Tuesday, February 5, 2013
The beginning.
Well I've gone and done it. I bought a set of Thorp S18 aircraft plans from a nice gentlemen who decided not to build this great ship. I'll start by saying, I am a complete novice. A novice to aircraft building, and blogging. This airplane WILL take many years to complete. I don't have a proper workshop or even all of the tools that I need to build this airplane yet. I feel like I'm in over my head, but every day I'm learning more and more about the build process, and it is beginning to seem more (eh hum) realistic. It will be awhile before this build, and therefore blog takeoff (pun intended). I've been studying the old newsletters, following the "thorpaircommand" forum, and staring at these blueprinted plans. I have no metal in the "shop" whatsoever yet. This blog will serve as a log reference and hopefully it will also serve as a building tool to the next crazy man who decides to try to build an S18 in the future. Wish me some luck.
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Kyle, good start. Don't be discouraged. Are you a pilot? There is a great article on the Thorp in the November EAA Experimenter magazine. As you know there are two Thorp aircraft - the T-18 and the S-18 which I learned at a Thorp EAA workshop at Oshkosh in 2013. In my research to build and own an airplane I kept coming back to the Thorp being the aircraft that met all of my requirements. Today, Mike from Classic Sport Aircraft called me in response to my email. I learned they have a complete airframe kit and sub-kits for wing, tail, and fuselage. Each kit contains all the parts you need. What really perked my interest is that the kits are actual parts and not just materials that you have to fabricate into parts. From what I understand that's what really takes the most time. On the other hand you can build pretty quickly when you're putting parts together. I've been looking at getting started for a long time and I'm probably going the sub-kit route. After I got off the phone with Mike I realized how important it is to have a good relationship with the people supplying you what you need. I bought the tail kit for another airplane but never got any real support from those folks and I never got started. I've concluded that the people who help you are more important the what airpane you build. I would highly recommend that you drop Mike and email, s18mike@ocsnet.net.
ReplyDeleteThe blog is inspirational, I have started my own project. Any movement of late? all the best...
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