Bizarre airplanes to buzz around Emporia Airport on Saturday
By Scott Rochat
Monday, September 18, 2006
The wings may look funny, but the planes fly just fine. And this weekend, they’re coming to Emporia.
Starting Friday, planes will arrive at the Emporia Municipal Airport for the 16th annual Tandem Wing Fly-In. The main event runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, when the public will be able to see the homebuilt planes on the ground and in the sky, and talk with the owners.
So what is a tandem wing? It’s a plane with one wing called a “canard” in front of the cockpit and another longer wing behind the cockpit. The result is a very stable plane with great handling — maybe too great for pilots used to another craft.
“When you’re in the air, you can fly it with two fingers,” organizer Spud Spornitz of Olathe said as he described the plane’s simple joystick. “And when you land, you can’t stall in, you have to sink in. A typical Cessna propeller plane, you pull the nose up and stall in. You fly these down to the ground like you’re landing a jet.”
And a tandem can be quicker than it looks. Some of the faster ones can reach 220 mph and cruise all day at 205 mph, Spornitz said, and only burn six gallons of fuel an hour doing it.
This is the first year the event has been held in Emporia. The previous 15 fly-ins were held in Ottawa, until the airport there was no longer available. Thankfully, Spornitz said, they already had a standing offer.
“Don Tevis (Emporia’s airport manager) went to our fly-in seven or eight years ago and said ‘If you’re ever looking for a new home, Emporia would love to have you,” he said. “And a year ago, when we found out we wouldn’t be able to do Ottawa, they just rolled out the red carpet for us.”
“It’s a nice facility,” he added. “It’s going to be amazing.”
The event will include models such as the Quickie, powered by a 20-horsepower motor, and the later Q2 and Dragonfly models, which began by using a Volkswagen engine. A later design, the Q200, dropped in a 100-horsepower Cessna motor instead.
In addition to the fly-bys and on-the-ground displays, there will be two technical forums throughout the day. Bob Nuckles of the AeroElectric Connection will speak on “Aircraft Electrical Systems” while Michael Huffman will speak on “The Do’s and Don’ts of working with a DAR.” That’s not a daughter of the American Revolution, by the way, but a designated area representative, the man or woman responsible for inspecting the aircraft for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Although Spornitz has flown the craft, he hasn’t yet finished building one of his own. Something about putting his four children through college first.
“Another two years and I can go out with my own plane,” he said.