Hi Charlie,

I'm not familiar with the kitfox wing, but you got me curious if they still did glue-only, considering that their gross weight on newer models is a heck of a lot more than those early versions. I stumbled across this video which seems to indicate they adopted rib stitching at some point

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogk8YFzoA6E

I’m also a fan of the Stewart System. I covered my Champ with it, it’s very easy to work with, (at least until you get to the topcoat), I'm a complete amateur and I think it turned out pretty well.

From what I know so far they do do rib stitching or at least the builds that I have started reading on the kitfox forum.

Charlie, your right I'm going to need a serious plan for this year at OSH and all of the vendors and demonstrations that we are going to want to attend.

We just got the notification from Kitfox that we need to confirm our order.. Roughly 2.5 months to things get real.

Some thoughts to share, in line with your original text. Using italics to make my comments visible (hope this doesn't anger any other readers).


A partner and I Placed the Order for a Kitfox STI last week. (Primary factor in the choice of the kitfox was the ability to fold the wings which allows it to fit in my existing hangar. For those wondering) Due to "Efficiency gains" they'll be able to deliver it this June. Things just got real, fast and you can't imagine how excited we are though feeling a little rushed on the decisions we are facing. We originally were told they were out ~16 months so figured we had tons of time to figure out the small things when ordering the kit right up to engine choices.

Curious if anyone on here has built one? I just started digging in on the kitfox forum and there is a wealth of knowledge but since I'm on here I'd figure I'd ask.
My next door neighbor is building one of these, plus I've been involved in several STI's and non-STI's from an inspection perspective.

In no order some of the questions we are thinking about.

Engine: Most likely the rotax 915 but the 916 is enticing but is it worth the extra $10k? We live in Colorado so a turbo is happening one way or another. We have looked at the Edge option but not sure I love the idea of boosting up a 912 to the levels they are without the other upgrades a 915 brings.
Neighbor went with the 916 - keep in mind you have to order the FWF kit pretty early, so you will be under pressure to nail down this engine decision. FWF kit is a pretty long lead item.

Covering: Oratex. Damn it's expensive, but not having to paint the plane is appealing. Any experience here.
I've seen both Oratex and Stewart on an STI. Ultimately the Stewart looked quite a bit brighter with better colour saturation, better shine.

Struts: Is it really worth over $3k to upgrade to the chromoly streamlined struts. This thing is not built to go fast. I've got the a36 for that.
Yup, this one truly is a no-brainer. The standard struts plus their flimsy plastic aerodynamic covers are, well, unbecoming of an airplane in which you'll have well north of a hundred grand invested.

Autopilot: We are going to put in at least a two axis but the more I read it's probably worth at least paying for the 3rd axis mounting kit. thoughts?
Provision the mount, then keep surveying those who are actually FLYING to see if they are getting any value from the third axis. From what I've seen so far it's a 50/50 proposition but I may not have sufficient data points in my sample.

Tires: My biggest concern from what I hear is the big Alaskan bush tires wear a lot on pavement. Both of us are new to a tail wheel and I figure for at least the first year a bunch of our time will be on pavement and the plane will be based at a paved field with no grass options. I'm thinking of starting with a more traditional tire at least as first and making the transition to a bigger alaskan bush tire later.
Look at the cost of purchasing via the OEM kit vs aftermarket. I know one builder who opted to buy the big ABW's "for the future" as well as the standard tires because the kitted price saved a few hundred bucks over the cost of buying the ABWs later. Personally, if both owners are low T/W time pilots there is a huge advantage to going with the standard tires for time building. The ABWs take some getting used to, plus they do make it a bit more sporting to get in and out of the cockpit.

Interested to hear your opinions.

Additional thoughts... Congratulations on taking this plunge. As has been mentioned by others, eat this elephant one bite at a time, but most importantly, enjoy each bite!

You will find there are some very common kit quality issues. The vertical stab is often not vertical - it's not a good feeling to put pressure on it to bend it back to vertical but that's the only way to fix it. There are challenges with some of the welded-on bolt mounting tubes - they are sometimes contaminated with weld - spend the bucks to get the right reamers to clear those holes before you get frustrated and destroy a bunch of bolts. Also, the glued up wing and tail surfaces really do look pretty and you will hesitate to cover them up if you are somebody who enjoys the look of wood. It would be nice to have a clear covering option! You want to ensure you have all the right materials to allow complete touch-up of all blemishes in the paint applied to the steel tubing.

Oh, one last thought... You may not want to be in a hurry to buy your tailwheel as it seems this is an area where innovation and improvement of existing tailwheel mounts is happening quite quickly.

Wishing you the best of luck with your build.

On this point there was somebody on one of the old forums (might have been Matronics or might have been Team Kitfox) who had a hard landing that collapsed his seat pan into the control tubes, which jammed them, and led to the second touchdown being even worse than the first.

After that, there was a lot of discussion about fitting what you might describe as a ratchet strap, minus the ratchet hardware, as kind of a sling support underneath each seat well. The solution is obvious when you see pictures of how some builders have implemented it- basically bond the strap onto itself with rubber cement (i.e. polytak or big box store aviation supply aisle), weighs very little, and costs very little (up front and maintenance/inspection).


As far as the popular support strap, I don't remember if the factory brought out anything similar or some other solution.


I also don't remember if the hard landing in question was one of the early airplanes (1-4) or the later, bigger ones (5 and up). The later ones were purportedly engineered to Part 23 standards in anticipation of Light Sport Aircraft (think early 2000s when the details were still getting hashed out) and possibly building turnkey factory airplanes. If you follow that to its logical conclusion, then the seat ought to hold up in a 9G impact (or 26G?) x170lbs x2 people, but I suspect that the sales literature and airshow booth talk was probably more along the lines of soft language, like meeting Part 23 in many areas. And I don't recall any talk of sandbag testing the seat pans to failure... that's a lot of bags of lead shot to stack in there!

A friend of mine is covering a J3 Cub with Oratex. Overall, it looks like a good product. There is something to be said about shrinking the covering and essentially being done. No silver, no paint, no overspray, no runs, etc. I did notice some minor iron marks in his. They might be able to be removed with a long run of the iron?

IIRC, Oratex was "tested" for years on RC airplanes as Permatex. I built many airplanes with Permatex covering when I was a kit.