The Glasair is a kit built aircraft. It features superb performance with remarkable top end speeds, side by side two-place seating, lightweight fiberglass composite construction, low total fabrication time, and simple step by step construction procedures.

The Glasair combines utility coupled with efficiency and performance, providing surprising rough field capabilities, sport aerobatics, good range, ample baggage space, light responsive controls, and gentle flight characteristics.

I ordered the first part, the rudder, on September 6^th, 1999. This was the culmination of about 18 months of research to match an aircraft to my desires. In the process I attended a Sportair workshop, visited Oshkosh twice, took 5 demo flights and purchased 3 info packages. You'll see from the variety of aircraft that made the list that we refined our mission in part by studying the aircraft. The front-runners were:

GlaStar - A wonderful machine that held the promise of meeting our needs. During the search, I began flying a Mooney after almost exclusively flying Cessna's, and found that I prefer low wing aircraft. I also decided to go for a high wing loading to smooth out the cross-country ride.

Europa - Also a delightful aircraft, and the folks in the U.S. office went out of their way to help me get to know the aircraft better. They even dropped by my home field on the way back from OSH to give me a chance to fly it. In the end, it's speed & useful load were both short of what we need. (On the useful load front, we compute this as 500 lbs. people & bags (the men in my family are not small folk) plus 3 hours fuel incl. reserves.)

RV-6A - Technically, this one made the performance threshold. However, based on the Sportair experience, my own skills, and just plain preference, I decided that I'd have more fun building in composites.

Lancair Legacy 2000 - Originally, I had eliminated the Lancair 360 as too small, too hot to land, low in useful load and not suitable for grass. At OSH this year I was surprised by the 2000, which promised to fix all those things. I actually failed to study the Glasair quickbuild kits closely because I spent so much time with the Legacy. In the end, I decided that the useful load was still at the light end (quoted as 650 lbs, although they now claim 800 with no mention of design changes), and if I built just a bit heavy I wouldn't be able to make even 2 hours with reserves. Also, as a first timer I was concerned about building a new design, even from such a well-regarded company. Finally, I'm anxious to get going, and the first legacy parts won't ship till mid-2000.

Glasair - You know the punch line already. Fast, slow, strong, great useful load, good looking, composite construction, available now, good resale, hundreds flying.  

Most homebuilt kits offer a variety of options, but no other manufacturer that I considered had quite the variety of the Glasair.  My final selection was a Glasair SuperII FT with slotted flaps, standard wingtips, and the wing & fuselage Jumpstart options.

SuperII - The first question was Glasair III or II.  The III is a high speed, high power beast capable of most anything you ask of it.  However, it is not available with fixed gear, and has a higher stall speed and increased field length when compared to the Super II.  Also, the Super II is insurable for me. Avemco requires 1400 hrs time for the III.  Finally, with the higher kit cost & much higher engine cost it would have proven too expensive.

FT - Next choice was RG or FT. The FT is $5000 cheaper than the RG, builds 500-700 hours quicker (Glasair quote), stalls slower, insures for less and hauls more. The RG is faster & looks sexier in flight. Since I don't plan on seeing the bottom of the aircraft in flight, and the speed difference is less than 10 knots, I chose the FT.

Slotted Flaps - A main feature of the Glasair is the fast and slow speed capability. The slotted flaps are a key part the slow speed numbers.

Extended Tips – Initially skipped this option. With lights it adds about $1000. It helps slow speed, but not as much as the flaps. But after many discussions with pilots of Glasairs, I added it back in to help lower landing speeds even further.

Jumpstart Options – With the Jumpstart options, S-H provides the labor for some of the more tedious tasks.  These options shaved about a year off the time to complete the project.  Also, I'm more likely to finish with the extra head start.  The budget was be hit pretty hard with the added cost, which will probably result in a rather sparse panel, at least initially. (Update: In later diary pictures you'll see that not only did I not skimp on the panel, it ended up pretty well loaded.)

 The specs as I'm building are: 

You can learn more about the Glasair at the NewGlasair website or check out other projects at Glasair News.