Marutaka Beech Craft D17 Staggerwing Install Land Lights

Beech had to have gone to the hardware store across the street when he needed a part for these hand built beauties.

For one example, the fuel quantity system is completely from a 1934 Chevrolet.

As for the other models, A through G, (excluding D).well youre on your own.

And if you think one Staggerwing is like another, youre wrong.

I have made so many corrections to the errors in this manual, that I contemplate publishing a corrected manual.

But with less than 100 remaining Staggerwings, most of which are the D model, I would be wasting my time publishing a corrected manual.

What should take an hour or two to complete, takes days, sometimes weeks to finish correctly.

Parts off one Staggerwing do not necessarily fit correctly on another Staggerwing.

Marutaka Beech Craft D17 Staggerwing Install Land Lights

Wing rigging, retracting landing gear with its fitted fairings, bending plywood, flap rigging, correctly routing control cables, install land lights.are just some of the issues that a normal airplane with manufacturers pictures, manuals, and plans would take a minimum of time to successfully complete.

ALL Staggerwings ever built have my plane to thank for there not being an AD ever issued against the plane.

When Staggerwings first started flying, some mysteriously crashed and were destroyed.

The Department of Commerce and CAA could not explain the reasons for these total destruction crashes.

Wing flutter was disintegrating the wings and destroying these planes (and occupants) before they hit the ground.

On that fateful day, the pilot flying my plane got it safely on the ground, with the upper wings just a contained bag of splinters and broken wood structure inside the fabric.

This alleviated the need for an AD restriction to be issued against the airplane.

With a Jacobs engine installation, there is also no AD note against the Jacobs engine installation.

If it isnt assembled and flying; flee from it Buy one that is already flying and only rebuild it if you must.

Rollout and first taxi date is April 21, 2012, during the annual Flying Little River Flyin (FL10).