Hello, from a hopeful builder/owner one day

General
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Hi everyone, I’m grounded_wannabe. I travel for a living and am getting ready to go back to school part time for a(nother damn) degree. For all the love I have for the traveling I do for work, airports drive me insane. So I’m hopeful to, once I have the degree, the job, and the money, to build a plane of my own one day. I mean, I also love building things and am pretty good at sticking with things, and I’ve been reading so much about how easy a onex is to start building.

I like to think, if I stick with my current plan, one day I’ll have the time and money to go for it. Until then, I’m just watching youtube videos by the EAA about the logistics behind getting a pilot’s license, how to put a plane together, figuring out if I can get out to OshKosh this July, etc. In short, half planning, half day dreaming.

Oh, and before anyone asks: I don’t intend to stuff cargo into a onex! If I were to actually use it for travel, I’d ship a suitcase ahead of myself to wherever I was going. Just saying! :wink:

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Welcome! At one time I was in your place of dreaming and scheming. But let me encourage you to execute your due diligence and a reality check while contemplating building any aircraft.

Make no mistake, it will take time, money, persistence, and one might even say tenacity. When I started I thought I would have the time to work on it consistently and would get it done reasonably quickly. It wasn’t to be - life and work got in the way and others who started building at the same time as me are long ago done and flying. Now that I am retired, I am back working on it regularly. For me that is what it took - retirement.

I do not mean to discourage you as we all started from the same place as where you are now - dreaming of it.. But it does sound like you are pretty busy with work and soon school again. You might want to first look into the time and cost to simply get your pilot certificate. That alone can be a challenge for some people when there are a lot of other things going on.

That all being said, I think the building experience is a wonderful learning experience and challenge that is beneficial on many levels.

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Welcome to the forum! The Sonex family of aircraft are great to build and affordable. The one benefit of the 2 place Sonexes if you are flying solo is there is plenty of room and useful load for baggage. At least one Onex pilot I know has done some serious XC.

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Welcome! I too had a simular career, but finally got retired, and one month later, I had plans for my scratch built sonex A, with aerovee 2.1. first flight was 2017, and still enjoying every flight! I agree with Bryan about usefull load. consider sonex B, and still enjoy flying solo!

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Very fun video! What a trip. The clip of the high speed pass reminded me of the now famous “Waiex at 180 mph. (https://youtu.be/LLVhmKAOKSo?si=4X4Uijk1jAdj0y_d)

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Thank you! Though, maybe i wasn’t clear; my plan isn’t to build this thing tomorrow, it’s to build it eventually. In a few years when I get done with all this schooling it’s something for me to look forward to doing, and by then, if all goes well, I’ll be able to buy the kit without worrying about whether or not i can afford it. In the mean time I’m focused on getting my hands on everything I need to know about how to build a onex plane, like going through builder’s blogs and EAA videos. Turns out there’s a handy DVD series somebody made that I might get one day, for example.

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Nice video!

Back in the day this was the video that made me drool over a Sonex …

The Right Seat with Tony Spicer

I know you said OneX but I’d recommend to get that second seat. It’s good for luggage when you go alone and need to take camping gear and for passengers when you want to share.

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I’ll give you my thoughts after dreaming of building a plane for 20 years now and just getting started. Buy the tail kit as soon as you can afford to and get started. The build will stretch over a long period but you’ll get to the finish line years and years (decades) sooner than if you wait until you think you are really ready.
Lucky for you the new Sonex Highwing is brand new and so you can start slow without fear it will be out of production before you finish.

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The Onex is the perfect second Sonex to add to the stable. We would like to find one. Even have a spare AeroVee.

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Not quite as impressive, but my 136 MPH groundspeed pass is here:

I think these days I could do a lot better - and a wide open diving pass would really get the motor to rev up, would sound really cool.

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Thank you everyone for your kind responses and warm receptions! I haven’t had a chance to watch the long 51 minute video yet, but I will when I can.

I won’t deny it, you’re probably all right to be recommending the two seater sonex instead of the onex, if only for the increased useful load. To be blunt, the real reasons I’ve been eyeing the onex are low cost, (alleged) ease to build, and bang for buck. For the same reasons, I’d actually like to build an RV-14. It’s just, you know, “wow, look at that price tag…”

In reality, I know the smart thing to do is not get my heart set on any particular plane, since I haven’t so much as sat down in any given cockpit yet. That’s part of why I’m hoping to get out to oshkosh, or at least a local EAA meetup sometime this spring.

Of course, I’ve also read a lot about picking planes, and it seems like the wisest advice repeated is “pick the right plane for the mission.” If I’m just planning on jumping from place to place on my own and skipping the airport, while packing light, I probably don’t even need to go as beefy as an RV-14. A Sonex alone, or any two seater with a cargo hold large enough for a backpack and a suit case, could be more than enough.

