Welcome!  You're here because 1) you're building a Lancair Legacy FG kit and you're looking for technical information, 2) you read someone's building their own plane and you just had to see that, 3) you actually paged down to the 347th hit on your search for "Legacy+FG+kit+builder" or 4) you really don't know how you got here; you think your browser is broken.  Well, lucky for you, you're here!

We published this site to chronicle a kit builder's odyssey.  If you actually have the time to read thru this introduction we'll tell you why we decided to build a plane, how we chose the kit, what we plan to use as a powerplant and how we'll equip the aircraft to meet our mission objectives.

The builder's log contains all the actual work we'll do to build a plane.  If you follow along from the start, you'll see this section grow as we complete the kit.  You'll watch as we prepare the shop, pick up the kit from the factory, build it, then flight test and tweak it before final finishing.

The news page contains interesting things about this site, kit planes, powerplants, avionics, etc.  Go to the links page to find other builder's sites, suppliers, aviation sites, etc.  Read about my dealings with the Feds on the FAA page.  Check the updates page to find out about the latest changes to the site.  Finally, use Google to find pretty much anything on this site or the web on the search page.

Again, welcome!  We hope you have as much fun following along as we will doing the work!

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why build a plane?

Lisa and I have been flying ourselves around the country since the mid '90s; we decided we didn't want to fly on anyone else's schedule.  Our current airplane, a Grumman--American Traveler (click picture to enlarge), has served us well and faithfully, but slowly!  It takes a long time (relatively speaking) to get anywhere at 115 knots. Mind you, it's a lot faster than driving, but if you're going more than 500 miles the airlines can usually beat you.  

The first few years we owned the Grumman, we were content to use commercial carriers for long trips and limit our personal flying to short hops or flying vacations.  Since 9/11, airport security has become so onerous we've found ourselves using the trusty Grumman more and more--hence our decision to upgrade to something a little faster.

So the search was on!  We looked at many different kits and thought about many different things.  Since we were starting from a "clean sheet" we realized we could configure our airplane exactly as we wish (within fiscal reason).  We had three major categories of equipment to choose:

• Airframe

• Powerplant

• Avionics/accessories.  

Click a link to the left to read about that topic.  When you click a link a list of sub-topics will open; click a sub-topic to see it, or simply scroll to read the entire page.  You'll notice the menu "follows" you on the pages to help you navigate--it's supposed to do that!

Alternatively, you can read each section then just click [ Next ]