Hi
I'm in Kent, Washington, USA, a suburb of Seattle.
First: scratch building an airplane is a huge project. Ray Brown and I are
coming up on the end of our third year of pretty intense construction (we
are building two H'Birds alongside one another in my 3 car garage. We park
our Dodge Neon and Dodge Ram-50 pickup in the garage almost every night).
I first cut metal January 6, 1995, Ray on May 5,1995. I made most of the
tooling, and Ray has just been building his parts and assembling them,
which makes it sound a lot less cooperative than it is. We work Monday
through Thursday, about 4 PM till 8 PM with a break for dinner, we skip
Friday, and usually get in about 5 hours on Saturday, and 7 or 8 on Sunday.
Certainly there have been skips, but not very many and not very long.
Comparing the Teenie Two and the Hummel Bird: The Hummel Bird is about 3
generations of evolution removed from the Teenie Two. A fellow in Texas,
Gary Watson, apparently built or was quite familiar with a Teenie Two, and
decided to try his hand at designing an airplane. He designed an airplane
he called a "Windwagon", and built what he thought was the first 1/2 VW
engine for it. It had a lot of similarity in design details with the
Teenie Two, such as the wing ribs slip on the spar, the spar is built by
making a "C" section out of .040 aluminum and adding strips to the flanges
to strengthen the spar caps, not very many ribs, and heavy skins all the
way to the tip. The fuselage was/is a fabricated tube that tapered a
little from the seatback to the firewall, and from the seatback to the
tail. The horizontal tail was attached a lot like a Teenie Two, a method
which I don't care for, but I have not heard of giving any trouble when
done as designed ( a tail fell off one Windwagon, but the builder had done
a poor job of building, had enlarged the rudder about 50%, and had not put
on the dorsal fin, which is structural on these planes- He died in the
crash, unfortunately). The Windwagon shared the Teenie Two's tricycle
landing gear design details, and the rudder bar, and the all pushrod (no
cables, no torque tubes) control system. The thing apparently flew well
enough, and was fast, over 100 mph on 28 HP, cruise.
Morry Hummel was building aluminum cowlings and other parts for Howard
Airplanes (Mr. Mulligan, the DGA series, etc.) before WW-2. He spent the
war building experimental aluminum airplanes, one offs. His whole career
has been metal forming, mostly on airplanes and some on cars.
Morry saw the Wind Wagon, and liked the idea, but thought he might make a
few changes. Morry likes taildragers. Morry lives in Ohio where open
cockpits are really only practical about two months out of the year, so a
canopy was needed. The horizontal stabilizer attach was redesigned to
eliminate the turnbuckles. The seatback was raised 5 inches so a shoulder
harness would work, and the instrument panel to firewall was raised 2
inches, increasing fuel capacity and footroom. Morry completely re
engineered the wing. The dihedral break on the WindWagon was in the
middle, Morry made the middle straight and put the dihedral break at the
point where the outer wing panels bolt on-much easier to build. The H'bird
spar is built up of 1/8 X 1 1/2 X 1 1/2 6061-t6 aluminum, common stuff,
with a .040, 2024-t3 web. The angles are doubled in the center section,
and tapered in the outer panels. Morry increased the number of ribs, and
reduced the thickness of the skin, and made the skins get even thinner
toward the tips. The ribs are now two piece, one in front of the spar
(nose rib) and one between the spars (main rib) and the skins are riveted
to the spars with no bump where the one piece ribs cross the spar. There
were other changes as well, all in all a vast evolutionary improvement
over the wind wagon. Morry's airplane weighed 268 lbs., Watson's smaller,
open plane weighed 270.
Morry never claimed the Hummel Bird was anything but a modified Wind Wagon,
and drew up a set of modification plans for the Wind Wagon. You still had
to buy the Wind Wagon plans, plus Morry's. Two problems here: The Wind
Wagon plans are O.K., about like the Teenie Two's. Morry's are awful,
confusing and ambiguous. Morry is a genius, and I am sure a supper shop
man, but he has a bad time writing instructions. Also, almost no parts
from the Wind Wagon fit the Hummelbird. You had to figure out what Gary
Watson had in mind, then what Morry changed to make the H'Bird. Few could
do it.
