Heated Pitot Tube

We’ve purchased a nice chrome heated pitot tube from Spruce. We’ve elected to go this route as we hope to fly the plane in instrument conditions, which might include brief periods in icing conditions. While the plane is not equipped with deicing equipment, we need to maintain the flight instruments if we encounter ice and […]

Outboard End Strake Reinforcement

The strake outboard of the fuel tank is reinforced on both sides with 8 strips of Triaxial cloth 4″ wide by 29″ long. The surface is roughed up first, and any unevenness is leveled with micro, and then two strips are laid up on the leading edge all the way up onto the spar shear-web, […]

2003 – N57V – Richard Riley – Velocity SE/FG – Fargo, OK – 0

The 1,500-hour commercial pilot was practicing slow flight operation at 400-500 feet above the ground, when he lost control of the aircraft and was unable to recover. The pilot stated to an FAA inspector that he attempted both power on and power off recovery techniques, but could not overcome the nose high attitude. Unsuccessful […]

Static Port

Rather than go with the factory’s rather ingenious static system, whereby they embed some AL tubing in between the fuselage skins and then drill small holes in them, we decided to go with production units. We did this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, many pilots were mentioning that they had to install a “trip […]

Seat Belt Hardpoints

The seat belt hard points are fairly time consuming. First, each seat gets for seat belt hard points, the inboard side gets one for the belt receptacle, and on the outboard side there’s one for the inertial reel, one for the the shoulder belt, and one for the lap belt. We’ve elected to install the […]

Door Locks and Latches

The door lock that we used is from Aircraft Spruce, and allows us to use the same lock for the fuel caps and the pilot’s side door. The bezel of the lock was filed down so that the lock mechanism just protruded through the skin of the door. The hole was drilled just above the strake […]