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When a new homebuilt de-sign hits the market and a lotof kits are sold in a relativelyshort time, there is a pre-dictable lag of a couple of years

or so while builders are slavingaway in their garages andbasements . . . then all at once,it seems, critical mass isachieved and at the next major

fly-in, a big bunch of the air-planes shows up for the firsttime. There are always a fewearly birds, of course, but Sun'n Fun '99 saw the first large

SPORT AVIATION 57

influx of GlaStars and RV-8s. We'vehad a considerable amount of coverageon both designs here in Sport Aviation,mainly involving the company proto-types, but we like to eventually followup with coverage of a customer-builtexample to see how new designs aredoing from the builder's point of view.

There were a number of very nicenew GlaStars at Sun 'n Fun '99, anyone of which could have been the basisfor a good article. We had to chooseone, however, and we decided on Boband Kathie Beaty's just completedN229KB. The GlaStar kit includeseverything needed to complete an air-worthy example of the type, but thef in i sh ing touches are left up to thebuilder. N229KB stood out in severalrespects: the overall level of work-manship was superb, the interior wasthe most elaborate we've yet seen in aGlaStar and the paint job featuredduPont's spectacular new chameleon-like ChromaLusion™ paint.

Since we're looking at the projectfrom the builder's standpoint, we mightas well start with the builder. Bob Beatywas born in Columbus, Mississippi in1948 and would eventually earn a de-58 JULY 1999

gree in pharmacy from the Universityof Mississippi. He began his workingcareer in an independent corner drug-store, later worked for one of the bigretail drugstore chains, then 12 yearsago he went to work for PharMerica, acompany based in Tampa, FL that pro-vides pharmaceutical products andservices to long term care and assistedliving facilities. Bob is currently thecompany's senior vice president of op-erations for the eastern U. S.

Always interested in aviation, Boblearned to fly in 1976 at Stinson Fieldin Aberdeen, Mississippi. He soloed ina Cherokee 140, then became a partnerwith several other pilots in a Cessna150 in which he obtained his Privatelicense. Sometime later the groupbought a 1946 Aeronca Chief projectand spent about six months repairingand recovering it. They flipped a cointo determine who would make the firstpost-restoration flight and, fortunately,Bob says, he lost and a pi lot wi thsome taildragger time won the toss.Even so, he ground-looped the air-plane on the first landing — the result,it turned out, of an over-abundance oftoe-in of the main gear. After proper

Bob and Kathie Beaty

adjustment, Bob would get a tailwheelcheckout and flew the Chief about 15hours before his business career movedhim away from Aberdeen.

The experience Bob gained in work-ing on the Chief had been singularlyenjoyable . . . indeed, quite therapeu-tic, he found. It was so different fromhis work in corporate managementthat it seemed to magically melt away

the stress of the workaday world. Thiseventually led him to homebuildingand the construction of a Kitfox.

"I flew it once and got relocated toColorado. A guy came up and askedme what I would take for it and I toldhim . . . and he ended up buying it. Bythat time I had already seen the GlaStarand wanted to build one, so selling theKitfox kind of gave me the seed moneyto get started. I was impressed with theGlaStar because it had such beautifullines and had such a wide performanceenvelope. It had a low landing speed,yet it was fast in cruise for a fixed gearairplane with wing struts. I flew thefactory prototype and was sold on thedesign. It was just a great flying air-plane; as docile as a Cessna 150 or 172but with much better performance. Ihad friends who were flying Glasairs,but as a Private pilot with about 200hours, I felt the GlaStar was bettersuited to my experience and skill lev-els. I just like fun flying; I'm not a bigcross country flier.

Walk around N229KB and the trim colorconstantly changes.

"I ordered the kit at Oshkosh in1995 and the first shipment I receivedwas the metal tail kit. I had learned torivet in the workshops at Sun 'n Funand Oshkosh, so with Tony Bingelis'books in hand for additional informa-tion, I began the project by starting onthe rudder. It was very challenging atfirst, but it got easier as you got intothe process.

"One of the additional things aboutthe GlaStar that had appealed to mewas the opportunity to do some com-posite work. I had no experience withthis process, so when I heard the EAAFoundation was building a GlaStar forthe Young Eagles Program early, Iwent to Oshkosh and participated longenough to learn how to laminate thefuselage shells together and at tachthem to the tubular sub-frame. I wenthome and immediately started on mineand it went very well.

"I had started the project in Col-orado, and I began looking for anengine while we were still living there.

I wanted a low compression Ly-coming O-320 E3D so I coulduse auto gas if I wanted to, and Ifound one in Trade-A-Plane.Wouldn't you know it, it was inLongmont, Colorado —jus t 10mi les away! It had been com-pletely overhauled by IA LarryPickerell and everything had beendone really first class. The cylin-ders had been sent off to FirewallForward and the crankshaft wentto Rick Romans, Inc. in Tulsa.The camshaft was reconditionedby Aircraft Specialties Servicesof Tulsa. It had good log books,so I bought it for about half what

you would pay for a newengine. Stoddard-Hamil-ton has a lot of engine bayoptions you can buy — astainless steel exhaust sys-tem, a baffle package, airinduction system, etc. —and I bought most of them.One of the good th ingsabout them is tha t theycome wi th detai led in-structions for mounting. Alot of the kit manufacturerspretty well leave the fire-wall forward to the builder,

but in this case all the detailed installa-tion instructions really helped me.