Enter Bill Spring up in Canada, an electrical engineer familiar with
drafting. He built a Hummel Bird after seeing Morry's, but was only able
to after going back to Morry's airplane, camera in hand, and shooting
pictures of everything he could, and asking a lot of questions. The legend
says Bill told Morry that there had to be a better set of
drawings/instructions. Morry agreed, but was busy with other projects, and
told Bill to do the job, so bill did. A super job. Bill's plans are for
building, not engineering. Full sized patterns ar there for every part
that there should be. How to build the tooling is there. Building
sequence is there. The drawing have been revised several times, and there
are darn few errors.
So some more people built HummelBirds. Feedback said a wider cockpit would
be nice. Bill changed the drawings and widened the cockpit 2''. Some
wanted tri-gear (including Bill), so Bill added the option of tri-gear to
the drawings, then built a second Hummel Bird, wide body tri-gear, and made
a video of the construction. GET THE VIDEO if you decide to build. Bill
and Morry both advertise plans, you get Bill's plans from either one. I
don't know if Morry sells Bill's video( Morry sells one of his own), but
Bills video is a near must for building this thing.
I am getting toward the end building mine, hope to fly in 2 or 3 months,
weather permitting.
The reaction of the local experts, most of whom are familiar with the
Teenie Two, is that the Hummel Bird is a proper airplane, perhaps one they
might build. Their 180 HP BD-4's and T-18's and RV's are really nice, but
are expensive to fly alone for the Saturday Fly-Out hamburger. Few of
these folks say the would be willing to fly a Teenie-Two. I respect these
guys, I deliberately did not put experts in quotes.
Take my opinion about the planes with a large grain of salt- I have never
to my knowledge even seen a Teenie Two or a Hummel Bird, except the ones we
are building.
Gather all the information you can, get all the advice you can stand, then
make up your own mind and build your project your way. It is yours, after
all.
I hope this has been a help. E-mail me or call (253-854-0734-your nickel.
I go to bed about 9:30 PM) or visit if you are in the area. I enjoy
"talking" about my project.
Chris
I just sat here writting about where we get our materials for 20 min. and
the server hung up the phone, which lacked up my computer ( ctrl-alt-delete
brought no response) so I had to reset and lost all my work.
We get our aluminum from Airparts in Kansas. Their advertisement is the
one with the lady standing in a roll of aluminum. We get hardware mostly
locally at Spencer Aircraft. AN nuts and bolts and stuff, at least in the
small sizes a Hummel Bird uses, are no more expensive than "grade garbage"
from the local hardware store (in small quantities, boxes of 100 "grade
garbage" are cheaper per peice). I get most of the 6061 angle and steel
from another local supplier, Specialty Metals. Boeing surplus is about two
miles from my house, but has been of limited value, with some exceptions.
The FAA made them stop selling AN hardware because their stuff did not have
the paper trail and was showing up on Certified airplanes. The new
airplanes are mostly 7075 alloy, worked in the "O" condition and then heat
treated. I don't need much 7075-O. They also have 2024-O, but I need T3.
Once in a while, though...
Where Boeing Surplus has really come through is things like undersized
reemers (like .498 to reem the wing attach bolt holes to fit standard 1/2"
AN bolts, which are .498 dia.)and drill bits. You use #30 and #40 bits by
the dozen on an aluminum airplane, and Boeing sell the good (Titanium
plated?) ones for about 1/2 the price of the industrial supplier across the
street (in lots of 10 from the Industrial Supplier). Wait now, I just
re-read that, Boeing sells the good bits for half the price of the cheap
bits accross the street. That's what I was trying to say. Almost all the
Boeing bits have been sharpened by Boeing, which is a better sharpening job
than I have ever seen on a new bit, I kid you not!
I got my instruments from Pacific Coast Aviaonics (local). They advertise
in Trade-A-Plane and their ad is easily confused with Gulf Coast Aviaonics.
I don't think they are related.
