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LJS1993

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LJ Savala
Okay guys this may sound totally insane but here I go nonetheless. Is it possible to completely design and build a plane from the ground up yourself? By that I mean completely fabricated, machined, welded, etc......by a regular pilot who just happened to have the skills and materials necessary to create his own aircraft? If so would it be truly approved for use by the powers to be? Are there any clubs out there comprised of guys who don't want a kit but are actually making their own designed aircraft?
 
Absolutely not insane, it happens all the time. How do you think all the planes we fly got here? Somebody designed them. Some were designed by professional aeronautical engineers, a lot weren't. See www.eaa.org for like minded individuals.
 
Farmers back in the 20s with period materials, no internet, and basic early information pulled it off.
 
Very possible, but not very advisable IMO as an aerospace engineer. Without the knowledge, just slapping something together can lead to a disastrous design that could kill you quickly in any number of ways. If you keep your fresh design fairly conventional and pattern it after an existing good plane, it might not be terrible, but beyond that you're really rolling the dice. There is so much to know to get things "right" to have a safe plane.

There are a lot of kit planes out there with terrible flying qualities and questionable structures. There are some that are great, too.

What are your motivations to do such a project?
 
KSMooniac said:
Very possible, but not very advisable IMO as an aerospace engineer. Without the knowledge, just slapping something together can lead to a disastrous design that could kill you quickly in any number of ways. If you keep your fresh design fairly conventional and pattern it after an existing good plane, it might not be terrible, but beyond that you're really rolling the dice. There is so much to know to get things "right" to have a safe plane.

There are a lot of kit planes out there with terrible flying qualities and questionable structures. There are some that are great, too.

What are your motivations to do such a project?
Click to expand...

Oh hell just give them a copy of Catia and wish them well.
 
LJS1993 said:
Okay guys this may sound totally insane but here I go nonetheless. Is it possible to completely design and build a plane from the ground up yourself? By that I mean completely fabricated, machined, welded, etc......by a regular pilot who just happened to have the skills and materials necessary to create his own aircraft? If so would it be truly approved for use by the powers to be? Are there any clubs out there comprised of guys who don't want a kit but are actually making their own designed aircraft?
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Don't know if you meant to only compare the extremes but there are many options between "Quick build kits" and "Roll your own design".

People who scratch build from plans come to mind. There are many plans out there of varying quality and completeness that are built by people who scratch build to save $$$ and/or put their own personal stamp on the design.

The Pietenpol commmunity is based around a single design that can be modified in myriad ways and yet produce a finished product that is nonetheless a Piet.

I grew up reading about Peter Garrison and his Melmoth. I was convinced that homebuilding would never be for me, at least in the RYO design and scratch build form, but I couldn't foresee the rise of QB kit and in particular the RV10.

As someone has pointed out previously, whatever the question, RV10 is the answer. :yes:
 
LJS1993 said:
Okay guys this may sound totally insane but here I go nonetheless. Is it possible to completely design and build a plane from the ground up yourself? By that I mean completely fabricated, machined, welded, etc......by a regular pilot who just happened to have the skills and materials necessary to create his own aircraft? If so would it be truly approved for use by the powers to be? Are there any clubs out there comprised of guys who don't want a kit but are actually making their own designed aircraft?
Click to expand...

It's most certainly possible and as long as it passes inspection it will be approved. That said, most people will take advantage of one of the NASA or NACA airfoils since there's been billions of dollars of engineering and wind tunnel development for performance, safety and efficiency already been done. I worked on one in Australia.
 
catmandu said:
Most publicized example I know of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrison_Melmoth
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Thanks for posting that. His own quote at the end made me sad reading it:

