Well, the glastar found it’s new owner. He is from Sweden. Gotland to be precise. So the it will spend a lot of time over the sea in its future life. Really sad seeing it go, it is a really nice aircraft.

The buyer Mats had no tail wheel experiance whatsoever but flew acceptable within an hour(he got talent, we had a 15kt crosswind!) and he has the mindset of a really safe pilot. But his CFI wont sign him of (we are now into the second day anf a few hours later). Personally I think the CFI is just trying to earn more money…
I never fully understand why some CFI’s think it is their job to make their students perfect. Personally I settle for safe, the road to perfection takes practise and that a normal pupil does not need a CFI in the right seat to do.

Cleaning out my future workshop. My 1 car garage that is! I only have something like 12×18ft available plus a small extra room maybe 8×12 feet at the end.
Since only the fuselage fits into this small space the thinking right now is to finish of as much as possible on the fuselage, maybe tear down the wall between the two spaces to be able to finish the wing and then find another place to mate the parts and the stuff that follows.
It is really a to small space for this but I think I will stand a better chance finishing the Glasair if the build site is as close as possible to home. If I have an hour to spare that can be put to productive use if I am building at home, otherwise not.
Parts will be stored in the container until needed to save space.

Apart from cleaning out the garage I am mainly waiting. The Experimental build process locally requires the FAA to stop by and aprove everything previously done so I have to wait for them to turn up..

As noted on the separate page the short field performance of the Glasair is somewhat under question. Most peaple in the US seems to think that anything below a 3000ft concrete runway is a no-no. Since most GA airports in Sweden is below 2000ft, and we have quite a few Swedes operating Glasairs from these airports, I knew they were not 100% correct saying it was impossible with smaller runways. I also know about a gentleman in austria that uses a 1600 ft concrete runway as Glasair III base but recently I got in touch with a guy flying his Glasair 1 RG from a 1400ft really bad uneven dirt strip, that has to be some sort of record with a RG.

Amazingly he lives very close to Kingman, AZ. The city I left less then three months ago! To bad I did not get a chance to a chat in person with the guy.

Ellipse is an interesting project from LH aviation
Compare it to Bede BD-5B! Basically they made a two man composite copy of the twenty year old design. Still a very interesting concept since in theory this is the way to build an aircraft with extremely low drag. That is why LH is quoting a 200kt cruise speed of an 80hp engine… It is going to be extremely interesting to see if the real cruise speed gets even close, as you might remember the BD-5 at the end got a much lower cruise speed then predicted. Well, if they get anywhere close it will be a really interesting design.