Realistics opinions please!!!!

[carpat]

Guys, I'm so excited right now! I just sold my Sonex yesterday and now nothing is in front of me to stop my Kitfox project. I kept looking on the market to find a good SS for sale but there is not many. So I am about to order my kit and I am scared to see only the good side of the building process and not the bad side enough.

Here's my situation and I'd appreciate to have your honest point of view. After building two houses in the past five years, I improved my skills so much and acquired a lot of tools and equipments. I have a well sized garage so the build will be right at home. I also maintained my Sonex for the past five years also and that allowed me to learn a lot about aviation and to improve my skills too.

DO YOU THINK IT IS REALISTIC TO EXPECT ABOUT 1000 HOURS IN ABOUT A YEAR OF BUILD TIME WITH ALL THE QUICK BUILD OPTIONS.

I really appreciate your help guys,

Pat

[MotReklaw]

Not sure how realistic my opinion is, but here goes.

Bought our kit in October, 2010. Built two Zenith kits previously. Quality of Kitfox parts is amazing. Just minor adjustments in fitting my airframe.

Had I worked judiciously, I would be through by now. Life gets in the way and I am frequently absent without leave. If you have the skills, and the reading comprehension, plus read all the gotcha's on this and the matronics sites I think it is possible to build in 1000 hours. I want to get finished, but I love my grandkids more than I want to get finished.

Be prepared though, building a fabric plane is different than all aluminum ones.

It is impossible to eat an elephant at one meal. If you divide it into many meals you can consume the entire mammal in one year.

I think KF has a builder onsite program available too. Get it six months that way.

Good Luck!

[jtpitkin06]

There is a reason you don’t read too many down side postings. The factory puts out a great product and the builder support is first rate. If you call the factory, Debra usually answers the phone right away and she knows every part first hand.


Fortunately, this forum has a good group of people that are always stepping up to help. You won’t read about problems that can’t be solved. The forum is populated with builders that have been there and done that. This is a fun group that seems to have a “can-do” attitude. I look forward to logging on and reading the daily posts even if they don’t apply to my aircraft. There are some web sites that are loaded with trolls. They spend most of their time posting negative comments and rarely offer a solution. Not the case here!

I started my kit a year ago. I took two months off in the fall to work on farm projects and a month vacation in March. So realistically, I have about 38 weeks working an average 15 hours a week. That concurs with my builder’s log with about 600 hours so far. The fuselage is done and the wings are done. Working on instrument panel and cowling right now. I do not have any quick build or prefab options. ( I like building things) I am not using a Rotax engine which adds more think-a-neering time. I estimate I’ll be done about December 1, 2011 with about 1000 hours of relaxing "tinker-in-the-shop-buildin'-in-the-man-cave" time. What could be better?

John Pitkin
Greenville, TX