he has been spending the last couple
of Alaskan winters . . . designing and
building an all-composite bush plane
that should be at the airport in Anchor-
age for its first flight about the time you
are reading this. With a very high lift
wing designed by John Roncz, the 150
hp, mid-wing monoplane is going to be
capable of very short field operation, yet
will be able to cruise at a very respect-
able 140 mph. It's an airplane I have a
feeling those of you who operate off
small private strips are going to be very
interested in ... and with the increasing
expense and hassle of municipal air-
ports, there are more and more of you
every year. It's high time for a design to
come along aimed in your direction.
The absolute opposite end of the
spectrum is not being neglected either.
Jim Bede gave a forum to a standing
room only crowd on his new supersonic
jet sportplane, the BD-10J . . . and the
news is that the Holiday Inn corporation
has contracted to have six of them built
for an aerobatic team that will promote
the firm's business interests. Jim's new
company, Advanced Aircraft, Inc., is lo-
cated on the East Kansas City, MO air-
port.
BURT
RUTAN'S
CATBIRD
The most technically interesting new
airplane at EAA Oshkosh '88 was Burt
Rutan's Model 81 Catbird. This 3-sur-
face, turbocharged and soon to be pres-
surized 5-place, all-composite design is
still another of Burt's radical leaps for-
ward in lightplane design. At first
glance, the configuration appears to be
a step back towards convention for the
King of Canards and, indeed, he had
just such a question posed during his
forum on the airplane at Oshkosh.
Burt's reply was perhaps the clearest
indication yet that he has ascended to
a new plateau, that he has squeezed all
the performance he feels is practical out
of the pusher/canard configuration . . .
and has now moved on to the more
promising three surface layout. "I
wanted a very compact seating ar-
rangement for 5 people and I couldn't
balance the Catbird as a pusher," Burt
told his audience. The CG range was
too great with different crew weight situ-
ations (meaning the range from one to
five persons in the airplane and in all
the combinations possible in occupying
the seats) and I had to have the CG
range within the people. Also, you can't
make a pusher with as little drag as you
can a tractor... or as quiet, due to the
20 OCTOBER 1988
disturbed air in which the prop has to
operate."
The closer one looked at the Catbird,
the more obvious it became that it was
far, far from being an ordinary low wing
tractor monoplane . . . even with a
canard. That canard, in fact, was the
first tip off that here was something
dramatically different from Burt. It is a
fixed surface ... with no moveable con-
trol element . . . and is there solely to
contribute to the design's trim authority.
According to John Roncz, the Catbird,
from the standpoint of aerodynamics, is,
in fact, a radically staggered biplane!
From the canard your gaze progressed
to the variable cooling air inlet; the slight
area ruling of the fuselage where the
canard mounts; the slightly swept for-
ward, high aspect ratio wing with its
triangular tips . . . they're called
"sheared" tips . . . and although they
were difficult to discern, you knew there
were three of John Roncz's fabled
SODA airfoils moulded into the shape.
("SODA"? Why, Stamp Out Drag Air-
foils, of course!) Then there was the
dramatically tapering aft fuselage . . . a
"pressure recovery" fuselage, in the
lingo of engineers ... and the T-tail with
its forward swept horizontal element. In-
side the cockpit, the attention getter
was the seating arrangement. The pilot
sits up front on the certerline and im-
mediately behind him and just off each
shoulder are two forward facing seats .
. . and behind them, facing backwards,
are two more seats. So dense is the
seating that all five persons' heads are
within a circle just 30 inches in diame-
ter. Helps a lot in conversation, Burt
says.
During his forum on the Catbird, Burt
issued a challenge to any and all own-
ers of Glasair Ills, SX300s and White
Lightnings to a race. What he wanted
to do was start with a full throttle, side-
by-side run at 10,000 feet and work up
in thousand foot increments to about taxied into a small ditch he had no way
15,000 feet or so. The Glasair Ills and of knowing was filled with soft dirt. He
SX300s with their much larger engines was able to cut down the tips and fly
would likely outrun him at 10,000, Burt back home to Mojave, however.
conceded, but as they got progressively Prior to his departure, I was able to
higher, the Catbird's high altitude capa- tape an interview with Burt on the Cat-
bility would come to the fore and allow bird. Before flipping on the switch, we
it to walk away from the others. His per- had been discussing weights . . . so,
formance graphs showed the transition that's where it began - with the Catbird's
should occur at 12,500 to 13,000 feet, empty weight. . .
and he wanted to see if this held up in Burt Rutan - The airplane weighs
the real world. The gauntlet was not 1,425 pounds empty, with IFR in-
long in being picked up. Dan Wright of strumentation and an autopilot. . . and
Santa Barbara, CA agreed to run his that includes a rather heavy engine. It's
beautiful SX300 along side the Catbird, a TIO-360 A1C6D Lycoming with a
and the next morning they were up and RayJay turbocharger . . . but no inter-
hard at it. Needless to say, the real cooler. It's the same engine that's used
world matched up almost exactly with in the Partenavia P.68C-TC Victor. . .
Burt's graphs . . . but both had a great rated at 210 hp at 2,575 rpm at 44 in-
time proving out the math. Unfortu- ches, which is 100%. I can get 100% all
nately, Burt got the tips of his prop the way up to 19,000 feet.
chewed up a bit when, after landing, he The airplane is not yet equipped with

