight planning the trip down to SNF 2024 in early April. Gonna give myself a couple days to get there - so will need a good stretch of weather. Fingers crossed! Worst case scenario is to trailer it down last minute again. I’ve sworn not to put the plane thru that again - the roads are terrible. Mother nature may have her own plans so will have to be flexible.

Aaron wants me to put the wheel pants and spats on the gear legs to see how it improves the cruise and fuel burn. Will try to do that in March if there is time. The leg fairings will likely improve the drag more than the wheel pants would. We have the wheel pants and mounting brackets ready to go, but not the spats.

Scott is finishing up the Rudder redesign after doing some time critical contract work. We are planning to build the first article starting at the end of February - this week. It will go together fairly quickly in our jig and we will post pics. Our current plan is to make several for display in our booth at Sun N Fun. We will be creating a work cell to fabricate the rudders and will make ten of these in the Beta variant. There will likely be no changes for the Std kit version of the tail after these are made so we can likely keep making more. The horizontal and vertical stabilizers are 95% ready so we may have a set of those ready for SNF aswell. We have to finish the controls and rear fuselage interface models and make any adjustments first.

The airfoils for the tail have been changed to be slimmer at the root ribs and tighter leading edge radius. Idea is reducing drag from the prototype’s empanage. We also changed the rudder structure and shape a little. Very much more like the real P-40/36 rudder structure - less ribs, but similar in all aspects. The aerodynamic counter balance shape is changed from the simplified version we had on the prototype. Because we can and it isn’t adding any more complexity. We are more accurate to scale this way at very little cost delta. We will be doing some minor changes throughout the airframe to make it more to scale when it makes sense to. Such as: the fuselage will get rounded off on the bottom and the wing root fillets will hit the fuselage more accurately.

This week we start building our own P-40 Warhawk! Lets Roll!

Just in Time!

Hey folks, Happy New Year! We now have completed our Phase 1 flight testing of the P-36 Hawk prototype. This was a very high priority mission for ScaleBirds as we need to be in Phase 2 testing to fly the bird to Sun N Fun 2024 in early April. Winter weather in CT is usually blustery and cold. We had it pretty mild from Christmas to New Years Day, but the week between was rain and low clouds - like at 300 ft ceiling on average. Just terrible. The clouds cleared for New Years Eve and N Y Day so I put the last 5 hours on her. The prototype is not heated and though she has a canopy, its drafty. I am still trying to warm up! Totally uneventful flights, the bird is getting into a good stable condition mechanically. Very happy with the systems and flying characteristics. Its now 10 degrees cooler than New Years, so we completed Phase 1 - Just In Time!

Scott is working hard on updating the 3D CAD modeling of the design and we will be making some announcements shortly regarding the first tail kits and our Beta kit progress. Its going to be an exciting year!