Before starting my Onex I joked that I would reverse engineer the whole thing to build the second one.
I bought a roll of graph paper tonight and will start tracing everything I can.
I’m very fortunate to have my entire kit. We went through the Vans bankruptcy, now this.
I too, obviously, have a need for a set of oops fittings.
Canopies are the other critical item that come to my mind.
And hydraulic brake pucks and tail wheels. Maybe Mark can chart a path out of this. If not, I’m sure we can come up with a list of consumables and …
Wes
I was about to order a set. I think I can make new rotors.
Matco makes nice brakes and wheels for the sonex.
I think I read somewhere that you can buy brake material the right thickness and cut them out for the pucks.
I’m also not super worried about service parts yet as I see a decent chance that someone buys the company or enough pieces of it during the bankruptcy to at least supply some service parts if it comes to that. The designs have value too so there are other ways Sonex could survive in a different form as well. And for now a financial miracle could still happen.
Someone should do a good archive of the Sonex site, especially the drawing revisions and associated drawings.
Hopefully somehow Sonex is rescued or at least the IP is sold on and not lost into history like so many others before.
I wasn’t far in with only the Tail kit so not as much invested as some of you. For now, continue building and hope for the best.
Anyone know who supplies the rivets that Sonex uses?
I’ve bought them from Aircraft Spruce before. Sonex was a better supplier, but ACS may be what’s left.
It was very sad to hear the news and I also hope that someone will buy Sonex or that the employees land on their feet.
I was just about to send in my ownership transfer this weekend (printed the docs yesterday). Now I’m not sure where I will get the engine mounts I need or the plans that were not included when I bought 502. I was going to get both from Mark once I transferred ownership. Are there any other options for Aerovee mounts out there. What about plans? As an A&P, I was hoping to have the plans in PDF for future repairs and inspections.
I woke up with a thought this morning. I wonder if it would be possible to do a crowd-funded purchase of the Sonex IP (e.g. Solidworks files, list of parts manufacturers, etc.) and release all of it as open source material. E.g. anyone can download them for free and contribute to improvements, vetted by peer review.
That would make any part available as needed for either a new build, mid-build, or repair parts for a flying aircraft.
For example, most parts can be cut in your garage from standard sheet metal or extruded aluminum as long as you have the dimensions, but you’d probably want to send out one of the several CNC parts to your favorite CNC guy (or the one Sonex uses if you chose to do that).
I have no idea how much money would need to be generated for something like that. Probably whatever the debt holder(s) (whoever that is) would accept to regain their losses.
I’d be willing to pony up a couple thousand dollars toward some kind of arrangement like that. Worst case scenario for most of us is not having a way forward with a partially built kit.
I’ll be honest, this news has been an absolute gut punch and my mind has gone in a million directions since the news last night. I feel so sad for Mark and the entire Sonex team; real salt-of-the-earth people with the goal of making aviation affordable. I have had nothing but positive interactions with the entire team and I can’t say that for the majority of organizations I work with in every day life. I feel like Sonex truly got it right with their mission statement and it hurts to see that market realities aren’t allowing the work to continue.
@ddeford , I’ve been having similar thoughts about how to ensure support can continue into the future; regardless of what happens with the physical assets of the business. In full transparency, I did reach out to Sonex to let them know I would be interested in having a discussion regarding IP if a full sale could not occur. While I’m not in a position (probably) to purchase rights outright, I think it would at least be worth a shot to try and crowd source an effort to acquire the resources necessary to continue the mission. My hope is that it doesn’t come down to that but who knows.
For the brake pucks, this is a link to the exact material they were purchasing and cutting. McMaster-Carr McMaster lists it as High Friction material and they used 5/8" thick sheet. there are several sizes of sheets available but 7x7 will cut a lot of pucks. The support line for Sonex gave me that info in an email, so it wasn’t just a guess.
As others mentioned, canopies will be an issue, as will rotomolded tanks. As was also mentioned, the suppliers for these items will hopefully be free to continue selling them.
Regarding support in the future, it would be great if either somebody bought the company, or a crowdsourced IP buy could make the info available. I would suggest we have another forum category of owner sourced parts - how to make stuff, where to buy stuff.
Woke up and checked the forum, saw this and my heart is breaking. I can’t contribute a lot to a crowdfunding campaign at the moment, but I’d be willing to donate what I can and help out wherever I can. Keeping the mission alive is definitely worth it, glad you’ve already reached out about the IP, @Badger830. Hopefully, knowing that the community is willing to try and keep the mission going in some form or another gives Mark and the rest of the Sonex team some amount of solace.
@Bryan_Cotton - 100% agree with every word of your last post.
Just before I picked up my phone, I was thinking how my emotions are similar (but not as pronounced, obviously) as when my mom died a couple of years ago. Back and forth between sad sense of finality, denial, hopeful planning about what to do next … The words “yeah, but” and “what if” starting each new series of emotions.
Stupid airplanes. Why do we have to love them so much? Haha. 
Maybe we can start putting together a spreadsheet of what parts were re-purposed from other industries and what parts are proprietary.
Great recommendation, Bryan. Version 1 of the Part Sources category is live. Let’s see how this version works; we can always tweak on the fly