In the USA, I understand the very liberal ruleset is indeed justified by the “educational” argument. But the real purpose of the builder can never be measured, of course; and it it will always be a mix of wanting to learn and to build experience, and the fun of building, and having a nice plane at the end.
And, slightly paraphrasing your last sentence: Building a high perf type can be just as educational – perhaps even more because of the higher build quality.
Even messing around with your plane is very educational. You don’t need to build one to learn a lot.
On a CofA type, the knowledge acquired in doing say the 50hr checks also greatly helps in assessing a maintenance company and communicating with them.
On the US Exp high-perf types such as the Dynasty, the “51%” is more lip service to the rule than reality. Especially on composite aircraft. But that is also true lower down. I know somebody building a “rag and tube” type and from what I can see most of it arrived assembled. The engine was in a crate and they had to wire up the avionics.
Even messing around with your plane is very educational.
Yes. After three years of messing around I have become a real expert at it.
I know somebody building a “rag and tube” type and from what I can see most of it arrived assembled.
It would be normal for the frame to arrive welded and done (who has the equipment and the know-how to do this job well, one-off?), but probably it still needed to be painted. And quite a deal of work will go into covering the frame with cloth (Dacron or such) and the subsequent treatment to get it taut. You’d be surprised at the amount of work that goes into assembling a kit, even when it is well done. Homebuilders tend to joke “90% done, 90% to go” …
Maintaining an existing aircraft is certainly educational, as is restoring one. Its also very satisfying to those who like it – my factory built planes were both flying projects to one degree or another and I’m not ‘in synch’ with anything I own unless I’ve worked on it for a while. For me, its part of the process of ‘making friends’ with the thing. Another guy I know restores aircraft in serial fashion, taking them from ‘barn finds’ to as new Link, and enjoys the challenge of everything from finding the plane to painting it. He’s just started on another Luscombe, this one a pre-war plane, having sold his last restoration project recently and also having completed a homebuilt Highlander Link that he’ll be flying for a while. I think I can count three restorations that he’s done in the last 12 years plus two kit builts – the other kit was a Glastar (Sportsman 2+2). Link. He’s an airline pilot and therefore doesn’t work much 
Re partially competed kit builts and 51% rule, I met a guy on Sunday who built his Glastar at the factory center, from nothing to flying in 5 weeks. That’s really something and I guess it got him the plane he wanted (its beautiful) but I wouldn’t do it that way myself. They laid out the tools he needed every morning before he arrived, and that seems like cheating to me!
On the outer end of the spectrum, some people still ‘scratch build’, my father was one years ago, and a friend built the aircraft in the photo below. Every part you can see was built from raw materials except the main gear tires, if you can see them! 90% done and 90% to go certainly appeared the case for that one, for a long time. He enjoyed the challenge of doing it the ‘old school’ way. He’s done a lot with modern designs and wanted to see how he’d do with one that you build from plans, with the academic objective of spending little money. Its since been flown thousands of miles on trips, cruising at maybe 160 kts, which was also part of the Wittman tradition. The cowling, all the fairings plus the propeller blades are carbon fiber, which is not traditional, but the builder is good with CF and it saved weight!
The same guy has the Tailwind plus a Lancair IV Link now, the latter he brought completed… which I guess is the ultimate way to not build an Experimental aircraft.
Silvaire, isn’t that a BD-4 in your photo? If ever I go the next step, it will be this one: scratch build my own BD-4, or perhaps with a couple of fellows, register it at the easiest place, F-P likely, get the required license (EASA PPL, then) ; and if ever both plane and pilot can be raised to IFR privileges that will be a real WHOAW!
Jan, its a Wittman Tailwind, which In December 1953 was the first airplane certified to carry a passenger under the then new FAA Experimental Amateur Built Regulations. It was subsequently quite a successful design and the BD-4 was one of the later planes that used a lot of its features. Despite looking quite boxy and crude, the Tailwind has an excellent combination of utility and performance even in modern terms. Its apparent that the Tailwind really did benefit from Steve Wittman’s decades of air racing experience prior to the 50s. Link
I was the first passenger in the Tailwind pictured above, about 55 years later 
It goes like hell
Oshkosh was Wittman’s summer home, and the EAA Fly-In was moved there because he suggested it. The Oshkosh airport is now called Wittman Field. Link
Really? How can you infer such a purpose?
