portable light table just like in airplanes

Rosen sun visors now are standard equipment. For those same folks, Cessna has completed certification on an inadvertent TKS anti-ice system on the Corvalis TT, and is hard at work on the Corvalis (though that system wasn’t certified at press time). Gull-wing doors that fold up and out provide ingress into a generously sized, automotive-like cabin.Ī new cold-weather kit improves engine-oil temperatures for pilots operating the aircraft in frigid climates. The Corvalis TT sports a slick composite finish, and its main gear are carefully faired and tucked beneath the wings. That’s a total payload increase of 100 pounds over the old airplane. Though Neibauer had previously designed a number of fast, retractable homebuilts (including the world-beater Lancair IV and IV-P), he recognized that fixed gear was simpler to build, lighter, less maintenance-prone and, perhaps most important in this context, less expensive to certify.īuyers also now have the option of deleting the formerly standard air-conditioning system for a credit and another significant improvement in useful load-about 75 pounds. Lance Neibauer apparently felt the same way when he configured his first certified airplane, the Columbia 300.

For most airplanes, this one included, it just makes more sense to leave the wheels hanging than to retract them.” Whether you’re designing a homebuilt or certified airplane, retracting the wheels is almost universally more trouble than it’s worth. Fixed gear is simpler, lighter and, in many ways, stronger. “This is a homebuilt airplane, after all,” said Wheeler, “so ease of construction is important. Wheeler’s explanation of why he elected to design his airplane with fixed rather than retractable gear was interesting. Like so many other homebuilt designs of the time, it was also a fixed-gear composite airplane, nevertheless possessed of near-retractable performance.

In those days (1987?), the Wheeler Express was that rare machine: a four-seat homebuilt. Back in the ’80s, when I was working on the ABC TV show Wide World of Flying, I flew up to Washington State to interview Ken Wheeler, designer of the Wheeler Express homebuilt, and fly his innovative airplane.

Portable light table just like in airplanes