The Fly Baby Story - Oshkosh 365

off the airways, and the corner of a triangular test area
that I had asked for and gotten. Ted Smith of FAA
showed up on schedule, made his inspection, and finished
filling out the paperwork. I put 5 gals, of gas in the
tank, since I wanted the ship to be light for the first
flight and to reduce the fire hazard — just in case. This
proved to be a mistake, but only one of several to be
made that day.
Since the freshly-overhauled engine had only three
hours of block time and an hour of running in the ship,
we decided to run it in for another hour while taxi-testing
the ship and trying out the brakes and steering.
There was nothing wrong with this — the later troubles
came from over-anxiety to get into the air and the Go-
Go-Go atmosphere generated by the now sizeable crowd
made up of all the local aero-nuts who could get away
from their jobs. I put on a parachute and taxied out to
the end of the runway. The first two hops were to be
low drags down the runway with the wheels just off
the ground to test trim and controllability at low power,
and all went well. On the full-throttle run, "Fly Baby"
jumped into the air and then the engine sputtered. I
(Photo by Bowers)
Ribs are band sawed from Vs in. plywood, then fitted
with '/» in. by Vt in. slotted cap strips. All were built by
one person in a single Saturday. Wing tip bows are laminated
from !/e in. J Sfl$p$, and ailerons are carried on Cspar
behind rear wing 'spar. Compression ribs are steel
tubing, one of few tyelded assemblies in the ship, and
drag wires are Va in. 1x19 stranded wire.
set down right away and taxied back past the crowd to
try again. Again it happened, so I cut out further attempts.
Since the ship had been given a fuel flow test before
coming to the field and the engine had worked fine on
the full-throttle demonstration for FAA, we were stumped.
We thought that maybe the fuel line had a restriction
or was a bit too small, so put on another and went out
to try again later in the day. This time the throttle was
advanced more slowly to cut down on acceleration and
backward fuel surge, and things seemed to be going OK
until at 20 ft. altitude at low speed with the nose up, the
engine quit cold. With no power and no speed, there was
nothing to do but hold on tight. The impact bent the
axles and the steel axle support plates gouged into the
sides of the wooden landing gear struts. Fortunately, the
prop didn't hit the ground so this was the only damage.
The ship was able to taxi back to the line under its own
power.
It was several months, long after I had put in a
shorter and still-larger fuel line, that I found out what
had happened. In looking at a photo taken just before
the first take-off, I noticed that the wire fuel level indicator
that sticks out of the cap of the Piper J-3 fuel
tank was all the way down.
The hour of engine running had used up most of the
5 gals, that had been put in and no one, neither myself
(Photo by Bowers)
Joe Roskie puts the final bits of hardware store aluminum
flashing to the leading edge of the right wing before covering
with Dacron from Sears.
« ».
nor a single one of the spectators, pilots all, had noticed
the warning that was there for everyone to see! The "preflight"
inspection had been made BEFORE the engine
run, and was not repeated before the flight. The lesson
learned, fortunately at relatively low cost, was a double
one — first, don't get in a hurry concerning test
flights, and second, forget the weight handicap and fill
the tank for the first flight. While the tank-to-carburetor
relationship was exactly the same in "Fly Baby" as it was
in the J-3 "Cub", the lighter homebuilt had considerably
more acceleration with the same power and the small
amount of fuel aboard surged to the back of the tank,
behind the outlet, so the engine was running only on
what was in the sediment bowl. With higher fuel levels,
there was no further problem, but I did make a rule of
"No take-off below % full" as used on Cessna 140s, etc.
Well, it took a day to straighten out the metal
landing gear parts, add a stiffening fairing to the
straight-across tube axle, make two new wooden V-strut
assemblies, and get it all back on the ship. With a full
tank, the first real flight was highly successful, and "Fly
Baby" was at last ready for Rockford, but with only
an hour and four minutes on it. FAA wouldn't let it go
cross-country with only this, so it got loaded back on
the glider trailer and three of us, Jack, Tony, and myself,
left Seattle on Saturday afternoon. Two days and
(Continued on next page)
(Photo by Victor D. Seely)
Those '/s in. plywood ribs are HUSKY. Note that Pete is
standing on the RIBS, not on the spars! Don't try this
stunt until you get the stabilizing tapes in, or the ribs
will bow sideways and break.
SPORT AVIATION 7