Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Movers & Makers: Chuck Stottlemyer”.
I’M chuck stotlemeyer, i’m actually charles, but i’m chuck. I make airplanes, i make motorcycles, i make furniture i make. What can i say? You know there are musicians and that’s what they do. I mix stuff. I love italian machinery, you know the art and mechanical part of it, but i became more mature.
I still like sport bikes but uh, something a little less racer oriented and we can have all our things in the van. It’S just a much more convenient way for us to travel, so the transit minute makes a great vehicle for something like that. I was sure that i could get this bike in barely like when you build an airplane. You stick a propeller on the wall and you start putting stuff on it.
You know well, i had to put it where i wanted it and then and then fabricate the parts that would take to get it there. I’Ve built and restored aircraft pretty much. All of my adult life, the fuselage is steel tubing, it’s box, acetylene welded, it’s all covered, except for the sheet metal and fiberglass course, with dacron a very strong, flexible fabric. It’S it’s very much a home built experimental airplane, a lot of fun cheap to fly.
The pits back here is a competition aerobatic airplane. It literally doesn’t care whether it’s upside down or right side up. It has a symmetrical airfoil.
This is all wood, wood, ribs, wood spars. This is aluminum leading edge. What i prefer is a 4130 steel tube fuselage.
That’S that’s fusion, welded and a fabric covered. I prefer wood wings because they ride better. You know you’ve seen a wood ladder, how they’ll flex like that? Well, wood wings do too and you’ll ride through turbulence a lot smoother. I really like the old technology. I, like the antique airplanes, more than modern airplanes. Leave me cold, i’m much more interested in this 30s technology, but the cnc uh.
You know i was a machinist. I could see when i first saw a computer hooked to it that this is going to be the future. I’D literally spend hours and hours and hours punching in numbers. You know doing the math figure arc intersections doing all that sort of thing, and and that’s about the time that the cad first started becoming available, and that was just oh boy.
This is great. This was a ground up restoration. The same basic airframe can be a four-seat airplane, but this just has two seats and then a big baggage compartment is the latest project and it’s going to be our flying camper. It’S always the first thing i think of whenever there’s a problem i said.
Well, i could probably make that i’ve always made things. That’S what i do when somebody asks. What do you do? I said: well i make stuff you .