I'm going to bed. Good luck with whatever you decide to do. Building an
airplane is one of the neatest things I have ever done, and I recommend you
give it a try. Let me know how you go.
The tie downs on my Hummel Bird are simple forged eyebolts I got from a
local industrial supplier of screw products, Tacoma Screw. The shank is
threaded 1/4 x 20.
I installed small pieces of aluminum angle to tie forward side of the
outboard wing panel spar using the same bolts as attach the plates that the
bolts go through to attach the outer panel to the center section, as shown
on Bill Springs video. Don't do it there! The tiedows are only about 6
feet apart, an most airport tiedown anchors are much farther apart. Make a
fat spot near the outer end of each outer wing panel spar and install the
tie down there.
I hope this helps.
First, I am no expert at polished airplanes. I expect to fly my airplane
for the first time sometime in January or February. It will , at least at
first be polished. I think starting out with a polished airplane will let
me decide if the work of keeping it looking the way I like is more than I
am willing to do, I can always paint it later. If I paint first and later
decide to polish, I have to remove the paint, a nasty job at best. I don't
see any risk to polishing first. Painting now or later is the same amount
of work.
As I understand it, Zenair builds its airplanes of 6061 aluminum, bare.
Most other airplanes are built of 2024 Alclad. The Alclad process is done
at the rolling mill, and consists of applying a coat of pure aluminum,
which resists corrosion, to both faces of the 2024 aluminum sheet. 2024
alloy has poor corrosion resistance. 6061 alloy has good corrosion
resistance. 6061 will not take as high a shine as pure, but better than
2024. On most polished airplane from the late 1940,s through the 1950's
you can see, if you know to look, vast areas where the pure aluminum has
been worn away, and the lesser shine of the 2024 can be seen. Most people
can't see the difference, and corrosion does not seem to be a problem on an
airplane maintaining an good shine. Perhaps aircraft kept at salt water
beaches have a problem, but polished or painted seems to make little
difference.
There are many polishes on the market, and the common ingredient in the
good ones seem to be "Rollite", a polish developed to polish the rollers
used in making paper. If you can't find good polishes in Germany, Contact
me and I will either purchase here and ship to you, or send you the names
and addresses of companies that you can do business with directly. The
Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) sells a set of polishes that are
respected around here.
Good to here from you and keep me posted on how your project is coming
along.
First, the drawing question: Yes, the drawings you get now are excellent
and, when combined with the 7 hour video Bill Spring sells, leave few
questions about how to build an excellent Hummel Bird. These are the
drawing you get whether you order from Morry Hummel or Bill Spring. Morry
sells a short video,"It's Easier than you think" that is interesting but
not as helpful. I don't know if Morry sells Bill's video.
This happy state of affairs was not always true. You used to have to buy
Gary Watson's Windwagon plans and Morry's Hummelbird modification plans to
the Windwagon. The Windwagon plans were not as clear as Bill Spring's
drawings, and Morry's instructions are ambiguous and difficult to follow.
My hat is off to anyone who could build from those plans.
Bill Spring told Morry that the plans were unsatisfactory after Bill had
built his first Hummelbird, Morry agreed but was busy on other projects, so
Bill made up a set of drawings/instructions. Bills plans are from the
builders perspective (I wouldn't want to do an engineering analysis from
them) and are excellent, with many full sized patterns and instructions for
how to build the tooling to build the parts. I get a lot of credit for
being ingenious for doing thing straight off Bill's plans. Bill pays Morry
a royalty for every set sold, and Bill and Morry have a very friendly
business relationship.
No, it would not be reasonably to build a Hummel Bird as a U.S. Ultralight.
I understand it is a Canadian ultralight. The Hummelbird has about 60 sq.
ft. of wing area and a stall speed around 40 to 45 mph. Most ultralights
have about twice as much wing area because the legal stall speed is 27 mph.
My 1/2 VW motor weighs 85 lbs. What 2 stroke are you going to find that
weighs 20 lbs. less than that with exhaust and carburetors? Not Rotax!
