Chapter 25 member Steve Adkins is building a Hummel UltraCruiser. Check out his project website at: http://quid.us/hummel/.

Check out these amazing photos provided by Steve Adkins:

This is my first aircraft project. Wife won’t let me start another one until I finish this one…”

Pat has done extensive rebuilding of his Corvair engine, and has a well – documented photographic record of the entire project. Pat is also interested in sharing his experience with other builders. Contact him at pwhoyt@yahoo.com for more information.

“I have known the Sisler SF-2 Whistler since it was first built back in 1973. And I knew that Gene Stinar, whom I had known at Southport airport in the 60s, had bought the Whistler project from Bert Sisler.

Recently I had been planning to buy a plane so my kids could learn to fly. My thought was to buy back the black-and-gold Pietenpol I had sold to Vi Kapler in 1988. (Vi had worked with Bernard Pietenpol in Cherry Grove in the 60s and 70s.) However, it occurred to me that a side-by-side airplane was much more suitable for training purposes than an open-cockpit tandem arrangement.

Considering possibilities, I remembered flying the Sisler SF-2A Cygnet for a 3.5 hour dual cross-country on the afternoon of May 19,1979, the day it finished its test period and received its airworthiness certificate. (That morning, after a 10-year break from flying, I had received my first BFR in the J-3 Cub belonging to Paul Wilcox.) A Cygnet seemed the ideal choice for us.

It was at Paul’s funeral last November 1 that an attendee mentioned that Gene Stinar was selling the Whistler to someone. Right there I asked Lee Hurry if he would give me Gene’s phone number, which resulted in my visiting Gene on November 14 and subsequently purchasing the plane.

At the January 16 meeting of Chapter 25, Jon Cumpton offered the use of his trailer to retrieve the plane, which we did on January 26 (see photo) with the help of Jon, Bert Sisler, Bert’s son Eric and my son, Forrest.

Gene had hired a person to plow a long, wide path to the front of the hangar on his country home, and helped in removing the wings and loading the plane on the trailer. His wife, Billie, served hot chocolate and cookies as we were finishing the task.

It was a wonderful experience to have all the advice and assistance from everyone present. I will never be able to repay their kindnesses, but they have my everlasting gratitude.

I am also grateful to many, many other members of Chapter 25 who offered
to help, but were unable for one reason or another.”

Dick says, “The plane handles very nicely, and I’m happy with it so far.” After an initial oil leak problem during taxi tests, Dick was able to correct the problem and clean up the airplane for his Saturday test flight. “I went out to repeat the high speed taxi tests, and had an open mind as to the aspects of flying. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer day with a 12 knot wind almost straight down the sod runway at Osceola. At about 50 mph I expected the plane to want to just lift off and climb, but that did not happen. I had to apply some back pressure and it lifted off smoothly.”

Dick was impressed about the rate of climb in his new airplane, too. He identified some other squawks, and plans another test flight this week. Congratulations Dick!

I took off from Airlake at about 1:30PM. There was no wind and the temperature was about 9 degrees F. I basically just made one circuit around the pattern and landed. I was seeing some high cylinder head temps on my rear cylinders, so I decided to make it a short flight.

I have had a dream of building and flying my own plane since I was a kid, and I have finally accomplished it (yay!). The flight itself was totally uneventful, which is what I was counting on, but that didn’t mean the adrenaline wasn’t flowing pretty hard anyway. Now the flight almost seems like a blur.

The plane handles great. It has a nice balance between responsiveness and stability. The only other taildragger I have flown is a Cub, and all I can say is that the Waiex is way way easier to land and taxi (and start, and take off, etc.). Everyone told me this would be the case, and they were right. I don’t think I really looked at my flight instruments during the whole flight, I just did everything by feel.”

For anyone that is interested, Joel’s builder’s log website is here: www.mykitlog.com/joelfuller