pressurization, which will add some
weight, but at 1,425 pounds it is still very
light for a five place airplane. I did pay
a lot of attention to weight.. . because
an airplane's performance just seems
to go to pot if you don't keep it light. The
main thing was that I wanted to keep
the span loading very low. The airplane
is designed to cruise at 24,000 feet and
about 30 nautical miles per gallon, and
you can't do that with short wings.
Above 12,000 to 13,000 feet, this
airplane will outrun any of the current
high performance homebuilts, including
those with a lot bigger engines. I've
known that ever since I decided to build
this thing, but today for the first time I
was able to go up and race the real hot
rod of them, the SX300, and, sure
enough, above 13,000 I can run away
from them. That was neat.
The Catbird has a long span and has
* * iat
the added advantage of sheared tips. If
you look at the planform of the tips,
you'll see they have highly swept lead-
ing edges. You might think this would
result in an early stall, but, in fact, it acts
just like the wings on the F-18 or F-15.
The highly swept leading edge causes
the tip vortex to roll off in such a way
that lift is produced to a very high angle
of attack. That tends to keep the big tip
vortex further out and tends to lessen
it, which gives you less induced drag
and it makes the ailerons work better.
The Catbird has tiny ailerons. They
don't use much of the wing's chord or
span, which gives me more fuel volume
and less drag . . . yet, the airplane has
a very good roll rate. The tips, I think,
are the key to having the ailerons per-
form better. . . and I've just got a little
side stick controller. There is technical
data on what the shear tips do for in-
duced drag, available from NASA both
in the form of wind tunnel tests and
analysis. I've kinda gone bananas with
them. I've got them on the business jet
(for Beech), the ATS, the Catbird and
even the hard sail on the America's Cup
catamaran.
A lot of people have asked about the
dihedral of the tips. Actually, that is a fix
for one of my screw-ups in the design
of the airplane. I built the wing too flat
and you couldn't pick up a wing with the
rudder at speeds above approach
speed. That's not safe because if you
drop an aileron linkage, you don't have
any way of controlling the airplane. I
created the necessary dihedral effect by
tilting up the tips . . . it has nothing to
do with efficiency or wingtip design or
anything. If I build another Catbird, it
will have more dihedral in the wing and
the tips will be on straight.
SPORT AVIATION 21
 A very important feature of this
airplane is the wing/fuselage juncture.
The wing is mounted up on the side of
the fuselage high enough that I have a
very low drag wing to body joint that
does not require a large fillet. In fact,
there is no fillet - just a very small radius
at the joint. A big fillet is just higher drag
if you've got a good wing to body joint
to begin with. There has been some
* \ work done that shows a "dillet" is what

m you really need - a dig, an undercut. For

example, the Wittman Tailwind (and the
Luscombe) has a dillet - you know, the
way the wing just tapers down to noth-

Burt Rutan sits in the up-front "catbird

seat," with aviation writer/photographer
Budd Davisson, left, in one of the two
seats just aft of the pilot.

