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| OWNER | |
| REGISTRATION |
Cool our own page! Hey thanks for taking the time to post our pictures in the Hatz home page. You have a good eye. We searched through all of Pops old Sport Aviation for articles about John Isaac’s Hawker Fury Biplane. Dad was interested in it a while back, so we stole a few lines from that design. We stole ideas from a lot of other people too. Like Billy Dawson, Lorry Wilkinson, and a lot of others I can’t remember right now. I thought we had something more original until we saw Ray Marvin’s Hatz, Oh well.
(webmaster’s note: It’s a sign of a good idea that it’s used again by someone who appreciates it! – Doug)
The N number will be NX546H. We have a Lycoming O320 H2AD to put in soon I hope! We plan on using a four inch prop extention to help keep the lines smooth. We made Frese style ailerons (ala Lory Wilkinson) on the bottom wings only controlled by push pull tubes (smoother and lighter weight), pushpull tube elevator control (smoother control), a large fuel tank in the center section by Maklin (to feed the Lycoming for more than two hours), we extended the landing gear a few inches and used round tube faired by sheet metal (cheaper and better full stall landings) we copied the construction technique of the Acrosport for the wing strut end fittings (looks cool). There are a bunch of other mods, and we have pictures galore which I’ll send as soon as I can convince Eileen that we really need a flat bed scanner for the computer that we really needed so I can send out pictures of the airplane that we really needed. This may take a little time.
Oh yeah, we started on Christmas day in 1992 building ribs. Mom gave Dad Hatz plans for Christmas and Eileen (my wife) and I gave him spruce. we built our ribs pretty quick by making two rib jigs, one was a mirror of the first so we could make a rib in the jig, pop it out flip it over, put in the other jig and add the gussets on the other side. We made two ribs a day this way. We just went into production making all the sticks and gusset plates which ain’t much fun, but gets the job done quickly, and in two weeks, or three, or four? we were done with pesky ribs! By the way, Dad enjoyed making ribs if you can imagine that.
– Chuck and Charlie Honer
"Here is a local rib joint we visit quite often." (Wing ribs)
"Here is a handy tool box Dad made that looks like it should be part of an airplane. Note the unique clamp storage compartments." (Center section)
"Here is a close-up of the aileron ballast tube, hinges, and control horn. The leading edge was later covered with plywood which made strong spar section to resist torsion loads."
"Here is the idler in the aileron control system which was installed to shorten the length of the control tubes."
"Some careful welding. We just tack welded a little at a time until we could remove the engine."
"Sandblasting the fuselage."
"Landing gear jig. If I had it to do over again, I would have used Piper style axles."
"Here is the vertical fin and rudder. Note modified hinges."
"The whole mess assembled in the jig."
"The whole mess removed from the jig after tack welding."
"Then it is heated red-hot, tapped into shape with a hammer, and welded."
"A finger-strap is welded overtop of the whole thing. It looks pretty slick when it's all done."
"This rotisserie rig was a big help. From sandblasting to finish painting, it was well worth it."