Melmoth is entombed in memory. We have two children now and much to do, and I rarely think about the old airplane, the 2,000 hours we spent in it, the 350,000 miles of prairie and ocean and mountain that slid beneath its white wings. Animals and men still live who heard it drone overhead and perhaps glanced upward; trees and stones remain that were once brushed by its shadow. They forget; but if I murmur the words "Two Mike Uniform" I can still feel the tremor of the roaring engine and sense the vast surrounding space of flight. I can resuscitate for a moment feeble shades of the fear and relief, the fine tension I would feel before flying and the lassitude afterward; and I can still taste the indefinable affection that filled me when, after hours of flying, with a final glance at the cooling airplane I slid shut the hangar door. - Peter Garrison
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cowman said:
Farmers back in the 20s with period materials, no internet, and basic early information pulled it off.
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Yep, some of the popular plans-built designs still flying today came out of that tradition, like the Pietenpol Air Camper.
And Cessna, Weick, Wittman, Piper, Taylor... they all started with "crazy contraptions" designed and built pretty much single-handed.
Then there's designers like Rutan and VanGruvsen... a little more sophisticated, but still very much in the DIY, pencil, paper and slide rule vein, with ordinary materials and tools.
Many, many failures, like the Bonney Gull... but many big-name factory-produced aircraft designs have been flops, too. Doesn't matter how you go about designing or building the prototype- it's either a good airplane or it isn't.
 
KSMooniac said:
Very possible, but not very advisable IMO as an aerospace engineer. Without the knowledge, just slapping something together can lead to a disastrous design that could kill you quickly in any number of ways. If you keep your fresh design fairly conventional and pattern it after an existing good plane, it might not be terrible, but beyond that you're really rolling the dice. There is so much to know to get things "right" to have a safe plane.

There are a lot of kit planes out there with terrible flying qualities and questionable structures. There are some that are great, too.

What are your motivations to do such a project?
Click to expand...

With that said I ask you this Scott. As an engineer could you possibly design and build your very own aircraft? Would it be feasible for an engineer such as yourself?
 
Bill Watson said:
Don't know if you meant to only compare the extremes but there are many options between "Quick build kits" and "Roll your own design".

People who scratch build from plans come to mind. There are many plans out there of varying quality and completeness that are built by people who scratch build to save $$$ and/or put their own personal stamp on the design.

The Pietenpol commmunity is based around a single design that can be modified in myriad ways and yet produce a finished product that is nonetheless a Piet.

I grew up reading about Peter Garrison and his Melmoth. I was convinced that homebuilding would never be for me, at least in the RYO design and scratch build form, but I couldn't foresee the rise of QB kit and in particular the RV10.

As someone has pointed out previously, whatever the question, RV10 is the answer. :yes:
Click to expand...

Yes I was pretty much thinking in terms of completely designed from the ground up without limited influence from already made designs or at least not directly from said designs.
 
Henning said:
It's most certainly possible and as long as it passes inspection it will be approved. That said, most people will take advantage of one of the NASA or NACA airfoils since there's been billions of dollars of engineering and wind tunnel development for performance, safety and efficiency already been done. I worked on one in Australia.
Click to expand...

Would you ever consider taking a "generic" design and totally fabricating and building on your own?
 
LJS1993 said:
Would you ever consider taking a "generic" design and totally fabricating and building on your own?
Click to expand...

Physically, sure, practically, not unless I win the lottery and have a bunch of free time and money both at the same time. None of the work is particularly difficult and none I haven't done before. Design wise the rules are known and there several good books on the subject. It is all very time and money consuming to do properly though. At this point if I would do something like that I would have to do it in such a fashion that I would develop production tooling such as molds and/or jigs for everything so I could sell "fast build kits" to make the time and expense worthwhile. "One offing" can be done cheaper than setting up for production, but not hugely so since many things will still require fabricating jigs just for that one assembly. With tooling for composite work, one can create a much stronger and lighter product than one can using a foam core system, and good foams are expensive while tooling materials are relatively low cost, and if yo make a mistake in your tooling, that mistake is easy and low cost to correct with no detriment to the final product. If you make a mistake on a one off, repair becomes a much more involved, and sometimes impossible, issue. All of this is why you see so many kits out there. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to do a one off.
 
