Maranda

                                                Building the Maranda

C-FXKH at Ram Falls, Alberta

What a Rush! What a feeling when the wheels first brush free off the ground and that creature of frustration and accomplishment first rises into the air. It is a feeling I'm sure must be unique to homebuilders' and the parents of a child. It certainly felt like a kind of birth, seeing my protégé take wing.

It is almost hard to believe that the time has come when I can hold a crisp new flight permit in my hand and call it my own. Casting my mind back to when I first started the project, I have to admit embarrassment at my optimistic proclamation that this was going to be a 250 hr. rebuild. I conveniently lost track of my time when it passed a mark in excess of six times that original estimate.

Following is an account of my experiences as a totally green homebuilder and some of the things I learned (translation: drilled into my thick head).

I first learned about the new member of our family about a month after I married my wife. This child was a little different - already she was already a year older than I. Maranda (AMF-S14F) C-FXKH came into the world for the first time in 1966, in the Nahanni River area of the Northwest Territories. There, she served her builder for several years (as described briefly in "Wings of the North", by Dick Turner) before finding her way into an ignoble resting place in packing crates while "Daddy" went off to Pakistan in the foreign service. After several years, she was rescued out of the crates and into the air for only 10 hours before her new owner decided it was time for a modification and rebuild. Unfortunately, Bud Richardson, her rescuer, was involved in an accident (not aviation related) which left him unable to continue the project.

The Maranda arrives on the farm

Enter a certain optimistic and energetic (afterall, I hadn't been married long) homebuilder, complete with a patient and understanding wife. All the phone calls and soul-searching were completed and in October of 1990, Maranda XKH rolled into her new home.

I can still remember standing in the garage, surveying my newly acquired mountain of airplane parts and pieces. Avril (my wife) had a strange look in her eye. I knew what she was thinking, but with a swallow and flourish, I proclaimed; "No problem!" Thus started my initiation into the rebuilding of an airplane, with all its rewards and frustrations.

THE BUILDING

When I received the project, the fuselage was more or less intact, although the cockpit was a tangle of unidentified wires and cables, surrounded by a bare wood frame. The wings did not have any fabric on them. A leading edge cuff and fuel tank were installed on one wing, but the other had only a hold where the tank should be and no cuff.

Making the cuff for the remaining wing was actually a fairly simple, enjoyable process. It involved cutting the new leading edge profile with a hot wire out of 2" insulating foam and then lining up the cutout and gluing them to the old leading edge. This meant about 90 cutouts to complete the leading edge. Using a contoured sanding block, the new edge was sanded to the appropriate shape and smoothness before covering with fibreglass, using epoxy as resin. I used epoxy rather than normal fibreglass resin because the epoxy is compatible with the Hipec covering process which I would use later. Hipec will eat exposed foam, and I didn't know if normal fibreglass resin would provide adequate protection. Installing the new cuff probably only took about 60 hrs, including all of the sanding. Of course, with everything exposed, I took advantage of the opportunity to replace all the hardware inside the wings and revarnish where necessary.

One of the more time consuming and frustrating parts of the project was the covering of the wings. I decided to use the blanket method, and after only two days of work had both wings covered in smooth, taut fabric. I was encouraged with this progress, which made the frustration which followed even more acute.

The fabric rejected the Hipec Sunbarrier (the first stage of the process). I tried everything I could think of. I phoned Falconar Aviation and I phone the Endura paint company in Edmonton, but the only result was a mounting phone bill. Noone knew what was causing the problem and we had collectively ruled out everything we could think of. The mass of pinholes showing through the Sunbarrier looked terrible. I didn't want to even think about how the airplane would fly with holes all over the wings. The long and the short of it was that I had to re-do one wing surface, wasting about $150 worth of chemicals and fabric and spending about 250 hours working and sanding (close to 100 hours of hand sanding) the wings until I had a method and surface which I feel is now more or less acceptable.

For those of you who are familiar with Hipec, the method I developed involved using Crater Eliminator mixed with Sunbarrier, which helped to fill the pinholes somewhat, but gave me zits or mounds in the finish. After a couple of brushed coats of Sunbarrier (to ensure the fabric was well glued to the structure beneath), I followed with a brushed coat of Primer Surfacer. The Primer Surfacer was fairly good at filling the remaining pinholes and sands much better than Sunbarrier. At this stage, I had a surface that would be great to walk on - it resembled the skid-stop paint used on outdoor cement stairs. Now the fun began - the SANDING. And sanding. And sanding. Followed with another brushed coat of Primer Surfacer. And more sanding. And a final, sprayed coat of Primer Surfacer. And more sanding. I started with an 80 grit DRY sandpaper and progressed up to 320 grit wet before I had a surface that I could live with putting a top coat on. So much for a quick recovering job.

