(May 2011) WOULD YOU believe me if I told you that there is an airplane that can comfortably fly a long IFR cross-country one day, land at a short, challenging backcountry strip the next and splash into a serene mountain lake later the same week? Would the story become more believable if I said you can build this airplane yourself in two weeks and park it in your garage?
You may not believe me, but what I found at the Glasair factory in Arlington, Washington, was just that airplane. A beautifully designed, high-wing, utility aircraft with convertible gear and foldable wings, the Sportsman is a larger, stronger, more advanced version of the Glastar, a popular kit co-designed in the early 1990s by Ted Setzer, current R&D manager at Glasair, and his brother Tom. The Glastar was a real departure from the low-wing speedsters generally coming out of Glasair — a company Tom founded with a couple of friends in 1979 as an alternative to dental school.
With more than 1,000 kits sold, the Glastar became so successful that a German company — OMF Aircraft — decided to put it through the rigorous process of certification. Slightly changed, the airplane emerged as the Symphony 160 in 2001. Unfortunately, that project ultimately failed in 2006, but the Glastar’s versatile design lives on. Returning as a kit, the Sportsman project launched in 2004 as Glasair’s utility airplane. The company simultaneously launched a new builder-assist program. Of 350 Sportsman kits sold, 157 have gone through Glasair’s unique and efficient two-weeks-to-taxi program. More on that later.
What Makes It Special?
I was introduced to N944SP — a bright yellow Sportsman that seemed to shine of pure happiness — by Helen Cernik, one of Glasair’s transition training pilots. Helen explained a couple of details that were new to me. On top of each high-mounted wing, there are two delta-wing vortex generators — one near the fuselage and one about three quarters out toward the wingtip. Just like the small, triangular vortex generators I’m used to seeing, these aerodynamic modifiers contribute to the Sportsman’s docile stall characteristics.
The positive wing dihedral is also quite noticeable during the walk-around, which, of course, makes the aircraft more stable in turbulence. And with the fuel vents being located near the wingtips, a byproduct of the increased wing dihedral is improved fuel venting.
Climbing into the roomy cockpit of the Sportsman is easy with a nice step and big metal bars across the windshield to hang on to. These are part of the chromoly steel framework that serves as the fuselage cage. Two large pins, located behind the top corners of the windshield, connect the forward sections of the wings to the fuselage. This may raise your eyebrows, but there is a good reason for the pins. One of the Sportsman’s unique features is that its wings fold rearward for compact storage or transport.
When the wings fold, the airplane’s center of gravity is shifted way aft, resulting in the need for another special component. At the bottom of the empennage, there is a small wheel that allows the Sportsman to be rolled around like a wheelbarrow.
Today, though, we wanted to use those wings, so we checked the pins and sat down. The seats were designed in-house and are made of memory foam. They are as comfortable as the seats in the Cessna Corvalis, an aircraft I’ve spent many hours in with zero discomfort. While you would be hard-pressed to put two adults in the back (which is why the Sportsman is called a 2+2, two adults and two kids), there is plenty of useful load — about 940 pounds for the 210-horsepower and just over 1,000 pounds with the 180-horsepower engine. And at Osh-kosh 2010, Glasair introduced the Sportsman TC with a carbon fiber fuselage and turbonormalized 180 horsepower with an even more impressive 1,100-pound useful load.
Helen also told me that the flap and wing strut fairings were added in 2010 for an approximate 3-knot speed benefit. And a 145-knot cruise speed on a 210-horsepower bird is quite impressive.
Utility at Its Best
Arguably the most versatile kit aircraft on the market, the Sportsman 2+2 can be flown in three configurations, with no structural changes required. The switch from tricycle to tailwheel is straightforward. Within less than three hours, the highly capable cross-country, IFR bird can be transformed into a backcountry machine. The conversion to floats takes about a day. Seventy-five percent of Sportsman customers purchase more than one gear option, and several have all three.