The prototype Catbird has a very sim-

ple, manually actuated landing gear...
hand cranked just like the nose gear
of the Long-EZ. Using two little cranks
like the one in a Long-EZ, the nose gear
comes up with 20 turns and the mains
take 50 turns. This imposes a high work
load on the pilot during take-off, but it's
a simple system that's adequate for a
proof of concept airplane. The cranks
run a little gear box that pulls the gears
up with cables that go around 6 inch
diameter pulleys - that's all it is. The
gear doors try to hold the main gear
7
down, so that's why I had to go to the
full 50 turns, to make the forces manag-
able. The gear goes down quickly - you
can just release it and let it go. The
cranks are really not all that bad . . . in
fact, it's a good way to get your exer-
cise. It's better, don't you think, than all
those people who go out and pay
money and take time out of their day to
do aerobic exercise . . . and, yet, buy a
motor to raise their landing gear (. . .
this accompanied by that sly grin that elevator and out to sectors in the wing ing where it bolts on. Wittman is sharp
always gives Burt away when he's pul- for the ailerons. Short pushrods extend - the wing to body interference drag on
ling your leg). off the sectors to actuate the elevator a Tailwind is half what it is on a standard
You may have noticed that the plane and ailerons. Pretty conventional. The airplane. The way we did it was with
doesn't have any lights on it either. My rudder is cable actuated. The whole John Roncz's airfoils. There are three
justification for that is that I own a De- horizontal tail is trimmable. It pivots at airfoils in the wing and the one at the
fiant, and at night and in bad weather I the leading edge, but since it has for- root is draggier than optimum, but it cuts
really should be flying with two engines. ward sweep, the pivot, aerodynami- down enough on the interference drag
I don't plan to just store the Defiant, I cally, is about at the quarter chord. The to more than make up for it. If I move
plan to keep flying it. I thought, well, if unique thing about the set-up is that, the wing up a foot or maybe even 14 or
I don't put lights on the Catbird, I won't pivotted as it is at the leading edge, you 15 inches, the drag is just as low and I
be tempted to fly it at night. I'll probably don't have the big gap you have when can use the wing roots to get your el-
find myself stuck here and there and you have a trimmable tail that is pivotted bows out into and get, effectively, a
wish I had them, but that was the at the trailing edge ... and which, there- wider cabin. This would also let me get
rationale for leaving the lights off. fore, requires a big drag producing fair- the fuel sumps in the fuselage. They
Sport Aviation - How are the con- ing. In the Catbird, when I trim hands stick out of the bottom of the wing now
trols actuated? off, the elevator is in zero position rela- and probably cost me a couple of knots.
Burt Rutan - I've got pushrods going tive to the stabilizer, so the trim drag I also have some "blivets" on the wing
back about as far as the area between situation is much better than it is on a to let some of the main gear stick out.
the second and third rows of seats. conventional airplane. The trim system That's something I would do differently
From there, cables run aft to a sector is driven with a little electric screwjack, if I did it over again . . . I really should
at the top of the vertical tail for the a dual actuator, actually. have made the wing thicker there.

