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Velocity N755V began like other composite kit planes - a shop full of pieces and parts, rolls of glass cloth, jugs of resin, and many bags of nuts, bolts, washers and miscellaneous. About 4000 hours of work spread over a span a nearly 10 years turned all that into the beautiful flying machine shown above. As of Oct, 2008, the plane has logged 130 hours in the air, and has proven to be very sound and efficient. The top speed is about 210 KTAS, and, best of all, it will cruise at 175 KTAS (200 mph) while burning only 10 GPH (20 MPG). And it does this burning 97 octane auto fuel - of course, it also runs just as well on 100LL.
The kit includes only the airframe; which,
when completed, looks like an airplane and makes the builder think he
or she is getting close to finished; but that is only half the story. All
of the electrical, the instrument panel, the engine, and the interior and
exterior finish is I added some custom features to the airframe; like forward extensions of the strakes to provide elbow room in the front seats, and interior strake-bottom windows for the rear seat passengers. I was able to apply my engineering background to various aspects, and particularly to the really big custom feature - the installation of a 3-rotor rotary engine. It won the "best Alternative Engine" award at the Contact! magazine Alternative Engine flyin. The links at the left provide lots of info on those aspects. The 'Airport Ops' link is about finally flying the airplane. |
The purpose here is not to
detail all of the aspects of that work. That can be found on web
sites of other builders who use their web sites as their building
log. Along the way I made some departures from the usual, developed
some optional ways of completing certain major tasks, and incorporated
custom features. What I present here is information about those
aspects, and info about the completed flying project that shows what
tenacity, determination and engineering can produce. Hopefully, this
can be of interest to the casual reader, as well as informative and
motivating for my fellow builders.
still left to complete, and left
up to the ingenuity of the builder.