SUBARU ENGINE
I am still getting inquiries concerning the Subaru engine and I’m sure I will for a long time to come. As most of you probably know, I had a very bad experience with a company called Crossflow Engineering out of Canada.

After my experience, I definitely would not recommend Crossflow Engineering and I am not high on the Subaru engine in any case. I found the installation too complex and I found the engine much heavier than claimed. I also came to realize that if I had a problem with the engine, I would be totally dependent on the designer/supplier for a solution. What if I were off in the boonies somewhere and the engine quit? The producer of the engine is the only one that knows how to work on it. Most Mechanics would just look at it and scratch their head.

If you are considering something like the Subaru engine, there are plenty of good reputable and knowledgeable companies right here in this country. Dealing with a company outside the United States even Canada is like mailing your money to Las Vegas only the odds in Las Vegas are better!

MODIFYING A KIT PLANE
Every time I sign up someone to buy one of our kits, I express my frustration with some of the builders that insist on changing the design during the course of building their project. EVERY person that has ever bought a Glass Goose kit has sworn that he wasn’t qualified to redesign the plane and was going to build it exactly by the

I have hesitated to bring up this matter, because I know that a big part of what we are selling is FUN, and that’s what I want it to be for everyone involved and I don’t want to take anyone’s FUN away from them. The problem is that all too often, folks are interpreting the privilege of building a kit airplane as an opportunity to have FUN by changing the design for various reasons. This is beginning to have consequences that are beginning to add up and could very well jeopardize everyone’s right to build experimental aircraft.

Just as an example, let’s say that Ben Curtin is building a XYZ kitplane and he is sitting around talking to some friends and one of those used to be an engineer for a big deal aircraft company. Someone says that the stabilizer on the XYZ looks pretty thick to him. The conversation continues and pretty soon all these friends have convinced each other that the original designer was off base and the stabilizer really should be a completely different airfoil. This all happened in a few minutes of casual conversation. No detailed engineering was done. The original designer wasn’t consulted as to why he used the original airfoil to start with. No analysis was performed to determine what the relationship of the airfoil to the other components of the plane was. The whole thing was like a ping pong ball of thoughts bouncing around in a shaking box.

Ben owns a drug store. He’s never studied engineering. He’s never studied aeronautical