According to the weights in the Leading Edge Airfoils catalog, a 447 weighs
almost as much as a 1/2, or more if you put on a muffler. The two strokes
are not all that light when you start really checking!
The Hummel Bird looks like a really neat airplane. I only say "looks"
because mine won't fly until early 1998, so I really don't know, but I have
put a lot of money and time in betting it's good. The local experts ( the
really are experts-respected professional airshow pilots, Boeing engineers
who regularly travel the globe professionally(both structure and
aerodynamics)) all like the way the airplane is built and approve of the
design( eyeball, no detailed analysis).
The design has been lucky. Gary Watson built a Teenie Two, then took the
best, and some of the not-so-best, and designed the Windwagon. Morry
Hummel liked the basic design but really cleaned up the weak spots, vastly
improving a pretty good airplane, but was lousy at telling others what he
did. Bill Spring cleaned up a few details and drew/wrote excellent plans.
Everyone remembered that the purpose was a minimum airplane and avoided
adding weight. The current project is about a forth or fifth generation of
evolution, and it shows.
I hope this has been a help. Learn all you can , get all the advice you
can stand, and go your own way. You, not I, will be up in the air in your
project.
I definitely would build a Hummel Bird again if I were to start over! Bill
Spring's planes ( the ones you get if you order from Morry or Bill) are
complete and easy to work from. They also contain a wealth of ingenious
ways to do all kinds of building on the airplane. I get a lot of credit
for being ingenious when all I've done is follow the plans-and learned.
I live in Kent, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, Boeing Country. I am a
member of two EAA Chapters, both of which are loaded with Boeing engineer
types. These engineers have looked at (not analyzed formally) the airplane
as I have built it, and all agree that it is a proper little airplane, all
the details follow good practice.
I took the airplane to the Arlington Northwest Regional EAA Fly In last
summer as a non-flyer. As we were unloading, the local TV news truck
stopped abruptly and started filming for their evening news coverage of the
fly in. They said that as soon as they saw the Hummel Bird, they new it
was the distinctive yet conventional airplane to use for the main airplane
in the evening show. The live coverage of the show was shot with the
announcer first standing with his hand on the tank cover in front of the
windshield and introducing the fly in, and ended with the announcer
climbing in to my airplane. The airplane attracts attention!
There are photo's in USAviator and the just received Kitplanes coverage of
Arlington.
I am a carpenter who builds boats, so I was not especially knowledgeable
about sheet metal. I have learned a lot and I have not been overwhelmed or
felt out of my depth during the building.
The overall design philosophy is unique and excellent. As you get into the
project you will look at other airplanes and say to yourself "well I can
see how you did that , and it works, but I like the way the Hummel Bird
does it better".
It has been a worthwhile project. I am looking forward to flying it early
in 1998.
It has been the biggest single project I have ever attempted, and my
attention never lagged. 2500 to 3000 hours is realistic build time.
Multiply money by two and time by three time your most pessimistic
estimate, and you should come close to the magnitude of any airplane
building project. I believed the 1000 hour, $2000.00 advertisements.
Three years, $6000.00 later I am almost done. Three great years. I did
buy my engine complete-$3200.00.
I expect the airplane to be about as cheap to operate as anyone ever
dreamed an airplane could be.
I will be glad to offer my advice on the specifics of building as you go
along.
About $300.00 to $400.00 initial order, mostly aluminum and rivets
(suggested "get started order in the instructions) will keep you busy for
about a year, and let you know if you really want to do this project
without a big investmate.
Getting a copy of Bill Spring's $75, 7 hour video is a near must.
That is about all I can think of now. Let me know what you decide.
You have a ways to go before you get to the wings, but before you start on
them,contact me. I have a number of things to say about how they should be
approached, from a minor reshape of the wing ribs (the drawings show the
most forward one inch or so cut off; don't. It is very hard to get an
accurate leading edge shape without the nose of the rib) to the tapering of
the outer spar caps, a neat way to make the shear web, where to put the tie
down eye bolts, etc.
Boy, am I ever getting ancious to fly!
Tom Hale
(
geocities.com/capecanaveral/hangar) (
geocities.com/capecanaveral)