Helen introduced me to the Sportsman in the tricycle gear configuration. After running down the handy electronic checklist for startup, the 210 hp Lycoming 390 fired up on the first try, and we took off over the scenic islands of Puget Sound. At 8,000 feet, we saw 142 knots TAS burning 11.7 gallons per hour with the throttle maxed out and the propeller set at 2,500 rpm. Lean of peak, we lost a few knots but burned only 9.5 gallons.
The cockpit of the Sportsman allows for plenty of elbowroom — it is slightly wider than a Cessna 182 — and the feel of the airplane is stable and very well balanced. Even fingertip pressure on the center stick smoothly maneuvers the aircraft. The metal bars that crisscross the windshield are a little distracting at first but are soon forgotten, and the sun visors are easy to adjust and provide just the right amount of sun protection.
While the presentation is not quite as nice as the Garmin G1000’s, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Advanced Flight Systems integrated avionics suite. N944SP is equipped with the deluxe IFR option, which, among other things, includes separate EFIS and EMS screens, two Garmin GNS 430s and a TruTrack autopilot. The autopilot smoothly tracked a GPS navigation course and the ILS into Paine Field, near Everett, Washington. While I had to manually enter altitude changes into the autopilot, the version delivered today has coupling capability.
Two more basic avionics packages are also available and, should the panel prove insufficient, the owner can easily swap or add components at a later date. Glasair is unique in offering a wire diagram to its customers, eliminating any guesswork for avionics shops or customers who make their own installations.
Satisfied with the avionics discussion, Helen and I decided to explore the stall envelope. The Sportsman is surprisingly maneuverable in slow flight, and the stall speed is an impressive 42 knots. There is no uncomfortable snap at the stall. The aircraft simply gets mushy, and a falling leaf stall can be practiced quite nicely.
Landing the Sportsman couldn’t be more straightforward, and my first landing in the tricycle gear was a squeaker.
Changing Gear
The true test of the Sportsman came after lunch. In about 2½ hours, a team of three had pulled the nosewheel off, added a Scott tailwheel, moved the mains forward and changed the regular tires to 31-inch bush tires. It was time to take the Sportsman off the pavement with Ted Setzer.
Ted was all smiles as we walked out toward the highly transformed N944SP. We flew a short distance from the airport to explore the edge of the stall envelope, flying below 50 knots most of the time. We muted the annoying “angle, angle — push, push” warning, and I noticed that the stall speed was a couple of knots higher with the large tires flopping in the relative wind, but it was still only around 45 knots.
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Satisfied with the slow-flight maneuverability, we headed back to the Arlington airport to try out the grass strip. Bush tires are different animals, and, having not flown a tailwheel for a while, I have to admit to a couple of initial bounces during the process of figuring out how to handle this new configuration. We also did maximum performance landings. To minimize the landing distance, we came in much lower and slower than I’m used to — right around 50 knots with lots of power. It was a challenging delight, and it didn’t take long to master this new technique.
After a couple of tries, I was quite pleased to be able to get the aircraft stopped in less than 500 feet. Ted claims to have landed the Sportsman as short as 175 feet! How’s that for short-field performance? He also talked me through a few high-performance takeoffs in which we added full flaps once we had about 45 knots of airspeed. Ted told me to just feel it out rather than looking at the airspeed indicator, and as soon as I pulled the flaps (they’re manually deployed by a Johnson bar between the seats, similar to a parking brake’s), we literally popped right off the ground and the aircraft climbed like an elevator.
It was time to take the airplane to the test. We flew a short distance to a gorgeous river northeast of Arlington, with pebbled riverbeds alongside. We found a good riverbed segment, a few hundred feet long, with enough of a straight river segment at each end to safely approach and escape in case of a go-around. We did a fly-by to ensure there was nothing on the riverbed that could be damaging. Then we came around again and made the approach we had practiced on the grass runway in Arlington.
