The SLOWEST Airplane in the WORLD?? The DR Chinook Aircraft!

in this episode we speak with dan reynolds on the flight line of the jennings louisiana national stall series swamp stole where he is competing with his road tax-powered dr chinook backcountry aircraft hi i'm dan reynolds i'm from canada yukon territory come all the way down to louisiana with this airplane i didn't fly it of course look it's too far it's not too far take too long and yeah i'm here to compete in the sole competition with it and it's a chinook that i just finished building not too long ago it's a highly modified chinook it started out as a wt-11 and it is now what i call i branded them i've got a sister ship to this valdez special so these are little hot rods that i've designed and modified just for stole competition but they also work in the backcountry for what i want to do with them on the mountains so it was around six feet can you beat it today with this incredible one-off so the only thing original this does have an original registration on this aircraft from a 1984 wt11 that was made by birdman enterprises back then but that is the only part that's original i have scratch built and made all the other parts of this aircraft and not from plans they're up here so i first bought one of the wt11s back in 1984 because i was just getting into flying and it was a cheap way to go and fun little aircraft and spent quite a few hours in that and then i wanted to do more with them and take them in the back country and a lot of winter flying so i started modifying them putting heaters in them and and then the landing gear wasn't strong enough for the type of stuff i want to do so then i started modifying landing gear and you know i don't know how many years that is but it's been a lot of years and about 1990 i really took on the modifications when i moved to a different location had a hangar i could work in the wintertime learned how to tig weld set myself up with machining tools and then i started building planes not quite like this this one this concept of the stole version with the slots and all the bigger tails and everything that's required to fly really slow was inspired from going to valdez i went over there to the stole competition which is where it really started alaska and watched what those guys were doing took some of their tricks home with me in my back pocket and i spent a winter in a shop building one of these little birds i just took the modifications to a whole different level and i've got something that i just love to fly it's so much fun history but it's pretty sensational so this plane as it sits with all fluids in it no fuel no usable fuel um weighs with these tires it weighs 538 pounds my gross weight on this plane is 1050 pounds yeah it's 1050. i kind of want to go back to kilograms but i'm trying to convert here for you guys this one here has got a second seat in it i licensed is a two place it's the only wte2 that's ever been licensed as a two place it has a bigger cargo area bigger cabin not quite as big as uh the standard two place kit that chinook makes well not chinook but the manufacturers of that plane the original kit right now um so yeah the seats out of it right now because i'm gonna compete i don't want the weight but it has a seat that goes in the back there and it hauls two people around like a like it doesn't even know you're there so this landing gear is uh my design i built this would have been back probably or designed it and then built it in 2020 somewhere in that era i don't know ears kind of blend in but i was into the the trapping a lot and in the really deep snow and the original gear sat a lot lower was a complete different configuration structurally and looked aesthetically and i was getting stuck in the deep snow with it and i just thought there's got to be a better way and the suspension wasn't as good so i'm a long time cub pilot i own two of them and i've got 10 000 hours in super cubs and you know piper built a pretty good gear system so i thought i'm not going to reinvent the wheel how will i build a system like what piper has and put it on this plane and this is what i came up with and it's worked really well this gear has served me well in the backcountry and the factory changed hands um quite a few years ago and they approached me and i actually made a deal with them and and give them this design for the gear and now this is the only type of gear that the chinook you get that they they actually will manufacture you can still get parts for the original gear from but they will not put a kit out with the old gear on it's all dr they call it the dr gear we are partnering with great companies like dynon avionics at dineon.com air tech coatings at airtechcoatings.com av nation youth magazine at av nation usa.com take a moment to go visit their websites at the links found below in the description of this video and visit our website at experimentalaircraftchannel.com for events our video library arrange an easy to find playlists on specific topics affiliate products aviation merchandise and so much more so i can never build two airplanes the same i've got the original valdez special that i did build back in 2018 it's back home this one here the fuselage is basically the same there's no changes there i was really happy with that but this wing is a little different than my other one this one it goes back to the original flat bottom wing the other one i put a profiled rib on the bottom of it so i thought maybe that'll help me but i don't know if it did or not so then i thought i'll try flat bottom so i went flat bottom i still don't know which one's better they fly differently but i don't know which one i like better and also on this one i had randy out of carbon concepts build me a set of carbon fiber slots so he was kind enough to do that for me and i'm trying them out and i'm liking them so far so that's the other one i built my own slots so not can't say which is better i think they're both good you're a true experimenter i i am just out there seeing if i can find better and there's only one way do it different to see if it's better and sometimes it's not so this one here does also have then a little longer wing i've extended the spars out a little and it doesn't have the wing tips the rounded wing tips tapered tips like my other one i've just squared them right off and put some pretty crude looking fences on them at the last minute before i come down here i was gonna leave them wide open it flies great with wide open you can look right in there and then frank knuck frank knapp would have loved that because that's all his thing if you ever look at a little cubby you can walk up and look right down in