Smith Builder Assistance B

We started out with the “Ultra quick build” option offered by Michael Heintz’s shop, Quality Sport Planes, in Cloverdale CA. This kit option included mostly built wings, fuselage, and canopy. Those items were shipped right off of the certified assembly line. This allowed us to focus our efforts on the instrument panel, electronics, engine and general layout of the cabin as well as picking out paint colors and design for the planes. Funny how long that actually took!

Our vacation started on March 2nd and on Saturday March 3rd, we parked Stephen’s Winnebago next to the Quality Sport Planes hangar and moved in for 2 weeks of long working hours (12 on average) and no weekend breaks as we wanted to make the most of our “vacation”. Our arrangement included the use of a fully stocked workshop, the assistance of three experienced aircraft builders (Ed, Eric, and Doug) and a direct line to Zenair support through Michael Heintz.

The class gave us an opportunity to get hands-on experience with some of the tools, start learning the vocabulary (cleco, rivet, etc…), and to get a glimpse into the world of aircraft construction. It also gave us an opportunity to meet Michael, evaluate his shop, and the whole builder assist process, and get a much better sense of whether or not undertaking this project was actually a good idea: could we reasonably expect to build 2 planes in a reasonable time period (less than 6 months)? This was particularly important to Alan and me as we live in Washington State and only had limited vacation time to be on-site. What we could not complete during our vacation would have to be done over long weekend trips. We needed to make sure that we could do it.

We also decided to go through the “Builder assist” program that Michael offers. This program provided experienced hands-on help throughout the process in the persons of Eric Petersen, Doug Dugger, Ed Dalbec, and of course, Michael who often added invaluable input in time of puzzlement.

Rudder workshop (Sanity check of “How/when/where to build”)
But before we fully committed to the project, we wanted to do a last sanity check. My husband and his brother had quite a bit of mechanical aptitude and experience but that experience had been mostly limited to cars, bicycles, boats, and motorcycles. I had basically no experience and never felt much aptitude either! None of us had ever pulled a rivet, twisted safety wire, or even seen a cleco. In order to get an idea of what we would be up against we enrolled in a two day rudder build class the last weekend of February 2007.