I made a nice, smooth approach at just the right speed. It would have been a perfect landing, but instead the touchdown produced a loud bang. There was a stump barely covered by pebbles that I had hit straight on. Fortunately the large tundra tires absorbed the shock and there was no damage to the landing gear. However, there was a ding in the horizontal stabilizer from a pebble hitting the leading edge. Riverbed landings are a blast, but they can be tough on the equipment.
With the exception of the hidden stump, the riverbed we had selected was perfect. The high-performance takeoff got us off the pebbles several hundred feet before the river’s edge.
Floating Along
While we didn’t get the bush tires wet, there was still time to get in the water. Although it wasn’t planned as part of my visit, the only pilot who flies the floats — Ephraim Carter — happened to stop by and asked if I wanted to try out the float version of the Sportsman. Did I! It was getting toward the end of the day, but there was still a bit of light left, and we flew west to a small lake called Goodwin Lake. There was plenty of landing distance, and I made a standard, rectangular approach to the selected landing area. Ephraim guided me as to when to flare, and we made a nice, smooth landing on perfectly flat water.
With less than a handful of hours in seaplanes, I can’t truly evaluate the Sportsman. But after three perfect landings in the lake, I was amazed at how easy it was to fly. With the large amphibians hanging in the wind, the float version loses a lot of speed in cruise — it does about 110 knots at 8,000 feet. But the utility is fantastic. Ephraim told me that with a step-turn takeoff, the Sportsman can get out of a lake as short as 1,500 feet. The feeling of the aircraft popping out of the smooth water surface at about 50 knots was magnificent.
Two Weeks to Taxi?
Probably the greatest obstacle to owning a kit aircraft is the build process. According to the EAA, it takes between 1,000 and 3,000 hours — anywhere from one year to more than a decade to create an amateur-built aircraft. And it can be a scary prospect, particularly when parts break or get cut incorrectly.
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Glasair has eliminated the fears and time factor associated with building a Sportsman. The two-weeks-to-taxi program is a remarkably well-executed concept. “It started in 2004 as an 18-day program for the airframe,” Ted said. “But we knew we could do more.” Glasair streamlined the process and, by the end of 2005, the two-weeks-to-taxi program was a reality.
Customers come in on a Monday morning, and by the following Friday they can taxi their aircraft away from the 25,000-square-foot Glasair hangar. The airplane is ready to fly, and as long as it has its final inspections completed with the required FAA signoff, it can. But how is this possible while maintaining the legal 51 percent requirements for amateur-built aircraft?
The answer is pure organization. Using the Japanese 5S methodology of workplace organization, the entire inventory at Glasair is clearly structured and labeled. So when an aircraft is ordered, it is easy to put together a kit to ship out or deliver to the adjacent two-weeks-to-taxi center. If there is a part missing or damaged, it takes minutes to pull a new piece out of the inventory with no interruption in the build process. There are many benefits to building an aircraft. As the customer, you know the airplane inside and out, and you’ll receive a repairman certificate specific to the serial number at the completion of the project. This repairman certificate allows you to perform regular maintenance, such as the annual inspection. Cost of ownership stays low, troubleshooting becomes easier, and the pride of ownership for an airplane you’ve built yourself is immeasurable.
That pride is evident in the employees at Glasair as well. Ephraim moved to Arlington from Alaska to be a part of the Glasair group, and he is building his own Glasair Super II FT. I was shocked to find out just how committed Ted is to the aircraft he designed. In his spare time at home, he is — you guessed it — building a Sportsman! After more than 30 years in the kit aircraft business, this is the first aircraft he’s building for himself.
Fly an IFR cross-country to visit family one weekend, go camping on a back-country strip the next, or go fly-fishing at a mountain lake. The options with this airplane are limited only by your imagination. And the foldable wings make it possible for you to share hangar rent with several friends. As long as they are Sportsman owners too.
Read more about the two-weeks-to-taxi program on the May iPad edition.