the rib you just look in there he doesn't cover his tips up and i keep asking why don't you at least put some fabric over or something no that just irritates people and i like that so okay so this is a 670 rotax engine from a snowmobile this particular one came from a 93 model there was two years that skidoo made the blocks the well the cases the same as what they did for the aircraft engines the only thing they didn't do on the snowmobiles was machine the face on the back of the pto here on the on the crank or the case side to fit the gear drive all the casting was there for the bolt holes to bolt it on you just had to machine it and then tap them out then you get the aircraft gear drive onto it so it also has the dual pickups for the dual ignition the trigger points i'm using the e-box on this one has an electric starter built right into it it's a heavy box but it's it's built tough this one here with the muffler and a little tweaking that's been done to it it's probably cranking out right around 100 horse so it's a good little engine i like it you know approximately how much it weighs yeah i know exactly how much it weighs weighs 111 pounds without fluids so when you're building one of these planes the first thing you start with is a body tube or with the long tube that runs right up in under your seat and then you start bolting parts onto that if you buy a kit from the factory all the major attach points all the brackets are already put on riveted on so they do that in the jig to make sure everything's lined up when i build them i don't i don't buy them that way these are custom custom-built one-of-a-kind things and so i've got my own jig that i use i've built over the years and i can also do it through measurements i know where everything goes so i'll just take i took a raw body tube with no holes in it and started drilling holes marking things out making the brackets bend in the brackets then you start bolting stuff on so there's a lot of riveting the kit comes everything's pre-drilled pretty much all the brackets are bent so i do all that myself and not everyone has that technology i have a cnc machine i have all the benders that you know bend the proper radiuses for different thicknesses of aluminum and types and i do some tig welding this tail has a little bit of tig welding on there's no welding on the factory kits that you get there's none so this is some places it's a little handier to weld i you don't structurally ever weld on 6061 t6 aircraft aluminum because it ten it weakens it around the well takes temper out of it so these wings are kind of unique in their design they have a strut braced system in them between the spars and then the ribs are only a tube profile there is no they're not a stamped out rib they're just a tube that's bent with special ends on the end and riveted to sparta's bar so you don't have um bottom wing ribs on them like a conventional aircraft the factory now is putting like five fabric plates on the bottom to act as a underwing rib and i saw them at the factory they look really good and i might consider that on my next one but adds more weight isn't necessary looks nicer guaranteed so with this type of stuff it's about weight brian here wants me to demonstrate how to get in an airplane i'm not quite sure why but i guess i gotta do it if he wants me to do it i'll make you happy okay open the door first why thank you pretty simple so it's nice and comfortable in here it's like sitting in a bathtub with mirrors all around you of the world so equipment here for a chinook yeah this this a lot of guys are going to glass panels now i just saw one that had a glass panel in it and i thought about that but i really don't know if glass panels work at 35 below i wonder that so i was gonna go one instrument in here for the competition keep it light you can see how well that worked i don't have a climb indicator because i think i can feel how fast it's climbing but um that's about the only thing i really kept out of here then i got a standard radio in here that's you'd find in any aircraft except for maybe some of the newer ones and what's to the controls like that okay so so this thing here is um i fly a lot of cub also fly cessna cubs have heel brakes assessments have toe brakes it's like i don't get in an argument which one is better it's whatever you prefer so this one has the rudder pedals and then i've designed these heel brakes that are down here and it's just i like the way they work they're right there get on them you know when you you know really stomp on one you actually your foot comes back from the other brake so you're not riding it by accident so it's worked really well um it's got a standard stick in it got flap lever down here for all your notches and throttle choke mags i've got switches over here that run a lot of my electrics um yeah it's i've got a heater behind my head for when it gets 30 below keeps me nice and warm blows down over keeps all the windows clear keeps my feet where are you below i test load this thing at 35 below how does that engine even start at 30 below i roll it out of the hangar warm and start it up quick you know it's a snowmobile engine originally so it will start at 35 below if you got everything right it's you don't have oil in it to worry about getting thick if it fires if you can pull it over fast enough to fire it's not going to hurt it that's kind of like what this chinook is about it's just we kind of did everything i think we covered most things and i'm going to be here i'm going to plan on leaving this plane in this area um for a little while anyway because i i'd like to hit a few more stove competitions but i don't know if i'll get any more in this spring summer but i definitely plan to have this plane at gainesville in late october and then i'm going to try to hit next winter as many of the stole competitions the national series any way that i can so yeah if anyone wants to come have a look at this plane or talk to me about it or whatever no more interviews but yeah they're welcome to come look me up sometime i like talking airplanes [Music] foreign

Channel: Experimental Aircraft Channel

Views: 1,344,564

Keywords: aircraft, aviation, experimental aircraft, light sport aircraft, ultralight aircraft, ultralight, affordable, flying, fly, pilot, how to fly, how to build, flight training, flight instruction, stol, stol drag, stol competition, trent palmer, mike patey, valdez, Alaska valdez, valdez competition, valdez winner, chinook, chinook aircraft, best, worlds, smallest, lightest, bushplane, back country, piper, cub, carbon cub, tailwheel, experimental aircraft channel

Id: VcigIk55wj4

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022