Hi all, my name is Cassidy. I’m a 19 year old guy from VT training for my IR & CPL (currently am PPL TW, about 140ish hours last I remember), and currently I’m working on restoring a Ridge Runner model 3.
I bought the plane in Washington & shipped it here. It had been sitting in a trailer with the wings & tail off for a few years and was definitely showing neglect.
Note: I bought the plane unseen knowing it was a huuge risk. Earlier in the year I had bought a used Rotax 503 with plans to build a MiniMax, however my mission requires sub-150ft landings & the MMax’s roll is 200ft+ (Not a lot of margin, I know, but enough to matter for off-airport here - I’ll talk more about this in another thread or comment). When that didn’t work, I looked at a BeLite & the day I went to order a kit from them, they posted about the factory fire on Facebook. I now had a 503 and no ideas what plane to build around it.
After digging around on the internet for Avid Champions or Kitfox Lites, I came across the Sky Raider & Ridge Runner series, descendants of the KF Lite. Sure enough, the model 2 & 3 were designed with the 503 in mind, and fit my mission perfectly.
This was the only Ridge Runner for sale while I was looking, and I couldn’t fly out for a prebuy for a few reasons. I took the gamble & it paid off I think, the airframe has 14hr TT (still in phase 1) and is in mint condition. The wings were a little beat up & neglected though, and missing the tips, but all in all it’s been a great project.
Here’s a couple pics from when I was taking it apart - the whole thing had been sloppily painted bright yellow with a brush & rattlecan, which looked hideous & probably weighed a lot. After seeing that as well as the dirt, dust, melted rubber, etc. I decided to reskin & restore the airplane. The RR came standard with the Dacron covering system, however I’m redoing it using Oratex 600UL.
Getting the fabric off was easy, getting the glue off was a different story. I used MEK on what I could clean up without harming, but after seeing damage to the powdercoat on the frame & rudder I decided to just blast & re-powder it. The frame, rudder, & control column are the only pieces done so far but it’s what I needed to start assembling the rest of the plane.
Here you can see the frame before it went out for blasting, as well as the rest of the parts for the plane (wings are stacked against the wall). My next steps are to install the elevator pushrod, rudder pedals/cables, and anything else necessary before I begin covering the frame.
That’s it for now, I’ll be able to post more updated pictures next week hopefully. Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any questions or tips!
I bought the plane in Washington & shipped it here. It had been sitting in a trailer with the wings & tail off for a few years and was definitely showing neglect.
Note: I bought the plane unseen knowing it was a huuge risk. Earlier in the year I had bought a used Rotax 503 with plans to build a MiniMax, however my mission requires sub-150ft landings & the MMax’s roll is 200ft+ (Not a lot of margin, I know, but enough to matter for off-airport here - I’ll talk more about this in another thread or comment). When that didn’t work, I looked at a BeLite & the day I went to order a kit from them, they posted about the factory fire on Facebook. I now had a 503 and no ideas what plane to build around it.
After digging around on the internet for Avid Champions or Kitfox Lites, I came across the Sky Raider & Ridge Runner series, descendants of the KF Lite. Sure enough, the model 2 & 3 were designed with the 503 in mind, and fit my mission perfectly.
This was the only Ridge Runner for sale while I was looking, and I couldn’t fly out for a prebuy for a few reasons. I took the gamble & it paid off I think, the airframe has 14hr TT (still in phase 1) and is in mint condition. The wings were a little beat up & neglected though, and missing the tips, but all in all it’s been a great project.
Here’s a couple pics from when I was taking it apart - the whole thing had been sloppily painted bright yellow with a brush & rattlecan, which looked hideous & probably weighed a lot. After seeing that as well as the dirt, dust, melted rubber, etc. I decided to reskin & restore the airplane. The RR came standard with the Dacron covering system, however I’m redoing it using Oratex 600UL.
Getting the fabric off was easy, getting the glue off was a different story. I used MEK on what I could clean up without harming, but after seeing damage to the powdercoat on the frame & rudder I decided to just blast & re-powder it. The frame, rudder, & control column are the only pieces done so far but it’s what I needed to start assembling the rest of the plane.
Here you can see the frame before it went out for blasting, as well as the rest of the parts for the plane (wings are stacked against the wall). My next steps are to install the elevator pushrod, rudder pedals/cables, and anything else necessary before I begin covering the frame.
That’s it for now, I’ll be able to post more updated pictures next week hopefully. Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any questions or tips!
