400-HP Biplane: Not Your Grandfather's Single-Seat Pitts
Jim Kimball Enterprises is home to the kit version of the Pitts
Model 12, Curtis Pitts's put-hair-on-your-chest redesign of the
classic Pitts aerobatic biplane concept for the 360-hp Vedenyev
radial engine. And if there ever was a company that was able to
seamlessly meld the biplane tradition and constant development,
it's JKE. So when they are about to launch something new, it's
worth a look.
It doesn't hurt that their workmanship is outstanding -- so when
they display a bare frame, it looks like something that should be
hanging in the Museum of Modern Art. But this one in Jim Kimball
Enterprises' centrally located booth at Sun-n-Fun, painted
arrest-me-officer yellow, wasn't the "ordinary" Model 12. It was
the prototype of something new, and something compelling: the Pitts
Python, a higher-performance derivative of the Model 12, for those
who find a mere 360-HP fully aerobatic biplane fills them with
ennui.
Jim and Kevin Kimball are a lot of things, but boring ain't one
of them.
We were eager to hear about the Python project, and Kevin
Kimball was willing to tell us. "This is what the Python will look
like," he said, showing us a rendering of the airplane (reproduced
here) that's not on the website yet.
"In planform it looks like an S-1... it looks like an S-1 with
Ultimate wings, doesn't it?" we asked.
Kevin laughed. "Just huge!" The original Pitts S-1 single-seat
biplane clearly has a family resemblance to the Python, which is
Jim Kimball Enterprises' own single-seat adaptation of their
High-Performance version of the Curtis Pitts design. The
resemblance stops at the planform. The Python has a big motor, and
is sized to fit (some S-1s fly with a little 90 or even 65 HP
Continental, and perform well if they're light).
The plane in the rendering is solid yellow, but the real Python
won't be. "I've got the paint scheme sorted out, but I'm holding on
to that." So there is a final paint scheme that's a mystery. Kevin
explains: "We were going to build a 12 for ourselves, oh, a year or
two ago. So we came up with a paint scheme, and we really liked it,
but the scheme ended up on two customer airplanes before I had the
chance to use it myself. So I'm hiding the scheme."
Who Are The Guys Who Do This Stuff?
Coming from some kit manufacturers, such advance claims might
come across as empty boasts, but it isn't bragging if you really do
it, and Jim Kimball Enterprises has a pretty good record of really
doing it. (So they can get away with saying "Jim has always
possessed the ability to excel in anything he touched," on their
website -- he has). The site www.2wings.com [a Model 12 builder]
offers an attractive poster of the first 25 Pitts Model 12 aircraft
to come out of their kits -- some of them built in-house, some of
them assembled by builders, all of them displaying that peculiarly
Kimball marriage of 1930s art-deco style and 21st-century
technological flair, not to Curtis Pitts's widely-praised
design.
A number of Model 12 owners have accepted
Experimental-Exhibition licensing, giving up the advantages of an
Amateur-Built Certificate of Airworthiness, in order to have their
planes completed in JKE's Florida shop, even though only one Model
12 is, as far as I know, actively flying in airshows this season
(Debbie Gary). The typical Model 12 owner just loves to fly
aerobatics -- and perhaps is a little addicted to power. They don't
hangar the 12 and get into a Kia.
Apart from the Model 12, JKE has built aircraft ranging from
replicas of the Gee Bee Model Z (built by Kevin and Jeff Eicher)
and Wedell-Williams racers and the McCullocoupe, another hot-rod
casserole of 1930s aesthetics and 2000s power. JKE has also
restored dozens of vintage aircraft to Champion standard, including
25 Stearmans and 6 Beech Staggerwings. While the company started,
in all seriousness, as Jim and the family's hobby, it nowadays
depends more and more on Kevin's formal training (he has a degree
in mechanical engineering and aerospace sciences, and an A&P
license).
But while we can show you some photographs, we can't show you
their build quality -- for that you have to look at a Model 12 or
other product of the Kimball shop up close, yourself. (Look for
part two, the interview)