22 OCTOBER 1988
 Sport Aviation - What about the con-
struction of the airframe - what mate-
rials did you use?
Burt Rutan - The fuselage is pretty
much a wet laminate - a fiberglass, Di-
vinicell foam, fiberglass sandwich laid
in female molds. The wing has a one-
piece, full span spar - no bolted joints
or anything; all S-glass roving caps and
with an E-glass shear web. It's the most
reliable spar you can build - doesn't
have fittings, corrosion and all that gar-
bage. The entire wing ahead of the
spar, from the shear tip roots inboard to
the wheel wells, consists of molded
leading edge fuel tanks. Most of the rest
of the airframe, the inboard area of the
wing around the main gear boxes, the
wing tips, the ailerons, the trailing edge
of the wing where flaps would be, the
vertical fin and horizontal tail are mold-
less just like the Long-EZ - hotwired
from blocks of foam and with outside
layups. Just the fuselage and wing fuel
tanks are molded.
Sport Aviation - Is there any carbon
in the airplane?
Burt Rutan -Just in the canopy sills.
Because the cabin will eventually be
pressurized and because of the stretch
of Plexiglas with temperature changes,
the sills will have to handle a lot of ten-
sion loads, so we used graphite there.
Sport Aviation - What structural pro-
visions did you make for pressuriza-
tion?
Burt Rutan - I didn't put in an aft
pressure bulkhead. When you do, you
have a decision to make as to whether,
structurally, to make the attachment of
the tail to the fuselage or the pressure
bulkhead to the fuselage the more reli-
able joint. Only one of them can have
the best double shear composite lamin-
ant connection there. So, I decided not
to put in a conventional pressure bul-
khead at all. What serves as the pres-
sure bulkhead is actually a rib about 3
inches wide and 8 inches tall in ellipse
. . . and it's way back in the middle of
the vertical fin. It's so tiny and the loads
on it are so small that I could afford to
just pressurize the whole tailcone. To
do that I only had to add one ply of hoop
material, 90 degree orientation hoops
of unidirectional fiberglass, and it was
actually lighter than adding a conven-
tional pressure bulkhead. I also had to
go with thicker Plexiglas - it has a 3/8
inch windshield. The windows are quar-
ter inch because they are so relatively
small in area that they didn't have to be
any thicker. The canopy frame and
latches had to be much stronger than
they would have been otherwise. Three
large pins at the front of the canopy and
others at the side actually handle the
loads. The canopy hinges, themselves,
don't take any of the pressurization
loads. There are no latches around the
top of the canopy. The front part of the
frame is stiffer in hoop strength and the
back part is stiffer in bending strength,
so they tend to pull together when the
pressurization occurs. The canopy, inci-
dentally, is fitted with gas springs. You
push it open about 6 inches and then it
goes swoosh up to its limits. That part
works quite well.
Sport Aviation - I'm aware that you
intend to try something new in the
means by which you pressurize the
cabin. Are you far enough along in that
development to talk about it?
Burt Rutan - Well, I hate to be too
specific because some of the ideas I'm
going to try may not work. Instead of an
off-the-shelf air-to-air heat exchanger,
which is a pretty expensive thing, I'm
going to try a trough in the bottom of
the fuselage, running from just behind
the engine all the way back to the tail.
Into that will go 6 or 8 lengths of
aluminum tubing that fit into pillow
blocks at each end. I'll run the tur-
bocharging air into that and pick it up at
the back of the airplane and dump it
into my normal vent. The airplane will
be ventilated at low altitude and pres-
surized at high altitude. That way I don't
need an air conditioning system. Usu-
ally, a pressurized airplane has to be air
conditioned, which is quite expensive,
because at low altitude you just can't
get the cabin air cool enough. Well, I'm
just going to ventilate i t . . . I don't even
plan to try to pressurize it below 10,000
feet. I'll actually ventilate i t . . . I have a
little valve that opens up in my normal
ventilation system that will supply my
fresh air below 10,000 feet. My
philosophy here is to see if I can do it
at a really low cost. The easy thing for
me to do would be to simply bolt in a
conventional pressurization system, but
they are very expensive and if they fail,
I know it would cost me an arm and a
leg to replace them .. . and, besides, I
wouldn't learn anything. What I have in
mind as an alternative may be a com-
plete failure, but, right now, I'm trying to
do it with homemade outflow valves,
one safety valve and one manually ad-
justable outflow valve, and a canopy
seal that I blow up with a blood pressure
bulb. I'll have a little valve that I close
over the ventilation and a homemade
valve that is like a shower valve. I'll take
the incoming pressurized air and run it
through the heat exchanger on the out-
side of the airplane if I want to cool it.
Or, I can run it all down on my feet for
heat or up on the windshield for defrost
- or anywhere in between. So, it's like
the handle in your shower. You need
heat when you're up at altitude, so I'm
going to have his valve that I move be-
tween putting the air directly into the
cabin, which is too hot, or directly into
the heat exchanger, which I feel would
be too cold. I'll be able to modulate that
. . . so, that's my poor man's heat con-
trol.
Now the source of the pressure is the
real kicker. I want to run 4 pounds of
pressure and there are three ap-
proaches I plan to look at. One is just
to put a sonic valve on the turbocharger
and take the pressure there. It's the
simplest thing to do, but it lowers the
critical altitude of the airplane, the al-
titude at which I can get 75% power,
maybe by as much as 3,000 feet.
Whether you touch rpm, the throttle or
the inlet valve, it changes the manifold
pressure - and your ears would be pop-
ping all over the place. So, what I would
rather do is tie the pressurization to
rpm. If I can do it with just a belt off the
crankshaft, I will - because then I can
change the inlet lip, the manifold pres-
sure or the mixture and the rpm won't
be affected. The other option is a vane-
type compressor running off the
crankshaft. It would take about 2 hp to
operate but would be tied to rpm the
way I want my pressurization to be.
I got another inspiration here at Osh-
kosh that I'm going to look into. NASA
has a Piper Arrow here with little wingtip
turbines that they claim can take some
energy from the wingtip vortex without
paying a drag penalty. Todd Hodges is
going to send me the technical data . .
. and if I can really get a horsepower at
each wingtip, now I can tie my pres-
surizatiion to speed. I'd much rather
come down at a constant dynamic pres-
sure. I could pull off the manifold pres-
sure, put the nose down, keep the
speed the same . . . that would be bet-
ter, I think. It's not as good as rpm be-
cause a prop governor does a really
good job of holding that constant, but it
might work. So, visualize some small
versions of these things - little turbines
maybe 6 inches in diameter at the trail-
ing edges of the wingtips - and if indeed
I'm able to get some free energy by
working against the rotation of the tip
vortex and get 2 horsepower for noth-
ing, then I can use that to pressurize
the airplane. It's just a thought I had
walking by the Arrow a couple of days
ago. It may not work, but it's worth a try.
That's the neat thing about Oshkosh . .
. you stay home and you're at your desk
or up flight testing what you've got in
front of you and you don't have the in-
spirations that you do when you're at
Oshkosh out looking at other airplanes
and other ideas. The thought of using
the tip vortex for pressurization might
just be a dumb idea that might not work
at all, but, again, it might be a real
breakthrough. It's redundant in that I
would divide it half and half - if you lose
one tip turbine, at least you would still
have half the pressurization. That's kind
of a nice thought. At least you wouldn't
SPORT AVIATION 23

