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I did it again, this time it's a Pietenpol

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Posted

Great Work - Should make most of us very happy that we can buy a prop instead of making one!   EDMO

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Posted

Great Work - Should make most of us very happy that we can buy a prop instead of making one!   EDMO

It makes me think twice about ever building another prop this size as well. It has taken twice the time I had anticipated and I'm not finished yet as well. I didn't take into account how much wood I had to remove from this chuck to carve out a prop compared to the smaller 52" ones I've built a handful of in the past.

I'll likely forget how much of a pain this prop is to build and build another one later too. Oh well, sometimes a bad memory isn't all bad, I won't remember how much pain I was in when I'm flying the plane with this prop on it later this year.

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Since I am back and updating old dead threads. Hmm, does that make me a resurrecter? haha

I got the Pietenpol flying in July of last year. The first flight was nothing but a large circuit over good roads so if there was an issue I had a good out. I stayed up for a short time and everything went well. The landing was so smooth I thought I had missed the ground. No serious, I just felt the tires spinning up. What an easy bird to fly. It sure isn't fast at about 70 MPH but it is just a fun flying open cockpit to fly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FObVWO1C-V0 Here is a video link to the first flight. 

I've made several trips back home to fly it and work on other projects but haven't been out there this year. Starting on December 25th (yup, Christmas day) I decided it was warm (40 degrees) and I needed to get it flying. I ended up having an unusual warm streak and flew every day until the 3rd of January this year in an open cockpit plane over the desert. Some days were just in my dad's Kolb Ultrastar and some days I flew both the Piet and Kolb. The highlight for me was on December 31st I took my son up on his birthday as my first passenger in the Pietenpol. He has so much fun that we landed and talked it over and went right back up. I don't have an intercom so I didn't know he wanted to stay up until we could talk again on the ground. I was frozen in the back cockpit because I wasn't dressed for flying that evening and went out to get something when he came out after me after deciding to fly. I had offered it earlier in the day and he didn't seem to care much about it. I only had a small jacket on while he showed up with a snowmobile suit on. I hadn't flown it without the front cockpit cover on and every bit of cold 36 degree air that could went right up my pant legs. The holes where my legs go through to the front cockpit is the only connecting point between the front and rear cockpit. Plus I didn't have the front windshield on yet. My son wore a snowmobile helmet and was just nice and toasty. Still, to me totally worth it to take him up for 20 minutes on his 16th birthday. 

To date I've only managed to put 5 hours on the plane but really haven't had any major squawks. Just minor issues from it sitting around, being rebuilt and put back together again with not a lot of information. Only thing left to do is to change the redrive belt, check everything over, top off the fuel and fly it across the country. But that is a dream for another day and maybe another year. 

 

 

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