"About halfway through the build-ing process, I was relocated to Tampa,FL and had to get an add i t iona l 1 8wheeler and load up my airplane andshop. With the move and getting set-tled in a new home, I was out of thebuilding process for about six months,but I f ina l ly got back on it. The lastbig a i r f rame job was b u i l d i n g thewings, and riveting on the top skinswas something I couldn't do by my-self. I needed a partner for that. Priorto this, my wife, Kathie, was not reallyinto homebuilding or even aviation ingeneral, but she agreed to go to Sun 'nFun '98 wi th me and learn to use abucking bar in the riveting workshop.That didn ' t work out very well, butwhen we changed places, she turnedout to be a really good riveter. That'sthe way we finished the wings, withme doing the bucking and her operat-ing the rivet gun. I bought her a RosieThe Riveter T-shirt . . . but that wasjust the beginning. She later enrolledin ground school and did quite well.She was the only person in the classwho was not a student pilot, however,

SPORT AVIATION 59

MARK SCHAlBLt

N229KB's beautiful leather interior

60 JULY 1999

so one night she came home and said,'Hey, I'm taking flying lessons!' Shesoloed in a Cherokee just two weeksbefore Sun 'n Fun '99, so we are nowpartners in the GlaStar and all our avi-ation activities. She wi l l get checkedout in the GlaStar, ol'course, and welook forward to enjoying it together.

"But, back to the construct ion. Iused a 3M structural double-sidedfoam adhesive to install the glass in theairplane. Some guys in Brazil testedthe process in the heat down there andit worked very, very well. I also used itto attach the vortex generators on thewings. It's resistant to ultraviolet andseems to be holding up really well. Ibought the modular instrument panelfrom Stoddard-Hamilton and with a lotof assistance from Bernard Bathauer ofEagle Avionics, Inc. ol'Brooksville,FL, i n s t a l l e d the instruments andavionics, including a new KX155,Garmin GTX 320 transponder and aSkyforce GPS. I'm currently undergo-ing instrument t ra in ing and 1 haveenough equipment in the panel to goout wi th a safety pilot and practicewhat I'm learning.

"Airlink Technologies, Inc. in PalmCity, FL makes some aftermarket partsfor the GlaStar that make it a lot easierto upholster the cabin, especially uparound the t u b u l a r s t ructure at thewing roots, and I bought those and in-stalled them. I found a guy who was inthe upholstery business, Ray Lufto ofJ and R Upholstery of Dade City, FL,and he built the seats from scratch. Wecame to Sun 'n Fun in 1998, went toone of the commercial booths andbought a couple of cow hides for likeone third the price you would normallyhave to pay. We decided how wewanted the seats to look and he did agreat job making them.

"Luckily, I also had a duPont tech-nical representative living nearby, DanWoodford of Land-O-Lakes, FL, andwe quickly became friends. I assistedhim in the painting, and we applied thebasic white Imron 5000 at my house.We rented a regular paint booth at anairport to apply the trim, however. It'sa new paint called ChromaLusion™and it changes color when viewedfrom different angles . . . not just dif-ferent shades of the same color, butcompletely different colors. The solidsin the paint are five-sided and eachfacet reflects a different color. It's re-ally dramatic.

"My f r iend and FAA TechnicalCounselor, Thurston 'Jaybo' Hinyub,made the first flight in January of thisyear. Unfortunately, he and his wifewere involved in a fatal aircraft accidentshortly afterwards. Ile really helped methroughout the b u i l d i n g process and Iwill always be grateful to him. The air-plane flew well from the start, needingonly a fixed tab on the rudder."

Bob's GlaStar was i n i t i a l l y fittedwith a Sensenich 74/65 propeller, butthat proved to be too much pitch forthe 150 hp engine. When he consultedSensenich, he was told that the 74/65propeller was best suited for a 160 hpversion of the Lycoming 320 seriesand he needed a 74/61 for his 150 hpversion. They graciously traded evenwith him and, as predicted, the 74/61

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proved to be a good match for the en-gine/airframe combination. It allowsthe engine to turn up to 2,650 rpm in

straight and level flight. At the time ofSun 'n Fun '99, Bob was still break-ing in the engine, cruising it at 2,500

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rpm and 135 mph. Wide open, it willease up to about 140 mph.

"The empty weight came out at1,250 pounds, which is very close tothe factory number. Gross is 1,960.The stall occurs at about 47 mph withflaps and 49-50 clean. It lands muchlike a Cessna 152, but with its muchcleaner airframe is harder to slowdown. The controls have a very tight,solid feel and you can make turns withaileron only and the ball stays right inthe middle. It's very easy to fly, it's alot of fun and I feel very comfortablein the airplane. I think it's a very safeairplane for a low time pilot.

"I especially enjoyed the buildingprocess. I'm a part of CorporateAmerica and I travel quite a bit. I'dcome home on weekends and the proj-ect would take my mind off all that. Itwas a great stress reliever. After theairplane was moved to the airport, I'dgo out to my shop on a Saturdaymorning, look at that empty room andwonder, 'What am I going to do withmyself?' I was really experiencingwithdrawal symptoms for a while.

"I've got to have some kind of proj-ect going on, and I think for my nextone, I'm going to find a basket caseCub or Champ and restore it."

And while he's recharging his psy-che in his shop this time around, heand Kathie can always take a breakand go flying in their beautiful GlaS-tar. How much better can life be? ^