109JB's Kitfox IV rebuild

[DesertFox4]

Best of luck on the rebuild John. Sounds like some nice mods.
A friend just installed a Garmin G5 in his Model 4 Kitfox and so far really likes it. The wide body mod is a nice addition too.

Sincere condolences on the loss of your father John.
So many of us here inherited our love for aviation from our dads and owe many of the very best times of our lives to their influence.

[109JB]

Best of luck on the rebuild John...Sincere condolences on the loss of your father John.
So many of us here inherited our love for aviation from our dads and owe many of the very best times of our lives to their influence.

Thanks. What you say is so true. Even though we could butt heads like no other pair, it was because we were so alike. He is and will continue to be sorely missed. It has been 4 months since he passed away and I’ll still be doing something and think to myself “I need to call Dad and ….” I then catch myself. Basically, it sucks!! Now clearing out his house I find things we worked on together from years ago and they bring up now bittersweet memories.

On the airplane I’ve kept the list of structural modifications small because one of my goals is to keep weight down as much as possible. The logs for this airplane say it was 619 pounds empty and I want to keep it under 650 with the mods I’m adding. That would still give me 550 useful load to the 1200 gross. The structural mods I listed should only add a couple pounds and I’m considering covering with Oratex to keep weight to a minimum.

I have looked at the Mangy Fox rebuild that Larry did and it looks great. I’m considering some tail enlargement, but I think I’ll put that decision off until later. I have a friend that has a long wing IV 1200 with a 912 so I’ll probably fly that airplane a bit this spring to check out the handling to decide if I’ll enlarge anything. I have a IV 1050 and on that one I do think it could use more vertical tail surface. I know the 1200 has a larger tail so maybe it is sufficient, or maybe I just need to increase the rudder chord to accomplish what I want to do.

On that note I do have a question. Since this is a speedster it has the airfoiled tail surfaces. Since there is some tail damage, I was contemplating going back to the slab surfaces as it may be easier to do the repairs and eliminate the wood ribs. Can anyone who has flown both the slab and airfoiled surfaces relate if there is any handling or performance benefit to the airfoil surfaces? If there is, I would keep them but if it is only aesthetic then they may go depending on what I see when I pull the covering.

The most major mod I want to do is eventually put in an autopilot to ease the workload on cross countries and a Grove gear. Beyond that there aren’t really a bunch of mods I want to make. My experience so far with my IV 1050 indicates that it is a pretty decent airplane the way it is and I don’t want to make it into something it isn’t