WINGT1P V O R T E X TURBWt
This is the NASA wingtip vortex turbine
that gave Burt the inspiration to try to use
a similar setup to drive the Catbird's
pressurization system.
totally depressurize and have an
emergency descent on your hands. Ac-
tually, you don't lose all your pressure.
The outflow valve controls the pressure
and you just have the rate at which your
air is exchanged altered until you can
get down to a safe altitude.
Sport Aviation - What was your pur-
pose in designing the Catbird . . . and
how did it come into being?
Burt Rutan - For me, the Catbird is
a research tool - with a couple of spe-
cific roles. A lot of its original design
criteria was based on its being able to
win the CAFE 400, which it has now
done, but it also had to be versatile
enough to provide me with very fast,
very long range, above the weather -
most of it anyway - transportation. The
key factor, of course, was that it had to
do these things with unprecedented
economy of operation . . . on the order
of a dramatic breakthrough in this area.
The airplane is designed to cruise at
24,000 feet. I can get 100% power at
19,000 feet, so that is where I can go
the fastest, but 24,000 where I can still
get 75% is where it will cruise the fas-
test. It will do 218 knots at 24,000 feet,
which is 251 mph. Now, at that point
you can get 20 nautical miles per gallon,
or 23 statute miles per gallon. 23 mpg
at 251 mph . . . with a five-place
airplane. That's pretty impressive, but
actually the airplane is not operating
very efficiently there because it is going
too fast. The best way to cruise it, if
you're interested in range and effi-
ciency, is about 185 knots (213 mph) .
. . which gets you 30 nautical miles per
gallon (34.5 statute mpg). You're burn-
24 OCTOBER 1988
1
^v M
ing about 6.2 gph to get those numbers
and, of course, at 24,000 feet the en-
gine runs very cool.
These numbers are much better than
we were able to get in the CAFE race,
but that's because the race course is
flown at a much lower level. Actually,
we would have been much better off in
that event with a normally aspirated en-
gine. 24,000 feet is where the Catbird
shines, but the problem up there is that
with the airplane in its present unpres-
surized state, you're on an oxygen
mask and it's a harsh environment to sit
in for a long period of time. The key is
pressurization. I won't have the Catbird
that I want until I get it pressurized. It
just won't be the travelling machine that
I intend it to be until it gets inflated to 4
psi.
As far as where the Catbird came
from, it was a Rutan Aircraft Factory
(RAF) airplane at first - a homebuilt. We
put it on the shelf to do the Voyager,
and by the time we turned that airplane
over to Dick and Jeana in September
of 1984, I was spread too thin at Scaled
on things like the Starship and the Pre-
dator and just flat didn't do the Catbird.
A year later, I got out of the homebuilt
business altogether and became a part
of the Beech organization. I asked Jim
Walsh, who was president of Beech at
the time, what he thought I should do
with the design. I told him I could take
it home, put it in my garage and maybe
spend years getting it finished . . . or, if
Beech were interested, I would be
happy to have the company furnish the
expenses to complete it and get the
data from i t . . . data that might be val-
uable for designing a follow-on to
today's generation of high performance
lightplanes, say a Bonanza replace-
ment. Jim thought that was a great idea,
especially when he learned how inex-
pensive it would be to build the airplane,
so he bought it. We began working on
it, on a back burner basis, in the old
RAF building and had just one or two
guys on it at any given time. Jim
Schultzman, Michael Dilley, Mike Mel-
vill and Ray Ratzlaff were the principal
ones who worked on it, on and off. Jim
Schultzman is the only one working on
it now, with occasional help from Mike
Melvill.
On Jim Walsh's departure from
Beech, interest in the little airplane es-
sentially vanished. Finally, I was told
that due to financial cutbacks in the
company, there would be no more
money for these sorts of things. I asked
if Beech had any interest at all in the
Catbird and was told no, so I said that
rather than just letting it sit or be cut up,
why didn't I just buy it back. The answer
was yes, so RAF bought Catbird back
and is spending all the money to flight
test and further develop it. It's my pro-
ject now rather than Scaled Compo-
sites'.
Sport Aviation - Where do you see
the project going, aside from your per-
sonal use?
Burt Rutan - Well, the next year or
two will be spent on development of the
pressurization systems. Beyond that,
the airplane still needs some work. It
isn't all done and certifiable y e t . . . for
example, it needs flaps to get the stall
speed low enough. It's about 3 knots
too fast right now. I'm just going to learn
as much as I can with it, and I think the
information I'll get will help me decide
whether to pursue any other small gen-
eral aviation designs. It's the most
promising configuration I've considered
for a new general aviation airplane.
More specifically, however, I want to
set a distance record in the Catbird.
Max Conrad set some pretty impressive
distance records back in the 1950s and
I want to exceed them. (Just two of Max
Conrad's many distance records re-
main unbroken today: the Great Circle
Distance Without Landing mark of
6,966.75 statute miles from Casablanca
to El Paso, TX set on November 24,
1959 in a 180 hp Piper Comanche . . .
and the Distance In A Closed Circuit
mark of 6,921.28 statute miles from
Minneapolis to Chicago to Des Moines
to Minneapolis - many times! - set on
July 14, 1960 in the same 180 Com-
anche. Both records were in the NAA/
FAI Class C-1 .C category for piston en-
gine aircraft with a take-off weight of be-
tween 2,204 and 3,858 pounds.) I've
laid out a course from Seattle to Rio de
Janerio that would let me stay over land
most of the time. If you go more than
5,000 miles, the rules allow you to make
a turn, so if I turn in the northeast corner
of Brazil, then I don't go through the
Amazon and I don't have to cross a
major ocean so I don't have to have HF
radio or a big heavy life raft. It would be
 -_li-iflH
Steve Sitter

