My Glasair III Construction Diary (Introduction)
By
Roger Halstead

Background:

    I've had "the urge to build" every since the "new wave" of kit planes came on the scene.

    Although the so called new wave contains a plethora of aircraft designs I associate it with the unbelievably smooth surfaces, high strength, and graceful lines of the composite and advanced composite designs that have become available. Among these are the Lancair, Glasair, Legend, Longez, and Giles.

    The Lancair and Glasair are well proven designs and the companies have developed good solid reputations. The Legend is new on the scene and shows the promise of a very efficient and strong airframe coupled to a large Aluminum block V-8 racing engine. The Longez has not only proven to be a very efficient and high speed traveling machine for two. Its performance comes from a small and economical engine of proven design. The Longez has also been the impetus for a whole series of designs that go all the way up to four passenger 200 mph plus machines. The Giles 200 and 202 are sleek, strong, and agile aerobatic specialists. The single seat 200 was introduced a couple of years back with the two seat version (the 202) being introduced in 1996. They have now been around long enough that customer built machines are now starting to show up.

    These were the designs that had fired my interest and I'd seen them all with the exception of the Legend and the Giles 202. As much as I'd like to have an aerobatic mount such as the 202 or a high performance powerhouse like the Legend, they were not in the list of probable selections. The Giles, being an unlimited aerobatic design would be a "ball" for some serious play, but not very comfortable as a cross country machine when my wife and I go on vacation. The Legend with its potential for high speed, long range, and sport aerobatic capabilities looked ideal, but it's an unproven design with only the prototype flying. Nor is it an inexpensive aircraft with an expected kit price somewhere in the 70K range and another 50K for the engine and prop. That still leaves the avionics package. The complete aircraft would probably fall somewhere between the Glasair III and the Lancair IV in cost, but it looks as if it'll be in a class by its self when it comes to performance.

    I'd pretty well settled on either the Lancair 360 or the Glasair III even though my desire leaned toward the Lancair IV-P. Unfortunately the total "freight" for a Lancair IV or IV-P came out to be a bit, well actually quite a bit, more than either the Glasair III or the Lancair 360. The Glasair III is not an inexpensive aircraft when equipped with the 300 HP engine and an avionics package that's good for cross country and that will also stand up to aerobatics.

    After spending hours looking over the three planes at Oshkosh I still hadn't made up my mind, but then I had a chance to fly the Glasair III. The factory pilot did the actual lift off and touch down, but I flew almost every minute for the rest of the flight. That's when I decided a "sport plane" might be more than an acceptable compromise. I still wanted the speed and comfort of the Lancair IV-P, but the Glasair III has similar range and is only slightly slower. That and it was designed with sport aerobatics in mind.

    Then a Glasair III kit became available locally. I found that it was located only about a hundred yards from where my Debonair is hangered. It had been delivered in September of 1990 and never taken out of the crate. We agreed on a price and it was placed in my garage Tuesday Evening, November 12th, 1996.

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