I should note that I sent a sample of untouched fabric and a sample of Sunbarriered fabric (complete with pinholes) to the Endura paint company chemist in Edmonton. He was unable to determine why I was getting pinholes and was unable to duplicate my results. I should also mention that another local Maranda builder and a KitFox builder in Calgary used the same process as myself, and duplicated my pinholing problem exactly. It's too bad we didn't know about each other earlier, for we could have saved one another a lot of trouble.

From my brief, personal experience and from talking to other Hipec users, it would seem that perhaps Hipec does not work well wherever it contacts wood structure, even when the wood has been sealed, but works like a charm over metal. Please note, though, that I draw this conclusion based on the experience of only four people and six projects.

Our paint booth was constructed out of polyethylene drop sheets stapled onto the ceiling of the garage. However, I wasn't sure what to do about ventilation. Being delirious already from the effects of my recent departure from bachelorhood, I wasn't sure I'd be able to take the added impact of paint fumes. The solution came in the form of an old furnace fan, already conveniently installed in a wooden box. A 5" hole cut in the side of the box, connected to a couple of 6' lengths of heating pipe made a good ventilation duct and a furnace filter over the intake side of the fan protected the motor. The whole assembly sat outside the garage, with the pipes running under the garage door and into the booth. It worked surprisingly well.

To the list of diseases in the Doctor's Almanac, I would like to add one more: "Atititis". This is an affliction which attacks an otherwise straightforward job and turns it into three times the size. It is when you do one thing and say "well, seeing as how I've got THAT off, while I'm ATIT, I may as well take THIS off, too" (I had some girlfriends whom I'd wished had this disease!). For example, while I had the seats removed, I thought that while I was ATIT, I would lower the seats for a bit more headroom in the cockpit. This was done by moving the seat tracks from the top to the bottom of the seat frame. While I was ATIT, I thought I should also move the rudder pedals forward. In order to move the pedals forward, I had to relocate the pilot's side header tank. While I was ATIT, I thought I should

build a better tank bracket. While I was ATIT, I thought it would be nice to be able to move the pedals back into their old position in case a shorter pilot ever wanted to fly, which meant a removable extension bracket connecting to the rudder cables. ATITITIS cost me about 80 hours of work, but the gain was 2.5" of headroom and about 2" of legroom. The pedal position can be changed back to what it was in about an hour, if you count the time it always seems to take to find the right tools. By this time, I was starting to get a pretty good feel for the life of a homebuilder. . .

Modifying the leading edge of the wings was a learning experience - it had an unfortunate effect on the fit of the wing tips. Of course, being young and ignorant, it never occurred to me, until I thought I was finished with that part of the project and Glenn Clarke, a fellow RAA member, stopped by and said, "So, how does this affect your wingtips?" What a wonderful sense of timing my friends have. Actually, I should say here that Glenn was a great help throughout the project, offering much needed advise and encouragement, stopping by on a regular basis to see how things were coming along. This is one of the big benefits in belonging to an organization such as the RAA/EAA.

After a little trial and error (why read an instruction book, when you can screw it up all on your own?), I discovered a fairly good method of modifying the fibreglass tips. I cut out the old tip leading edge, placed wax paper over the wing and mounted the wing tips. The fibreglass was then applied and followed the complex curve of the leading edge so that it fits quite closely. After this first layer of fibreglass hardened, subsequent layers inside and outside the new surface were added for strength. Once the fibreglassing was done, I primed the tips and almost cried. I thought the wing was coming back to haunt me in the tips. Tiny pinholes all over. After much time and effort on my part (and a couple of minutes consultation with another RAA member), I discovered that the sandpaper I was using was too coarse - 120 grit paper causes as many pinholes as it saves. The pinholing problem was successfully eliminated by switching to 240 and 420 wet sandpaper. For filler, Spot Putty is great stuff. It comes in a tube and dries on air contact, so you don't need to premix anything. For filling pinholes, you can sand the filled surface within 5 min. of application (large fills take forever to dry, however, as this is an air-contact drying process). 240 grit dry takes the glaze off with two passes. Six passes wet leaves a surface needing only a few more passes with 420 grit wet to finish.

The work on the fuselage took a surprisingly long time. I really hadn't intended to do very much with it, but another bout of ATITITIS took care of that.

