Barnaby Wainfan

My collected articles on airfoils (originally published in KITPLANES magazine) are compiled in book form, with supplemental material added.

Order here:

• Aircraft Technical Book Company
• Wicks Aircraft and Motorsports
• Amazon

The FMX-4 Facetmobile is an experimental lifting-body airplane I built to explore what I think a sport airplane should be.

I wanted an airplane that was simple and inexpensive to build, safe and fun to fly, and had performance as good or better than a conventional airplane. The FMX-4 flight test program demonstrated that the faceted lifting-body configuration of Facetmobile provides all of this.

The airplane has benign flying qualities and is easy and fun to fly.

Its most remarkable characteristic is that it is highly stall resistant. Even with the stick held fully back, the airplane remains fully controllable and has no tendency to roll-off or spin. This is a major advance in safety since it virtually eliminates the possibility of a stall/spin accident.

The primary structure is composed entirely of straight tubes. Building the airplane required no special tooling, and the parts count for the airframe is less than half of that of a conventional airplane.

The Facetmobile exceeded 100 mph in level flight on only 46 horsepower and could carry its own empty weight in useful load.

In 1994, the Facetmobile won the special Award for Innovative Design at the EAA Airventure convention.

Read more about Facetmobile on Wikipedia

N117WD Specifications:

• Length: 19 ft. 6 in.
• Span: 15 ft.
• Empty Weight: 370 lb.
• Fuel (normal): 10 gal.
• Fuel (with aux): 19 gal.
• Gross Weight (normal): 620 lb.
• Gross Weight (max): 740 lb.
• Structure: 6061-T6 Aluminum tube
• Covering: 1.6 oz Stits fabric
• Engine: Rotax 503DC

Performance:

• Maximum Speed: 110 mph.
• Cruise Speed: 90 mph.
• Stall: no stall; stable mush.
• Min. Speed: Less than 30 mph.
• Rate of Climb: 750 ft/min.

The Lightbeam is an ultralight (compliant with FAR Part 103) whose design was originally developed as a glider for the TV series Junkyard Wars, which required us to build an aircraft in only 2 days. The concepts I developed in order to create an aircraft with no jigging nor fixturing and with only restricted access to materials were too interesting to stop thinking about after the show's conclusion, so my dear friend Richard Riley and I set out to further explore those ideas, and produced this fun, lightweight, and simple-to-manufacture airplane.

Fun fact: there are only two custom-machined parts in the whole airplane, with the majority constructed of either lasercut or waterjet flat stock, or off-the-shelf components.

Lightbeam has been under (sporadic) development since 2005. The plane is extremely slow, carries no useful load except the pilot, and exists today solely so that I can have fun flying it.

This airplane was built to break world records, and at one point held seven speed and distance records in its weight class.

The Flying Magazine description shown here made an enormous impression on me when I first saw it as an 11-year old.

Years later I had the great good fortune to attend the University of Michigan and study with Professor Lesher. The Teal and Professor Lesher's teachings are among the most important influences in my professional life.

The Dyke Delta was an important influence on me as well. I first learned about the airplane in an article in the July, 1972 Air Progress Magazine. I was inspired by the thinking that went into the airplane, and the idea of an individual designer developing such an unconventional, innovative airplane.

The Delta's performance is still competitive with the most modern light airplanes flying today despite the fact that the design has been flying since the mid 1960's.

The JD-2 was a primary inspiration for my own FMX-4 Facetmobile.