Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Tue, 04 Jul 2017

Building a Biplane: Building Your Own Kit


A completed rib for the Charger

The Marquart Charger is typical of most amateur-built biplanes in that it doesn't have a kit. You get a bunch of sheets of paper with ink marks on them, and your wits. If you're really lucky (I'm not), there's some variety of build manual to give you a hint how to do things.

I am very fortunate that I have the Biplane Forum (where I'm known as IanJ) as a backup, and between reading existing threads and information, and asking questions, I get about as much support as if I had a designer I could call. Unfortunately Ed Marquart, who designed the Charger, passed away in 2007, so calling him is not an option (though I understand he was a very helpful guy).

Because there's no kit for the Charger, I get to make everything myself. However, that doesn't mean that I completely ignore the kit world. For instance, I can take some of their ideas, and make them my own.


Eight little rib noses, ready to go

This weekend's idea that I'm taking for my own is to produce my own mini-"kit" of parts to build ribs. It's hardly revoluionary, but it will give me a little taste of what a kit-builder's life is like, as I take nearly-finished parts from their labelled containers, and put them together with a minimum of fuss to crank out completed ribs. It also satisfies my slightly OCD heart to be able to bag and tag parts and keep them perfectly organized to facilitate the task.

So, I've cut out 15 of each truss-piece, and 15 top- and bottom-pieces, and will soon have 15 nose pieces cut out, and enough 1/16" plywood gussets cut to make the remaining 15 ribs of the first type (there are around 60 ribs in total, so this is nowhere near finished, but it's a start). Then I can knock out a rib an hour, or maybe even faster. It's debatable if this actually saves me much time in the grand scheme of things, but it's a little bit more efficient to mass-produce some parts, then use them later.

As I've finally been able to tell people, "I'm building an airplane," and now, finally finally finally, it's actually true.

Posted at 22:40 permanent link category: /charger


Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater