Starting with an idea

For as long as I can remember I’ve made things with my dad. From simple wood rocket planes to now full sized aircraft. During that time there have been many ideas - often born from our need or interest in something. Recently I’ve had far more time on my hands, better late than never.

With a Lancair 360 in the garage and a Long Ez in a farm building down the road there have been a number of times where we could just need something - that ends up taking days to design and fabricate. This then means the projects take far longer than one might have initially planned.

The starting point for this project was a need for sidesticks - online I saw some for $425, not outrageous for good side sticks with plenty of buttons, there was also a 3D printed one available for $250, far more reasonable. The cheaper one was great but the surface finish couldn’t compare to the luxuriousiously smooth wood with carbon fibre effect. The thing is, I knew I could (with a bit of brushing up on solid works) designs it myself.

So it started, a few thousand on printers and more on licenses lead to a week of pushing myself (and great tutorials on YouTube) for making the parts we needed. Now about 15kg of materials and a couple of months later we have dozens of parts for the planes (all non structural so far) and dozens more well on the way. So why not share it?

Looking around there aren’t really any places you can pick up cost effective parts for people building or maintaining their aircraft themselves, and here we are.