an easy thing to do from the planning the sharp end . . . so, let's consider
standpoint and, I think, safer than head- Great American Propeller's Hi-Thrust
ing out across the Atlantic or Pacific. It's electrically actuated constant speed
tough to find a route that is 8,000 miles propeller. Under development for sev-
long and still mostly over land, however. eral years now, the new prop is in-
In the Catbird such a flight would in- tended for the many high speed home-
volve a bladder tank in the cabin that builts with engines for which CS propel-
essentially surrounds the pilot . . . and lers are not available, the small Conti-
would absolutely require an autopilot. nentals and Lycoming O-235S, for
The flight would take about 45 hours example, and as a lighter weight, less
and would be at altitude to stay above expensive alternative for those engines
the weather. It would not be a deal like for which hydraulic CS props are avail-
Dick's where he had to stay awake all able.The prop Fred Griffith and his co-
night (Alaska to Grand Turk Island in a horts at Great American have come up Burt Rutan
Long-EZ) . . . the autopilot would allow with is generally similar to other electric
the pilot to sleep some. It would still be
a tough flight, however, just having to
sit in one place for so long.
As to where the Catbird will eventu-
ally go, wouldn't it be nice if we had an
Electramotive V-6 Pond Racer engine
derated to 400 hp for extreme reliability,
with electronic ignition and extremely
smooth operation . . . and for an attrac-
tive price . . . in a 10 to 12% larger
Catbird, an airplane that would allow an
individual and four companions to beat
the airlines . . . in pressurized comfort.
. . on most trips you would make here
in the United States?

THE TALKING
PROPELLER
In the next few issues of Sport Avia-
tion we'll have articles on many of the
aircraft mentioned here, but for now,
let's take a look at some of the propel-
lers and engines introduced at EAA
Oshkosh '88. We might as well start at

SPORT AVIATION 25