Update 10.16.2007
Progress has been pretty slow for the past few months but I now have the wings finished and most of the engine installation is completed. The big items yet to be done are to cover and paint the fuselage and paint the tail feathers. Also the engine needs to be gone over thoroughly which may involve a complete teardown.
Update 1/25/2007
Fisher Horizon 1 Project by Gary Johnson
Reporter Trent Sommer
Gary Johnson came from Nebraska and spent much of his working life in Alaska. As a hobby he built custom furniture for family and friends for a long time. In 1991 he retired and came south to Port Angeles. While living in a mobile home west of town he built a 24 x 40 wood shop, stocked it with worthy tools and then designed 2800 square foot post and beam house. Unlike our current 2 x 6 construction methods, post and beam framing uses 8 and 10 inch beams held together by mortise and tennon joints and large splines locked together with wooden dowels thru the joints. Over a period of two years Gary made the timber frame parts, cut all those joints, numbered everything and (with a crew) assembled the frame. Erection and assembly took two days! They live there today and it is great house. Gary has flown in the past, and living close to Fairchild he felt the calling. For a man that works this well in wood, he would obviously choose a project of—wood construction.
In January of last year Gary started a homebuilt project. His Fisher Horizon 1 is a 2 -place tandem wood and fabric airplane with a strut braced high wing that can fold and a Continental C-85 for power. It has a 25-foot span and gross wt is 1050 lb. He built a mockup first to make sure that he would be comfortable in it and did alter some things to enhance that comfort.
At a meeting a few months back we asked for project reports and Gary said that he had finished one wing and was working on the other one. He apparently works on it every day and things have changed! Both wings are hanging on the wall along with both ailerons, a flap and a half, a rudder, a stabilizer, and an elevator! Hinge points and steel fittings have been drilled, fitted and removed to varnish and cover the wood structure. Standing on the bench is a fuselage that it will soon stand on its gear on the floor! The landing gear is assembled and awaits installation. Support structure for the front seat is on the bench and looks like a piece of furniture. There are controls and the firewall forward stuff to go, but the way Gary works at it I wouldn’t be shocked if it flew in the late summer.
Well, wood airframes are labor intensive, a lot more effort to build. You have to cut, fit and glue a lot of pieces together to make one rib—and there are a lot of ribs. The Horizon wing even has a latticework of geodetic reinforcement (on both the upper and lower surfaces). It is attached to the inside of the rib cap strips to serve as drag and anti drag support. The spar is a built up ”I’ beam with fairly large chords and a thin plywood web. The whole wing panel is very light and strong. The leading edges are skinned with plywood—three plies, totaling 1/32” in thickness! A wooden wing is an intricate and beautiful thing. It almost seems a shame to cover it
The body is built like a model airplane, with a frame of about 3/4 inch square wood strips for longerons, vertical and diagonal members, covered with a 1/8” Birch plywood on the outside. The inside frames are made of similar materials and the whole look is that of a really big radio controlled model airplane! It has tandem seating and the pilot will sit in the rear seat. The entry door is like a J-3 Cub with the window folding up and the door folding down. The struts attach to the bottom of the body aft of the door, so this should be a great platform for unobstructed aerial photography!
We currently think of homebuilts in terms of aluminum parts with punched holes that align with mating parts and become elements of a self-jigging assembly. The 51 % rule is often questionable when it flies. When Gary flies his Horizon 1 there will be no such question.
