Homebuilt Aircraft | CRATEX Abrasives

Experimental amateur-built aircraft, often called “homebuilts”, because they are typically built in people’s garages and basements, are the fastest growing segment of new aircrafts in the United States. Amateur-built aircraft are built by individuals and certificated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as “experimental amateur-built” (E-AB). www.eaa.org

Kit planes or homebuilt aircraft are small planes built either from scratch, plans or assembly kits by aircraft enthusiasts who are not necessarily professionals. In the US these amateur-built aircrafts may be licensed as "experimental" under the FAA or similar local regulations, under the condition that the aircraft builder has not built it for profit, but rather for recreation and education. The primary builder of the kit plane can also apply for a repairman's certificate that will allow him to perform maintenance, repairs and inspection.

Kit planes are employ simple construction methods, they are usually small with one to four seats. They can be made of any material that is light and strong enough to bare the flying. The oldest and best-known construction is the fabric-covered wood, seen in the classic Pietenpol Air Camper or popular Bowers Fly Baby. Metal constructions are also seen most often, while the wood-composite mixture and composite material structures (usually fiberglass, carbon fiber, Kevlar combined with structural plastic) are on the rise lately.

Engines used for kit planes are usually similar to or the same as the engines used for certified aircraft (e.g. Jabiru, Continental, Lycoming,  Rotax), but some of them are also homebuilts – converted car engines, such as the Chevrolet Corvair 6-cylinder or the VW air-cooled flat-4s, motorcycle or chainsaw engines. Although many kit plane builders prefer dedicated aircraft-engines due to better performance and reliability, converted engines significantly lower the costs which is the main motive behind the usage.

Short History of Kit Planes Popularity

Brazilian inventor and aviation pioneer, Santos-Dumont, was the first to present construction plans for free to the public. He published the drawings of Demoiselle, light-weight monoplane with a wire-braced wing and an open-framework body, in the 1910 June edition of Popular Mechanics magazine.

Many of the aircrafts designed and registered during the 1920s in the US were considered "experimental" and many of these were prototypes. One of the first homebuilt aircraft was the 1923 design of Bernard Pietenpol, a self-taught mechanic and an aircraft designer considered the father of kit planes. His most famous design, the Pietenpol Air Camper, an airplane he designed to be built and flown by the average 1930s American, was flown by Pietenpol for the first time in 1928.

Kit planes really gained popularity among the Americans in 1924 with the start of National Air Races held in Dayton, OH. The races had certain limitations when it came to useful loads and plane engines, so most of the aircrafts ended up being amateur-built.

The very first aircraft referred to as a "homebuilt aircraft" was Baby Ace, designed by Orland Corben. The aircraft plans were offered for sale in 1929 and are still available today. Not only are the plans available, the kit plane enthusiasts are still building Baby Ace planes today.

The popularity of homebuilt planes reached its peak during the years following the first ever solo transatlantic and non-stop flight between North America and Europe. In 1927 US Army Air Corps officer, Charles Lindbergh, flew a custom built single-engine, single-seat, high-wing monoplane with well-known engine-turned finish on the nose panels called Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris. The venture landed him an Orteig Prize and the Medal of Honor. Not only did his historical achievement drew a lot of attention, but he also devoted himself to promoting such activities.

Contemporary aircraft designers, builders and pilots were excited and inspired, but since many of them were in fact self-taught, the accident rates proved to be rather high. Consequently, federal standards were introduced and basically put an end to the era of amateur aircraft building, except in special occasions, such as racing.

1946 was an important milestone year for kit planes – it is when Goodyear restarted National Air Races. The Races included a midget racer class that started to take over the country from that point on. Calls for accepting standards that would allow the recreational use of kit planes were becoming louder, and by the mid-1950s amateur aircraft building was once again allowed both in the US and Canada under certain limitations and standards. Around the same time, the founder of the EAA, Paul Poberezny, wrote a series of articles for the Mechanix Illustrated on how plans can be purchased and kit plane can be built at home.

By the mid-1980s general aviation manufacturers were discouraged to introduce new designs mostly due to the costs and litigation. Kit planes weren't limited by the regulatory restrictions that the manufacturers faced, so they were free to introduce innovative designs and building techniques.

For example, the aerospace engineer, Burt Rutan, introduced the canard design that has the foreplane placed forward of the main wing, and pioneered the use composite construction. Also, Richard VanGrunsven took the metal construction in homebuilts to a new level with his RV series. Consequently, the kit planes were sold five times more than the factory-built ones, and the number of produced kit planes in the US officially exceeded the production of any certified manufacturer in 2003.