Building
a Fly Baby from the EAA
Articles
By Ron Wanttaja
The information on this page is the opinion of the author only. Neither the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) nor the holder of the rights to the Fly Baby design are responsible for the content on this page.
One of the requirements for contestants in the EAA design contest was to write a series of articles for EAA Sport Aviation magazine that would the instructions for building the aircraft. Pete had a technical-illustrator friend do a series of drawings for him, and wrote a series of 14 articles that presented the drawings and provided background information for construction.
At the same time, Pete put together the “commercial” version of the plans. These were significantly expanded over the articles, being organized as step-by-step procedures. But the same figures were used, and the figures actually contain most of the information needed for building.
The EAA articles were always an alternative. But, since Pete was selling a better product for a relatively low amount of money, and getting copies of all those magazine articles was difficult, the official plans were the way to go for almost forty years.
With the spotty availability of the official plans sets since Pete Bowers’ death, one alternative often mentioned is building a plane from the EAA articles. EAA now has its entire magazine archive online, and if you’re an EAA member, you can download PDF files of the original articles for free.
And it’s perfectly legal. Cool, huh?
Make no mistake, a set of plans would be a better
way to
go. But dozens, if not hundreds, of folks did build Fly
Babies
from the articles. Keep in mind you have one big advantage,
today…the Fly Baby community, especially the Discussion Group
on
Yahoo. If you get stuck, post a question there…not only are there
a
number of actual owners and builders, many of us own plans. We
can look
up the section and see what Pete said about it.
Downloading the Articles
The first step is to download the magazine articles. Go to the EAA365 Web page and click the “EAA Members Only” section. Log in (or create an account) and click the “Sport Aviation Archives” image. Click “Search for Articles.”
Now, if you do a search for “Bowers” and click the “Author” option, it’ll give you links to all of Pete’s articles. The Fly Baby building series was run from December 1962 to May of 1964, so you can narrow your search down. Hit the “Submit” button, and you’ll get links to all the articles. Click a link, and a PDF file will display. Hit the “Save” icon, and you’ll be able to save the article to your own computer.
Here’s a breakdown of the EAA magazine articles vs. the organization of the plans. Note that the articles were not published in the same sequence as the plans.
|
EAA
Magazine Article Part |
Date
of Publication |
Plan
Section |
Plans
Topic |
|
0 |
Dec
1962 |
N/A |
Introduction |
|
1 |
Jan
1963 |
4 |
Wing |
|
2 |
Feb
1963 |
4 |
Wing |
|
3 |
March
1963 |
1 |
Fuselage |
|
4 |
April
1963 |
1 |
Fuselage |
|
5 |
May
1963 |
2 |
Landing
Gear |
|
6 |
June
1963 |
3 |
Tail
Surfaces |
|
7 |
July
1963 |
5 |
Power
Plant |
|
8 |
Sept
1963 |
6 |
Misc
Systems |
|
9 |
Nov
1963 |
6 |
Misc
Systems |
|
10 |
Dec
1963 |
6 |
Misc
Systems |
|
11 |
Jan
1964 |
9 |
Addenda |
|
12 |
May
1964 |
8 |
Assembly |
|
13 |
Aug
1964 |
7 |
Covering |
|
14 |
Sept
1964 |
7 |
Covering |
|
N/A |
N/A |
10 |
Biplane |
Note that the Introduction Pete published in December of 1962 is not the same one published in the plans. In the plans, he talks about working with the materials. You can find this sort of information at a number of sources.
One big difference between plans and the articles: The figures in the articles are not published
full-size, and on the plans, they are.
The problem is, after years of copying, the drawings in the
plans
aren’t the original size, either.
So you’d have to redraw the templates, one way or the other. The plans used to be sold with full-size rib
templates…but they aren’t, any more. So
you have to re-draw the ribs, anyway.
Helpful Data
This section contains links to some stuff that’ll help your building process.
- Materials List: One thing missing in the EAA articles is the list of materials contained at the start of each section of the plans. This is a link to an Excel spreadsheet that contains my stab at the materials needed to build. Each material includes what portions of the plan it’s on, so you can make a relatively easy stab at what each portion needs. Don’t have Excel? OpenOffice is a free package that is completely compatible with Microsoft products.
- Figure Corrections: While the text of the plans and the text of the articles don’t really match, the Figures are identical. As you go through the articles, you’ll notice the figure numbers are weird… In the first article for instance, you’ll be looking at Figures labeled “4-1, 4-2,” etc, while the 5th article has Figures 2-1, 2-2, etc. The artwork in the articles is labeled the way it is in the plans, rather than using a separate numbering scheme for the articles. That makes it a lot easier. Plus, Pete was meticulous about marking on the plans when a page changed…you see a “Revised April 1970” note, etc. at the bottom of the page. So if Pete didn’t issue a revision…we can assume the figures didn’t change from the original EAA articles. Even better, Pete made the corrections by hand, himself, rather than re-drawing the entire figures or having his technical-illustrator friend do it. So it was relatively easy to page through the plans, find changed figures, and compare them to the figures in the original articles. This will open as a PDF file.
- CAD Drawings: As mentioned above, the figures in the EAA articles aren’t full size, and even the plans templates have distorted over many iterations of reproduction. The Fly Baby community has come through, here, with computer drawings of key parts. The link takes you to a web page where you can download templates for the wing ribs and for all the metal parts. You might have to fiddle with your printer to get them to come out at the right size, but it’s a tremendous advantage for the builder.
Questions? Email Ron Wanttaja .
