Mon, Mar 18, 2024
From 2022 (YouTube Version): Fngine Company Challenges Convention—and Wins
Viking Aircraft Engines, the Edgewater, Florida-based manufacturer of piston aircraft engines, has fashioned a seemingly humble business-model into a genuine, and genuinely American success story. Viking’s praxis is simple. The company buys new and gently-used, late-model Honda automotive engines, and converts them to aircraft powerplants. Conversion, however, is no simple feat. In point of fact, it’s a downright complex process comprising extensive modification of the engine’s cylinder heads, valve-train, cam chain, pistons, oil-system, crankshaft, exhaust manifold, and a great many other bits and bobs which, though critical, make for boring reading.
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Sat, Mar 16, 2024
From 2022 (YouTube Version): Jenny, I’ve Got Your Number...
Among the magnificent antique aircraft on display at EAA’s AirVenture 2022 was a 1918 Curtiss Jenny painstakingly constructed to Curtiss’s original specifications by the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Chapter 1414 in cooperation with the Vintage Wings and Wheels Museum. The two organizations, both of which hail from the village of Poplar Grove in north-central Illinois, set about the project in service of a noble, joint ambition to build a flying aircraft representative of aviation’s iconic early days. Construction of the Jenny began in February 2017 and spanned five-years and 22,000 volunteer man-hours. Insistent upon authenticity, the Jenny’s builders—led by Don Perry, a retired construction worker, longtime EAA member, and veteran of numerous aircraft builds—secured north of 1,200 original Curtiss engineering drawings
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