AV-MECH

Luckless Lancair to Fly Again
Thu, 14 Aug '03

By ANN Correspondent Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien
At 6:05 PM on August 1, 2003, a taxi accident marred the nearly perfect safety record at this year's Airventure. A factory RV-6 demonstrator (file photo, below), N66VA, stopped while turning off the runway. The following aircraft, Lancair 360 N3602D, struck the RV from behind and both aircraft were damaged. Fortunately, no one was injured.

Now, Van's can probably fix the RV without too much trouble. But what about the all-composite Lancair, which received enough structural damage to be non-flyable? The owner asked the people at Lancair. They asked Arnold Holmes, of Semloh Aviation Services Corporation in Edgewater, FL. Soon, he had agreed to haul the broken 360 home to Edgewater for repairs, and he called back to get one of his mechanics started towards Oshkosh with a trailer.

Arnold was already having a pretty good show, even before he got the call to fix N3602D. "I had given out every business card I brought along," he told Aero-News. "I've picked up a lot of aircraft, and I've brought them home from Sun n Fun, but this is the first time I picked one up in Oshkosh."


The pilot will be without his plane for four to six weeks. "The insurance stepped right up, so there are no delays, but it will take a while to fix." In the meantime, Arnold's A&Ps will be installing a number of upgrades in the temporarily-grounded Lancair. "The owner is going to take advantage of the downtime and we're going to fix a number of things."

Arnold recently left Adam Aircraft, where he had built composite production tooling for the A500 and A700 series Adams. "The company is doing fine… they have lots of money, but my job, the job I was hired for, was basically over, and it was getting boring. I'd really rather fix airplanes." Even though he and his mechanics are all licensed, he works only on experimentals. A particular specialty is picking up projects that have gotten off track or been misassembled, and correcting the mistakes in them.

There are some hired guns in the kit-plane experimental business, who don't do an awfully great job. We agreed that on a complicated, expensive kit like any Lancair, owners should conduct a "due diligence" analysis of any shop that assists him in construction or repair of his machine. What the owner of 02D did -- ask the kit manufacturer -- was a good way to do that, especially with a highly reputable kit maker like Lancair.


Another problem is imperfectly sorted engine installations. One of the hangar queens at Arnold's shop has an Engineair V-8. "I feel sorry for the guy [the owner]. The plane has been under construction for the last nine years. I need some engine parts - a wiring harness, an ECU. And a new company has the conversion now, and they were right over there [indicates a now-empty tent] and they were selling their engines to new customers. But they can't even deliver me parts."

Arnold pointed to the hangar on the other side of Wittman Field. "That's where the plane is, in that hangar. It'll be another three hours of so," Arnold said. "I just talked to my guy [the mechanic coming with the trailer] and he was passing through Chicago."

Disassembly and transport of the 360 should be no problem. "The wings come right off. I can pick up a lot of airplanes with a U-Haul, but the 360 has wide wing stubs, so I need this trailer. We'll take it apart, secure it on the trailer, haul it back to Edgewater [FL], and start to fix it right away."
 
Arnold likes the Lancair line, and the company. "It's a good plane, and a good kit. Sure, not all the parts fit perfectly without some fitting, but that's the nature of experimental aviation. If Lance spent as much on his molds as Adam Aircraft spent on their production tooling, the parts would cost much more."

The Other Guy
N66VA is a well-known and much-photographed airplane. It was one of two RV-6s in the March photo on the AOPA Air Safety Foundation 2001 calendar. It was the prototype for the Van's Nigerian Trainer project. Finally, it is well-known today as it became the factory Experimental-Market Survey/Crew Training machine that instructor Mike Seager (shown below) used to give RV builders and owners type transition training.



The status of 66VA is unknown at this time.

Kneeling in the photo above is Arnold "The Repair" Holmes. Arnold had a lot of flight time in my Pietenpol, including a lot of serious cross country work. At the video camera is Merrill "Skymanta" Isaacson. He has shot and edited all of our video and DVD work. Here, he films Arnold discussing dynamic prop balancing before working on Mark Langford's aircraft. Although his installation was quite smooth beforehand, Mark wrote a very favorable review of Arnold's work after his flight home. Most of Arnold's work has been done on Lancair IV-Ps. He's well known in the industry for his Semloh Aviation business (Semloh is Holmes spelled backwards).

From the flycorvair.com website

Hello to all listers,

On Saturday Feb 19th N420PM, Lancair IV-P with V-8 power made it's test flight. Power is provided by a "Silver Wings Aviation" all aluminum V-8 producing 420 HP and turning a five bladed MT. The engine and gear box ran flawlessly and test pilot Doug Pohl commented that the aircraft handling was superb! The sound it makes when it flies by is truly wonderful. The aircraft is lancair serial#96 and has had a long and sorted life, passed through the hands of many who could not complete her. Owner, Peter Model of Switzerland contracted with Semloh Aviation of Edgewater, Florida to take on the task of making it fly and fly it did. Semloh conducted vibration analysis of the engine and gear box before and after flying using their MicroVib equipment and found the engine to be in outstanding shape. Spectrum Analysis also shows total engine harmonics signature at way less than half of what a twin turbo 550 usually has. Peter is a proud papa and is looking forward to flying the time off over the next few weeks.

From the Lancair mail list 

Hello All

I sent this last month thinking some of you going to sun and fun might avail
yourselves of this opportunity but I think it got lost in cyberspace. If I’
m repeating myself I apologize.

I bought my IVP; I did not build it. It was build by a professional. Even
if I could legally work on my airplane it would be hard to find the time to
do so. I do the little stuff but for the most part I get others to fix it.
My local shop can fix the normal engine stuff up to a point but is lost on
the airframe and uncomfortable with some of the issue that come up on a
sophisticated aircraft for which there is no service manual. For the
airframe I have used quite a number of shops (both east and west coast) to
do work. Mostly they have been build shops – ones who specialize in
building IVP’s for others. I have had so-so results. They are set up to
build airplanes not to repair them and as a result they have typically
promised a long lead time and then delivered even later than promised.
Sometimes the squalks aren'nt fixed and often some things are fixed and new
things are broken. Also they’re not that good at the
engine/electrical/mechanical part of the plane. They’re good guys but the
repair business is very different from the build business.

Enter Semloh Aviation at Massey Ranch airport (x50) south of Daytona Beach.
It’s run by Arnold Holmes (386-206-6015). It is a true repair shop and
specializes in Lancairs. Arnold is an A&P and is competent on all aspects
of the aircraft. He knows composites having worked with Burt Rutan and Adam
Aircraft. He fixed a fuel leak of mine the others failed on many times. He
’s finished a number of ill-started Lancairs. The great bonus is he also
good at the other parts of the airplane, including engines and electrical.
He is just starting his avionics shop. My engine (and airplane for that
matter) has never been better. He’s gotten all the systems working as they
never have before. Further, he’s fixed a lot of other irksome airframe
problems which were caused by others when they “fixed” stuff. He did my
annual this year in record time and there’s more good news: He gets it done
on time. I’ve left it with him ( I drop It off and rent a car) for a week
or so at a time and the work’s been done when he said it would be. And it’s
been done properly. I was delightfully surprised. He’s not cheap. He’s
reasonably priced and you get what you pay for. He stands behind his work.
As you can tell I am so far very impressed. I have no business relationship
with him by the way.

For those of you looking for someone who understands the whole Lancair
aircraft I highly recommend Arnold and his team at Semloh Aviation. All the
best.

Bob Evans
LIVP N4TQ

From the Lancair mail list 

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