Because that is the basic behind the 51% rule. This is the definition of a experimental homebuilt aircraft and the basic of obtaining a special certificate of airworthiness in the experimental class. That and restauration of some old aircraft not currently airworthy, as the rule is here, but this is experimental restauration.
You can of course buy a finished one, but then you cannot take a yearly or more extended maintainans, again, at least not here. Then you have to have help from a certified mechanic, but still it will be much simpler than a certified aircraft.
I have no idea what the British rule says, this is different in each country.
See e.g. the aircraft at the start of this thread. Or this one. All 51% owner-built. And why not? Why limit the Exp category to low performance machinery for “educational and recreational” purposes?
You can build as high performance as you want as long as you stay within limits of 2000 kg MTOW. Restauration has no limit I think. The main purpose is still to build.
Both the UL scene in Europe and the Experimental / non CofA scene in the US have but one purpose in truth:
To be able to build, fly and maintain airplanes outside the quagmire of expensive and often senseless and politically motivated rulemaking.
Especcially in the US I see the trend that everything which can’t be flown legally certified somehow or the other finds its way into the experimental class. Airplanes like the Antonov 2, most east built acrobatic planes, warbirds and, oh yea, “51%” homebuilt. That rule btw is probably the one most easily cirumnavigated and is very much useless anyhow, as anyone who wants to get a plane like that can find someone to build it for them and then buy it from them. The only way to really enforce the 51% rule would be to ban the original builder from selling it for a considerable amount of time (like 10 years or so) to make sure that really only builders fly such planes. But we don’t want that, do we.
The terminal illness which all GA faces all over the world is invasive rule making which has in the end the same goal everywhere, to eradicate GA as much as possible. In Europe that goal is relentlessly pushed by the political class, and yes LeSvig, the politicians and bureaucrats today are a class of their own and a very dangerous one on top of that, and by the hate/envy society that is predominant in Europe, particularly in some of the “dominating” powers. That you have a lot more freedom in Skandinavia sais a lot about the fact that Skandinavia has never been and probably never will be one of those societies, whereas it is very well established in central Europe.
In the US, the tendencies go the same way but they do have a massive GA lobby which can and has prevented the horrors we have to live with here in Europe. In the end, this is not only valid for aviation but for the general life as well. Senseless rulemaking, the fearmongering and associated restriction of personal freedom is today paramount in almot all issues discussed or implemented in our Western society. Again, the concept of Freedom on which the US is built as opposed to feudal Europe has prevented a lot of the decline in freedom we experience here, but it has not been for the lack of trying.
If the mindset today dominant in organisations like EASA and others would have been present in the pioneer years of flying, it is very likely that aviation as we know it would never have gotten off the ground at all. Can you imagine someone like Lindbergh getting a permission to fly his Spirit of St. Louis over the atlantic the way he did? That is right, it would not be possible today anymore.
What is needed for the survival of GA is a massive reduction in rulemaking for anything flying under private operation. Substantially there is NO justification for any of the gold plating and fear mongering so omnipresent today. Our planes fly just fine without anyone telling us which instruments we can use, to tear out perfectly functional engines and components just beause an arbitrary set cya date has expired or pilots having to conform health and mindset standards born in dark times in elite dreams by certain people who have become unspeakables today.
If society decilnes further as it has been since the 68’er generation has taken over its alleged leadership, then it will simply descend into something I for one do not wish to be part of.
Especcially in the US I see the trend that everything which can’t be flown legally certified somehow or the other finds its way into the experimental class. Airplanes like the Antonov 2, most east built acrobatic planes, warbirds and, oh yea, “51%” homebuilt
It’s worth noting that the FAA treats things like the An-2, Yak-52, Nangchang CJ6 etc. much differently from 51% homebuilts. The homebuilts are “Experimental – amateur built” and once test flown as far as private non-business flying is concerned can do everything that a certified aircraft can do, fly IFR, go coast to coast, etc. On the other hand the factory builts like the An-2 are “Experimental – exhibition” and are limited to flying within a certain radius of the airfield they are based at, except for exhibition purposes (in which case IIRC you must notify the FAA of your itinery and must be going to your destination to exhibit the aircraft, although it seems the definition of exhibition is pretty liberal).