Probably the most time consuming job on the fuselage was the complete re-upholstering of the interior, which Avril (my wife) did almost entirely on her own. She hit on a system which yields a nice lightweight finish to the interior of the cockpit. All of our panels consist only of fabric stretched over foam - no aluminum backing. The foam is attached to the walls of the cockpit with velcro, which allows for easy access and inspection of otherwise hidden items like fuel lines and control cables. The nice thing about this process is that it is very quick and easy to cut foam to shape, and if you make a mistake, you can always glue a little more foam on, or cut more off. We used 3M #76 glue - a sort of aerosol contact cement. You just spray it on in a couple of passes, wait 3 minutes and then join the parts. It works nicely on foam, fabric and tin foil (used to make a base for the com antenna). The joined materials are held together strongly enough for fabric panels, but if you make a mistake, you can pull the joined materials apart without destroying them, even after the glue has dried. The fabric was purchased in a regular upholstery shop and it is fire retardant to some temperature higher than where I would be well - done.

I am happy to report that my inspector was a homebuilt enthusiast and was very helpful and prompt in answering my inspection requests (typically 3 days from request to inspection). HOWEVER - The inspections turned out to be a much bigger hurdle than I had planned for. Everything must be exactly correct. While I was glad that the inspector was so thorough,  I was also surprised at many of the items which held up the flight permit. For example: Cotter pins. They cannot be split around the sides of the castle nut. One part of the pin must be bent over the end of the bolt and the other bent up to the base of the nut. The end which is bent over the end of the bolt cannot be cut flush with the head of the cotter pin, but must be cut so that it ends at a point halfway across the diameter of the bolt end.  It sure felt good when everything was cleared and the day finally came when the inspector said "You've got a nice plane, there, Dave".

Ok, on to the good stuff!


THE FLYING

Sometime before the big day, I measured the deflection of the ailerons and found it to be about 15 degrees up and 13 degrees down. This is somewhat less than the 23 degrees published by Chris Falconar, so I gave him a call to ask his opinion. He said: "Pick a day when the winds are calm and go ahead and fly it. Let me know how it works out" (!)

As you taxi out to the runway, one of the first things you notice is the relative quiet (compared to the Luscombe I am used to flying). This is due to the all-wood construction, completely upholstered and foam-backed interior and the use of sound insulation wherever possible. Ground control is even better than some tricycle-geared aircraft I have been in, due to the large rudder and tailwheel.

The main gear on the Maranda is quite far forward, making it very difficult to nose-over, but it also means that the tail is slow to rise. However, this does not affect

the takeoff roll too badly, because the long tailwheel spring keeps the wings closer to level while on the ground. When full power is applied for takeoff, the 81" Colin Walker propeller takes several seconds to turn up to full static RPM (I found out later this is due to rpm guage lag). Brake release brings moderate acceleration and two notches of flap allow the tail to be raised at 40 mph, with liftoff at 50 mph. Rudder control and visibility are excellent throughout the takeoff.

Climbout is positive and consistent. Once you are pointed up, up you go. There isn't the hesitation that some other, lower-powered aircraft I've experienced suffer from, especially on those warm summer days. While it isn't the homesick angel I had hoped for, it is still satisfying to have to reduce power to keep the traffic above your nose.

In flight, the Maranda has a solid, substantial feel, but the controls are light enough that it doesn't feel like you are flying a truck. And how about the ailerons? Well, aileron control was ok, but not as definite as I would like. In my opinion, it would not have been adequate for mountain flying, where substantial roll control might be needed to counteract a gust. I have since modified the control system by extending the base of the stick and connecting the aileron cables at a point farther away from the pivot point, increasing the effectiveness of stick movement. This worked very well and roll control has been substantially improved, however, I would caution anyone else who tries this. The increased moment arm between the aileron cable connection and the pivot point results in greater loads on the stick. The system should be tested to ensure that the modified stick will withstand flight loads.

Visibility is better than a Luscombe or Taylorcraft, but not as good as some ultralights. This brings me to one of my favourite in-flight characteristics. After spending a few hundred hours in a Luscombe, in which my more tender parts would start to throb after 30 minutes, it was a real treat to complete a two hour flight in the Maranda and be able to walk a straight line after landing. My thanks to the original builder, who was so thoughtful as to include bucket seats.

Stalls in the Maranda are gentle, preceded by a mild buffet. There is very little tendency to drop a wing and it is quite easy to keep her straight with the big rudder. Close to gross (1850 lbs), the clean stall speed is about 50 mph and the full flap stall comes about 40 mph. With power on, it just "mushes" along.

