Detroit Lakes with Dennis Jacobs' Electric Pietenpol, Ted and EAA Chapter

Walking over to Dennis’ hangar, Ted Kiebke showed us his plane called the SNB (Secret Navy Bomber) powered by a water-cooled Geometro 3 cylinder automobile engine he assembled for about $3800. This 1 litre 60 hp engine burns 2.2 gal/hr; with a straight stack exhaust, and a 3-bladed IVO propeller. It leaped to life on the first try!

ELECTRIC Pietenpol Experiment

 Dr. Dennis Jacobs, Physics, Moorhead State University shared some fascinating details on his electric Pietenpol project. A video of one of his experiments is found at the following link:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3fmnq7f4mxmhqpn/MMHaCt0XNP

In the first part of the video, you'll meet "...some of the students at Moorhead State, who helped me with some of the initial research, giving a presentation to the local Experimental Aircraft  Association.  The two kids working with me on the testing are local teenagers who plan to go into aviation for their careers so I hired them to help me that day.  I also take them up flying quite a lot.  (The youngest is 14 and already checked out in 4 different aircraft.)  The van that the plane is hooked up to is an electric van with lead acid batteries.  I am jumping from there to the plane to run the electric motor and the off/on switch is on the van. (remember this is a basic budget operation)  The main problem I had that day was one of the connections was bad and had a major voltage drop and even melted one of the terminals on the battery.  I was not getting a true reading on the current the engine will be using but even with that the results looked pretty good."   

Even Dennis' 1948 C172 was an interesting plane to check out.

Dennis Jacobs (left) and John Blackner

Part of the Detroit Lakes EAA group, Fargo Air Museum volunteer Damien Gehler, and EAA 317 Chapter President Murill from Fargo joined the RAA-Winnipeg Area group to check out Dennis' electric Pietenpol. Photo Credit Jill Oakes.

Damien teaching us about the air filter on this float plane.

As we were leaving, we met Marlis and Lyndon Thompson arriving in their Super Cub on amphibian floats. Throughout the weekend, we’ve made a lot of friends within 30 minutes of I-29 (Route 75 in Canada) and look forward to dropping in to the Detroit Lakes fly-ins held every Saturday morning from about 9am til 11 am! 

Our American counterparts are getting their Passports in order and we hope to see them next year on the Canadian side of the Red River Valley checking out our projects.  

Casselton Bob Miller Municipal Airport with Bob Miller and EAA317

We pried ourselves away from the War Bird restoration world and met Captain Bob Miller at his amazing hangar at Casselton Bob Miller Municipal Airport, which included more Grand Champion award winning aircraft. Starting with Bob’s immaculate log books, test flight reports, and builder’s records, through to his meticulous workmanship and innovative design elements, and finishing with his tools left in precise order…we were speechless! The EAA Chapter members joined us in awe as we learned numerous tips, a few examples were how Bob:

·         balanced his elevators to precision;

·         added an access door to service the brake cylinders;

·         moved the electronics to the front side of the firewall for easier maintenance;

·         camouflaged the cowl hinge pin; and

·         sprayed black paint on the fiberglass weave, allowed it to bake in the sun for a few hours before sanding the paint off and then prepping the piece for paint – so the fiberglass weave wouldn’t show through the paint!

"Bob Miller increased the height of his RV 8's back turtle deck, which resulted in designing and manufacturing modified rear interior bulkheads, redesign the aluminum plate on the upper rear fuselage, and redesigning the sliding canopy! The results were the work of a master craftsman." Bob Stewart

This was just the beginning of Bob’s collection…his hangar is like a “Toys-R-Us” for pilots! It is no wonder that John at Tri State Aviation and Brent Meester at Odegaard Wings both started out working with Bob! We ended the evening having dinner with Bob and Janice Miller, along with the EAA Chapter and Fargo Air Museum volunteers with slides of Bob’s award winning RV and RV video clips on the big screen.

Odegaard Wings with Brent Meester: employees wanted!

One of TSA’s collaborative companies is Odegaard Wings, owned for the last 10 years by Brent Meester. Brent and Cindy both underlined how their companies are built on Beck’s basic plan of action, “When someone else is making a piece with excellence, buy it from them; if no one else is making the piece then we make it ourselves and others buy it from us.” The research and development needed to re-create a piece with excellence is extremely expensive. Recently a customer’s wing needed two new fuselage attach fittings made from extruded aluminum. The customer funded the research and Brent is now able to produce this fitting.

The equipment needed to reproduce Corsair wings includes a 480 volt spot welder equipped with water cooled tips for spot welding aluminum. This piece weighs 10,000 pounds and it cost a small fortune in time and money to get the power hooked up. "The spot welding on Corsair is on the aft fuselage and it is also used on P51 wings is some spots but the place spot welding was most needed was the P51 gear doors as the door flange needed to be smooth on both sides." Harvey McKinnon 

Numerous Grand Champion award winning War Birds have resulted due to TSA and Odegaard Wings’ attention to original details. Using the old style unmarked rivets, and going to the extreme of removing the 2024-T3 markings on aircraft aluminum, re-stamping the aluminum with an exact copy of the original markings, and then priming over the markings so the markings bleed through like the original are a couple of examples…the results are only visible in the wheel wells! 

Brent’s looking for employees!

Tri State Aviation with Cindy and John

Last year the Winnipeg RAA chapter toured Tri State Aviation (TSA) at Wapheton, North Dakota. We were keen to reconnect with Cindy and John, and to see how their P51A project was progressing. Cindy invited us for lunch and after a delicious break with some Giant sunflower seeds packed in our pockets, John began the tour. Cindy writes we "...would like those that enjoyed the Giants seeds products to comment online --- just go to: http://www.giantseeds.com/   and then to “contact us”

 

One of the highlights of this tour was recognizing the tools we were introduced to last year and learning a bit more about how they are used. Considering John’s insights that initially Mustangs were only expected to last 100 hours Total Time and that Mustangs flying today can easily exceed the 500 VNE when racing, it’s no wonder it’s taking longer to restore the P51A than planned. 

Hopefully we will be back next summer for the test flights. We also learned more about the WarBird restoration process. Cindy explained “We are viewing Beck’s 25 years of research and development in a couple of hours” and that the key to TSA’s success is that Beck made sure that everyone involved with the company understood the entire process, there were no secrets. Consequently, TSA is able to continue working as a leader in the WarBird community, maintaining the excellence and innovation critical to success. 

RAA president Jim Oke presents Cindy a plaque from RAA Winnipeg Area Chapter, with the large contingent of tour participants' applause in recognition and appreciation for the tremendous contribution Cindy has made to "Keeping the War Birds Flying"!