My rationale in my head has been, “Okay, I could build a onex as a starter plane. And, if that goes well, and it turns out I’m well suited to this, I could build an RV-14 and sell the onex, or hell, keep them both. Who knows?” But, this is all pie in the sky dreaming. None of it matters if I can’t get my degree and make enough money to afford a garage, haha.

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Nice!

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Welcome! One inexpensive way to get to fly a plane is to do a discovery flight. Around me most FBOs have them for around $100. Be warned though that if you really enjoy it that you’ll be wishing you could fly seeing planes fly overhead.

I always wanted a Sonex after realizing how much cruise speed you could get for a relatively low price which is why I’m building one. I could see the Onex working well especially if you’re not pushing the gross weight and are able to pack light. Nowadays most of the time I’m able to travel with a 15lbs backpack for trips up to 1 week. But besides the additional baggage capacity a 2 place Sonex could also be nice if your life gets you in a situation where someone else wants to fly with you. There are some ways to save money on a build and many ways to spend more. I bought a partially assembled kit and spent a good amount of time on eBay, Craigslist and Facebook marketplace to get some deals on tools and avionics.

If you’re traveling where you have specific time commitments, general aviation has some downsides for traveling since the weather affects us much more than the big planes. You don’t want to be pushing limits because wind or clouds were different than forecast and you have no other way to make it on time. Going with a plane equipped for IFR for a lot more money and getting your rating can help but there’s going to be situations you’re not able to fly.

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Thank you for the warm welcome! And, everyone here has made the wise observation that a onex is probably too small for what I need, enough times that I’m beginning to take it to heart. I won’t finish my degree for a few years, so when I’m done I’m hopeful the sonex highwing will be released. Looking it up, it looks like it has a lot of the specs I otherwise would want in an airplane.

And, this is just me being overly hopeful, but wouldn’t it be fun if, by the end of finishing my degree, they released a new plane that was able to flex harder inside the recently slackened mosaic rules? It’d be fun if I graduated just in time for some kind of new sleek, faster sonex plane to hit the market. But I’m just day dreaming.

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Dreaming is good. I’d recommend getting the pilot license before you buy anything, or start building. It’s a key part of the journey of figuring out who you are as a pilot.

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Welcome to the forums! When the time is right, I wish you the best of luck in building your airplane! You’ve heard good discussion points on which airplane would be best for you, and I’m sure we would all agree that a good idea be to take the time to visit the Sonex factory to look at the different models in person. You will find all of the models to be fun flying airplanes and easy to build!

I built a Waiex, flew it for over 12 years, and I’m now building a Onex. I love the build process and I’m having a ball popping rivets again! I’m building the Onex because, after flying my Waiex for nearly 500 hours, I only carried passengers a handful of times, so I’m happy with a single seat airplane. That’s something you’ll have to think about…what is the mission you want to fulfill?

In any case, as you think about your mission, be sure to ask questions online here and hopefully you can find some local builders to check out airplanes in person!

Good luck!

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You’re exactly right. There’s really only one or two things I find myself wrestling with, and those are seats and luggage. I’d personally love a single seater that could have enough room for two suitcases and a backpack or something, which makes me look at companies like bearhawk. But at the same time, its like you say; how often am I bringing somebody else with me? In the end, isn’t it cheaper to ship luggage wherever I’m going to than it is to buy a plane orders of magnitude more expensive just so maybe I can carry extra luggage or another person?

Ultimately I’m years away from being able to build one so its not something for me to really seriously worry about right now, it’s just going to be based on “what will my life be like after I graduate in a few years?” And for all I know maybe I meet that special someone and want a second seat for her. Or, maybe I don’t, and I go with a onex (or a merlin PSA, I dunno).

Really if there’s anything I’m anticipating more, it’s what kind of kit planes might come out over the next 3 years shaped by the new mosaic rules. Will Sonex have something new and exciting in the works by then? Something to overshadow their highwing?

Ultimately I think building a onex first is still the right call for me, because if I find myself with buyer’s remorse for any reason (not liking the plane lifestyle after all, or wanting a nicer plane), I can always just resell it. But like I said, we’ll see.

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“Famous”!? I’ll take it. I took some heat in the comments on that one because the 180 mph was not when the airplane passed the camera and I think it’s obvious. I was at 180 (groundspeed) prior and called it out on the radio. I was not aware of clickbait back then but 180 is 180, even from a slight dive:)

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Ha. Well, it was famous in my house. I played that so often, that now every once in a while even one of my daughters will still just randomly say “… 180 …” at which we’ll both laugh.

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By the way, I’m curious. I’ve been reading about different sonex engines this evening. I know there’s the aerovee turbo, and then there’s the jabiru 3300. the Aerovee website tells me the turbo can go above 180mph at max speed, is that by any chance the engine you’ve been using?