Many homebuilts were barely-disguised copies of existing, proven airplanes. If an uneducated guy wants to design and build something, he should find an airplane that more or less matches what he wants and get real intimate with it. Study every inch of the airframe. And even then you'll be guessing as to what metals it might be made of.

For every successful airplane designed and built by an amateur, there will be many that never made it into the air, or killed their pilots. The Wright brothers were amateurs, and crashed a few times to prove it. Lots of those early guys did. I wouldn't want to reinvent the wheel, myself. Learn from the mistakes of others.

Dan
 
I have a co-worker who has built two aircraft of his own design. Well, in reality, the first one wasn't of his own design. It was a replica of the WACO "Cootie," which was the first WACO ever built. The original Cootie crashed on it's first or second flight. He built it using photographs (I believe there were seven photos of the original existing). He built it, flew it, got the "specs" on it's flying characteristics, and then donated it to the WACO museum in Troy, Ohio.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Waco-Cootie-(replica)/1793593/L/

His current aircraft is a completely original design.
 
Sat in one at Oshkosh. One seater. The navcom consisted of a shelf for a handheld transceiver and a shelf for his smart phone.
 
LJS1993 said:
Okay guys this may sound totally insane but here I go nonetheless. Is it possible to completely design and build a plane from the ground up yourself? By that I mean completely fabricated, machined, welded, etc......by a regular pilot who just happened to have the skills and materials necessary to create his own aircraft? If so would it be truly approved for use by the powers to be? Are there any clubs out there comprised of guys who don't want a kit but are actually making their own designed aircraft?
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You mean like Curtiss Pitts, Lamar Steen, Paul Poberezny, Ken Rand, and more people than I can remember?

At one time this was "typical".

There are exceptions. John Thorp and Burt Rutan are aero engineers. The Kitfox guy just copied the Avid Flyer, and of course, we can't forget Jim Bede - another professional aero engineer.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
You mean like Curtiss Pitts, Lamar Steen, Paul Poberezny, Ken Rand, and more people than I can remember?

At one time this was "typical".

There are exceptions. John Thorp and Burt Rutan are aero engineers. The Kitfox guy just copied the Avid Flyer, and of course, we can't forget Jim Bede - another professional aero engineer.
Click to expand...

Oh no! You mentioned Bede!:rofl: The kit plane industry is just now getting over his reputation.;)
 
JB1842 said:
The Wright brothers did it, and they weren't even pilots.
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They crashed a lot of them, too. Fortunately, 15-20 knot impacts are generally survivable. Not many planes today operate in that speed regime.

Overall, I agree that it's possible, but it takes a lot of knowledge and skills which the average pilot (probably the vast majority of pilots) doesn't have.
 
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Bill Watson said:
Don't know if you meant to only compare the extremes but there are many options between "Quick build kits" and "Roll your own design".
Click to expand...
Back when I started flying in the 60's, "scratch built" was pretty much the only choice, although the vast majority involved professionally-crafted and flight-tested designs. Only those with serious aeronautical design/engineering skills crafted the plans which were successful, and the vast majority of homebuilders were happy to buy those plans rather than try to design their own aircraft. Things have changed with the technology of "plastic" airplanes and the consequent advent of those "quick build kits" in which all the design and much of the fabrication is done by pros, and the amateurs are primarily just assemblers. This has opened up the E-AB option to a much larger (and less knowledgeable/skilled) audience. There are still folks out there doing what you suggest (design, fabrication, and construction), but they are an even smaller percentage of the pilot population than they were 50 year ago.
 
LJS1993 said:
Okay guys this may sound totally insane but here I go nonetheless. Is it possible to completely design and build a plane from the ground up yourself? By that I mean completely fabricated, machined, welded, etc......by a regular pilot who just happened to have the skills and materials necessary to create his own aircraft? If so would it be truly approved for use by the powers to be? Are there any clubs out there comprised of guys who don't want a kit but are actually making their own designed aircraft?
Click to expand...