On landing, I typically turn final at 80 mph, reduce to 70 mph, deploy full flaps and cross the threshold at 60 mph. At this speed, there is very little tendency to float, but enough speed in the bank for a soft touchdown. On rollout, as with the takeoff, rudder and tailwheel provide good control, even in a crosswind.

I often find it interesting to compare performance statistics between a manufacturer or distributor of plans and an actual homebuilder. Here's a list of figures to compare:

CLAIMED/ACTUAL

Empty Weight: 960 / 1174

Stall Speed (full flaps): 37 / 40

Take-off Roll: 100' / 800'

Landing Roll: 150' / 600'

Rate of Climb: 1300 fpm / 800 fpm

Cruise: 120 mph / 100 mph (2300 rpm)

The performance statistics were determined by loading up the aircraft to 1500 lbs (when the plans for the Maranda were originally distributed, gross weight was limited by regulations to 1500 lbs, the gross weight for the design now is 1850 lbs). I flew on a day when the temperature was 180C and from a field with an altitude of 4000 feet, which meant that the density altitude was 5500 feet. If we follow the rule that you add 10% to the landing roll for every thousand feet above sea level between 0 and 3000 feet, and add 20% to the landing roll for every thousand feet between 3000 and 6000 feet, my sea level landing roll should be about 400 feet. I am using a fine-pitch prop which allows me to turn up 2300 static rpm.

For the take-off roll, short-field technique was used, with two notches of flap. For landing, full flaps, approach at 60 mph, flare over the apron and touchdown just past the threshold.

In conclusion, I would describe the Maranda as a solid aircraft, with moderate short and rough field capability and pleasant flight characteristics. Beyond the statistics and flight performance envelope, though, it allow me to do what I like best - to sit back on a sunny day with the world stretched out before me and just soak up the experience.

OF TEST PILOTS AND FRIENDS

During this project, I was fortunate to enjoy the help of several people, without whom the task of rebuilding and learning how to fly the Maranda could have had much less happy results. I have already mentioned some of them, but others include Jim Thomas, owner of Mustang Maintenance at Springbank Airport and homebuilt enthusiast (don't ever tell him I called him that), and Butch Foster; fellow RAA member, homebuilder, CFI for Mount Royal College and my test pilot.

Before the Maranda first flew, I had close to 400 hours of experience between a Luscombe and a homebuilt Cavalier. Due to limited experience on different

types, I chose to have a professional to do the test flight and asked Butch if he would do it for me. In retrospect, I feel that this was a very important decision. It took me three hours of dual instruction with Butch in the Maranda before I felt comfortable enough to solo, even though I was still very current in the Luscombe. Not that the Maranda is a difficult airplane to fly - Butch calls it a "pussycat", it just took me that long to get used to the different instrument placement, control feel, flight characteristics, etc. If anything had gone wrong on that first test flight and I was at the controls, I am quite sure I could not have handled it. This was well illustrated during on of the check ride flights with Butch.

I was practising full flap stalls to get the feel of the aircraft when the flap handle jammed in the deployed position. Butch took control and told me to call Springbank to ask for landing clearance on the closest runway. Things were getting a wee bit interesting and I didn't much appreciate it when I discovered that the balky crystal in my old radio had chosen this moment to pack it in. Fortunately, Butch had brought along his portable radio, so we were able to call up the tower and obtain the necessary clearance. As we slid down the approach for final, I could see the windsock that we would be landing with a 90 degree, 10 knot crosswind, Oh boy, what fun!

Needless to say, Butch put her down with nary a squeak and we taxied in to the hangar. It took us a couple of minutes to discover that the cable release for the locking mechanism was not working properly and a couple of minutes more to verify our conclusion. We released the flaps by hand and Butch promptly had me get back in the saddle for another flight - this time without flaps.

I think the moral of this part of the story is obvious You may think that you are capable of a test flight - I thought maybe I was, but when something goes wrong, it sure is nice to have a pilot like Butch at the controls. Now that I am familiar with my new airplane, have a new radio and know how she flies and have had some practice, I would like to think that I, too, could handle such and experience even if I was alone in the cockpit. I sure am glad that I didn't have to find out in those precious first few hours of unfamiliarity.


POSTSCRIPT

Over 10 Years have now passed since I wrote this article. I'd like to think that I'm a bit wiser (and greyer?) than I was. We have had around 300 hours together (interrupted by a 5 year absence when I was posted abroad) exploring mountains and fields, including the mandatory pilgrimage to Oshkosh, with all our camping gear.

Since completing the rebuild, a lot of my spare time has been spent on the Kit Car and the helicopter, but the Maranda and I still get out regularly to go exploring together and we still have a lot of fun.