TALESPINNERS - August, 2002

Ferrell Velocity XL/FG
by Brett Ferrell and Elizabeth Szoke

I have discovered the secret to building composite airplanes, and it only took me 2 weeks. It merely requires the ability to stand on your head, maintain complete fine motor movement in both arms, and to target your sweat drops. We don’t want to make a mess on our nice prepared lay-ups. But I’m getting ahead of myself, that’s not where the story starts.

Flash back about 12 years. I say about, because I don’t remember exactly when it happened, this faithful conversation, but it happened “in college” as do so many important life events. “Brett, check this out, it’s the coolest thing, you can build your own airplane!” my friend John told me. “You’re out of your mind”, I replied

“No, really, see there’s this whole magazine about it, it’s awesome.”

“No, you’re a nut case”, I assured him as he handed me a shiny but already well-worn and fingerprinted copy of Kitplanes. “And just because there’s a magazine doesn’t make it rational”, I threw in as my zinger, my sure-fire call to reality. Yet he remained unmoved. So I browse the magazine, and tried to shepherd my wayward friend back to the real world of engineering where you build expensive things with other people’s money and go home in a minivan to a house painted in four shades of white.

And a funny thing happened, rather than convince him that this wasn’t possible, I began to suffer delusions of grandeur, that I might be able to pull off such a trick myself… given a huge amount of time and vast financial resources. Oh my friend was ever the dreamer, telling me about how he was going to scavenge spare parts from work and with a few key pieces from Radio Shack, he was sure he could build a function ‘Heads-Up Display Unit’. (my friend suffers from both over-enthusiasm and Electrical Engineer’s disease) I knew that I would never build a HUD, but I thought that I might, just might mind you, build an airplane some day.

In time I subscribed to Kitplanes myself and carefully analyzed the performance of the various planes, also looking forward to the big year-end extravaganza that summarized the variety of aircraft available in the market that year. I always wanted a composite bird, that much I knew, that we were fast and sleek and modern looking. And they seemed simpler for a non-mechanic to build. Where my friend leaned toward the Lancair, Glassair, and Seawind (he had a pronounced fling with the Seawind, being a scuba diver), I kept coming back to the spaceship like pusher design of Rutan. At the time I was in ROTC, and looked forward to flying other pointed-nosed aircraft, and the non-propped portrait of these planes just felt like home. And there were the imminently sensible improvements from not having prop-wash on the rudders, visibility, and stable stalling characteristics.

I came to love these ducks, these canards, very much. I longed for a Long awhile, but knew it wouldn’t last. No, if I, me myself, were going to own an airplane, I was going to be able to carry 4 people on trips. My idea of flying is being able to go far off places, fast, and with a payload. I had an affair with the Cozy, so much so that I very nearly bought the plans. Then she came into my life, the Velocity. It was love at first site! Beautiful clean lines, a pusher canard with 4 places and no need to “graze” on the ramp. Now this was a plane a guy could really fall for, and I did, hard. If I ever built a plane, this would be it. Then in about ’97 came the “Elite” gull-wing doors, and I thought it couldn’t get any better. Until about ’99 when the XL came out, to my total and unabashed admiration! It had more of all of the good things in life, power, fuel, legroom, and even came with slightly better stability. This was the plane for me.

But as happens, life proceeds, and the timing was never right. I was just out of college starting a job, moving, moving jobs, needed the money for something else, but it just didn’t happen for many years. Then I met a soul mate whose soul also longed for flight, with similar means, and reasons to move about this great land. Hints turn into chats, chats into discussions, discussions to research (why this plane over that), and finally she was hooked to. So, last year we went to Oshkosh together and met the Swings. For those who haven’t had the pleasure, they are extraordinary good people with whom we got along very well. We took the demo flight, talked to builders, and enjoyed the show, stopping to take pictures of the canards in attendance. Then it happened, on one of our seemingly dozens of visits to the Velocity booth, Beth blurted it out, “alright, we’ll take one – can we put the deposit on Discover?” I was stunned. We both pretty well trained by our professions to be slow moving, conservative, but over all rational people. We hadn’t discussed doing this today, was she out of her mind?!

In the end it was very well reasoned, there was a price increase coming, and we knew we wanted the plane. They’d mentioned that production was a bit backed up, especially if you wanted fast-build wings (we’d already decided not to tackle the primary flight structures ourselves). We had months to get the necessary preparations made, and we’d really already made our decision, she just felt it was time to let Velocity in on the secret.

Flash-forward to present day, where we’ve settled into a new house purchased largely on the size and shape of the garage, purchased hundreds of pounds of tools, and made endless preparations (gray epoxy/terrazzo for the shop floor, 2 perfectly leveled industrial strength work-benches, paint and light the shop-including the Velocity logo) for delivery day. We went to Sebastian for 10 days of Head Start training on building technique where we actually accomplished a lot of work on our plane (set the Center Spar, installed the elevators onto the canard and bedded the canard to the fuselage, installed the engine cooling NACA ducts, the keel, the landing light, battery tray, and the oil cooler scoop).

The funny thing about life is mostly I find that no matter how well I plan, I nearly always find I’m under prepared. As we unloaded the truck (that my beloved was kind enough to drive the plane back in – whole other story, ask sometime) I began to wonder, “well I’ll be d@amned, where I’m going to put this?” My oversized garage was beginning to resemble a seriously under-sized workshop. Who knew the wings were that big? I don’t think I got the memo.

But we got our baby tucked in for the night, and began disaster recovery the next day. We rearranged the shop, and then rearranged our rearrangements. Come by sometime, I think you’ll find we did an acceptable job. We tried all kinds of things, many of which we were sternly reassured by this or that hardware guy could support a couple hundred pounds of wing (they can’t), and resorted to a basic but time tested “stack on floor” concept. Which just goes to show why they don’t call it “Plane Depot” I suppose. Then we took inventory, and brought our documentation of construction already completed on our website (by the time you read this www.velocityxl.com will be up and running), tested the epoxy pump, and set off on our great adventure.

Since then we’ve spent about 2 weeks happily glassing, drilling, bolting, sweating, and learning contortionist tricks of every description. In retrospect the Head Start trip was invaluable, as I would have been terrified of the project (and the money spent getting it into my garage) if I hadn’t done it. Also, my fears about calling the factory were completely unfounded; they are more than willing to hold my hand and tell me which piece goes where, and with an encouraging and sympathetic demeanor (coming from a computer support background I can really appreciate this too, because I know that there are stupid questions, and though they need to be answered, sounding cheerful while doing so can be difficult).

Major milestones since taking delivery are bonding and glassing the center section spar in, completing the speed and actuator installation, installing the brake master cylinders, and bonding in the gear leg bushings. There is much to do yet, but we’re setting off to tackle it optimistically.