Orville and Wilbur Wright went that route. :yes: No store bought spam cans for those boys! :no:
 
"At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation.
— Igor Sikorsky, reported in 'AOPA Pilot' magazine February 2003














​
 
DaleB said:
Absolutely not insane, it happens all the time. How do you think all the planes we fly got here? Somebody designed them. Some were designed by professional aeronautical engineers, a lot weren't. See www.eaa.org for like minded individuals.
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Most of the aircraft we see setting on the ramps today were evolved from previous design. 172, A,B,C,D,E, and so on.
Like Ron says, very few builders are building from plans any more. The EZ/canard builders even have kits now.
 
Ron Levy said:
Only those with serious aeronautical design/engineering skills crafted the plans which were successful
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Lamar Steen was a high school shop teacher
Curtis Pitts was 16 when he designed his first airplane.
Don't know the details of Dan Denney's background but I'm reasonably confidant it does not include "serious aeronautical design/engineering".
 
LJS1993 said:
With that said I ask you this Scott. As an engineer could you possibly design and build your very own aircraft? Would it be feasible for an engineer such as yourself?
Click to expand...

I would answer ABSOLUTELY, I could design my own plane, or at least most of it. Part of becoming "educated" in the field of aeronautical/aerospace engineering is discovering how much you DON'T know about any given topic. Within a few years out of college, I started specializing in structural analysis and composite structures in particular. I still love the aerodynamics and flight test disciplines (especially since I fly) but structures has turned into a steady and continuously employable career for me. If I were to design my own, I would likely reach out to some friends on the aero side for reviews or consulting as needed. There are so many nuances with aero design to get to a great vehicle that scratches all of my itches... combining low drag wings with great control authority and harmony AND safe low-speed behavior is quite difficult, and I don't have the experience to get that last 10-20% of the design perfected.

Now, the bigger questions is WOULD I do so... and sadly the answer for me is no. The only thing that would change it for me is to get a powerball-type windfall where I would not have to work the rest of my life, and then I would love to make my GA plane, and company. I've worked at Cirrus and Lancair so I know first-hand how much effort is required to develop a GA plane, and even with a team of folks in engineering and fabrication, it takes years going at it full-time. And that is just the design and development phase...certification will add more years. I'm just not able or willing to try to do that "on the side" while working full-time and living life.

Sorry if that deflates anyone's balloon, but that is my realistic view of the question. Some folks might naively jump in and start designing a plane with no background whatsoever and have a fun time at it...there is nothing wrong with that. They may or may not develop a good plane. They may or may not kill themselves with it. I get bent out of shape only if they start offering it as a kitplane without making it to be what I consider safe. There are a lot of bad kitplanes out there that never got fully developed, or were just plain awful. I don't like to see that since a buyer or passenger might not know ahead of time.

Today I dream of spinning-up my own composite design and fab business on the side and trying to grow it into something that will support me. I have some products in mind to try first that are in the GA world, but realistic for me to try right out of the gate. I wish I could do a complete airplane, but for now I can't and don't waste my dreams on that idea. We'll see what happens!
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Lamar Steen was a high school shop teacher
Curtis Pitts was 16 when he designed his first airplane.
Don't know the details of Dan Denney's background but I'm reasonably confidant it does not include "serious aeronautical design/engineering".
Click to expand...

All great examples, and they developed fairly conventional designs that were more evolutionary and thus "safe" in my opinion. At the other end of that spectrum is someone like Lance (a graphic designer) that developed slick hot-rod kitplanes. Some of them were pretty good, some not so much from the safety and handling qualities point of view. They are all gorgeous, though! Lance got some help along the way, and some of it was good and some of it was terrible. He built a successful company, though, and that is very impressive.
 
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