Beauty Todd!

..careful, Greg.

When you let your eyes start to wander, sometimes it results in an affair with another brand.. Don't ask me how I know...

I kind of came up with the same conclusion. Oldest son goes to college next year and really does not want to fly, wife does not want to fly and youngest son loves to fly and thinks the Glasair is just plain sweet. Hopefully, when the youngest goes off to college the wife will lose her fear of flying. If not, I have a great personal traveling machine.

Come on Todd. No jab on selling the GA?

PM me when you pick it up. Dinner is on me if I'm in town.

I would take you up on the dinner, but the test pilot is delivering it to me.

More questions on the all weather issue. Would a prop slinger tks throw any fluid over the windshield or wing roots? Tail? Would this create a better or worse condition for emergency exit from icing conditions?

I don't think enough. Keeping the prop clean would help keep thrust, but the wing losing efficiency would be very detrimental.

Todd,

GREAT looking airplane. Any experience and/or heard anything about radio reception while flying in moderate/heavy precip? Just curious. Always curious to hear how experimentals might be affected by that kind of interference. Love the performance figures on those planes, congrats!

Rob

It is flying again after paint.

Yup sweet, plastic clown plane that certainly ain't.

Looks great Todd. Very nice job.

Ok, I have to ask: have you flown a glass air 2? That is the smaller one? I've heard all kinds of thing about them - mainly about being "slick".

Right now, I'm thinking about building an RV, but this thread has me drooling over a 180/200 hp glass air again...

If you want to build, both Glasair II and III kits are available. A group of engineers at Boeing just completed a II and were planning to fly it to OSH (don't think they showed up however). As far as I know the Glasair II RG performs quite well on 200hp. Of course the III will outrun the II, but that is to be expected with 300+ hp.

Another "fast glass" kit option is the Lancair Legacy. It is a beautiful airplane with a carbon fiber airframe and IO-550N engine. Cruise is 230+ KTAS, but it comes at a price -- a completed Legacy will most likely cost at least $200K. I assume the cost of a Glasair III is similar.

The paint job on Todd's plane looks fantastic. The Glasair III's are beautiful machines.

I looked very hard at a Legacy. Very nice airplane. Even though the Legacy is carbon fiber the Glasair is stronger. Also, 95% of the Legacys were powered by a Continental engine which IMO is a very inferior engine. I wanted to get away from cracked cylinders, gear driven alternators, and $2500 starter adapters. If you look at how a G3 is built you will realize how strong it is.

Regarding glasair strength. Before kids I was building a Super-II RG. Pretty much a Glasair III but with 200hp. To help in getting parts, I purchased a glasair I insurance wreck from an online auction for a great price. I was able to get an engine core (prop was totaled), full stack of king digital avionics, leather interior, etc, etc for super cheap. BUT, plane was sitting on its belly up near Buffalo NY in the winter.

When I arrived with my trailer I discovered the airplane was frozen to the ground. The field had flooded a bit then frozen. No way was my ford expedition going to pull it out. I called around and hired a guy with a bucket loader. We proceeded to put a lifting strap around one wing, out near the tip. We lifted vertically with what must have been 10's of thousands of pounds and the wing didn't budge. Tractor almost tipping forward, etc. Finally with one massive tug delivered by rocking the tractor did the whole little plane popp up out of the ice. I couldn't find one crack or broken fiberglass piece afterwards. Simply amazing how strong they are.

I was fiberglassing the fuel tank sumps when my wife walked into the shop holding two EPT testers with positive indications. I instantly realized my days of two seat airplanes would be over for the next 20 years.