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James Aircraft Update

Capflyer

Well Known Member
James Aircraft, home of the Sam James Holy Cowl has had a tremendous year of change. Mark and I, Mike, purchased the company from Sam and Will James in February of last year. I thought it would be good to update everyone on what’s been happening with the company since we acquired it.

Mark and I both have nothing but gratitude to both Sam and Will James whom we purchased the company from. They are awesome people and have been there for us any time we have called for help or just to chat. Sam is now officially retired and refurbishing his boat at his home in Florida. Will moved to Vermont and is enjoying a life of nature, cold weather, and snow.

After purchasing the company, we moved everything from Sam's place in Florida up to Maryland and set up a new shop. By the time this was accomplished we were well into May and sitting on a huge backlog of orders that had accumulated since well before we took over. This presented some extreme challenges for us. Sam and Will spent a week training us in Florida but we still had a lot of learning to do on the product manufacturing techniques and on accelerating production throughput. All this had to be accomplished while more orders continued coming in.

In our first six months we manufactured and shipped a large number of cowls, plenums, induction systems, and wheel pants to customers all over the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Our customers included builders of RV's, Mustang II, Glasstar, Glassair, Bearhawk, a variety of canards, Reno air racers, an air show performer and another kit manufacturer. With the help of our distributor’s tech rep, we re-evaluated the resins and processes that we were using. One of the big changes that we made was to move from a very difficult to work with high temperature epoxy resin used on the plenums to a hard to find and obtain high temperature vinyl ester resin that retains the strength and heat characteristics while at the same time reducing weight and working viscosity. This helped significantly in wetting out the fabric and in improving product quality. It also lays the foundation for moving to vacuum infusion.

We have a number of changes and projects on our plate right now:
• We very quickly outgrew the relatively small space that we have been leasing in a large community hangar shared with a maintenance shop and aircraft owners. On March 1st we will be moving into our own substantially larger and fully insulated hangar which will house the business and our two RV's. While we may have to temporarily reduce our production volume during this move, the new facility will benefit us tremendously as we scale up our production volume.
• We are also collaborating with a couple builders in the design and development of a cowl for the RV14 and RV10. Computer aided design and simulation will be used during the development of these new products.
• We are sourcing new materials and resins to improve product quality and gain efficiencies in production.
• Several molds that we have been using need design improvements or are at the end of their useful life so we are making new molds that can be used for vacuum infusion of fiberglass and carbon fiber parts.
• We have plans to purchase a larger curing oven so that we properly ramp cure some of the resins we are moving to and also the ability to produce parts from carbon fiber prepreg.

At times we get an abundance of calls and emails which we try to get answered as quickly as possible. Please give us a ring back if you have not received a response from us in a reasonable time. It is difficult for us to break away while manufacturing parts so please leave us a message if you get our voicemail.

Thank you to all our customers and if you plan on becoming one please order them early in your build. There is currently about a six-month backlog in our production queue. We do not take any payment up front so it does not hurt to get your name on the production list as early as possible. We look forward to the future and to the opportunity to provide products that perform well and look great.

For more information please visit our website www.jamesaircraft.com
 
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meeting

Nice meeting you at Oshkosh last year and hand delivering some wheel pants. You are definitely dedicated to customers.

Great product and I use James cowlings on all my RVs
 
Best of luck getting up to speed on your production!

Will and Sam are great people and I really enjoyed working with them.

Regards!
Bill
 
To the new owners

Hi Mike
Best wishes to ramping up production and improvements!
Daren from FL and customer of the new owners. Can?t wait to get my 7 up and flying
 
MIT?s new way of producing composites

Pete, what a great article you posted from MIT. That should reduce costs and production time.
 
I’m interested in the plenum for the RV-10 and suggest designing it to fit the ShowPlanes cowl. I was told years ago the 10 James cowl molds were destroyed.
 
I?m interested in the plenum for the RV-10 and suggest designing it to fit the ShowPlanes cowl. I was told years ago the 10 James cowl molds were destroyed.

Since he is the guy who makes the James Cowl, why would he go through the trouble of designing and building a plenum for a competitor's cowl?

Just saying...
 
? We are also collaborating with a couple builders in the design and development of a cowl for the RV14 and RV10. Computer aided design and simulation will be used during the development of these new products.

? Several molds that we have been using need design improvements or are at the end of their useful life so we are making new molds that can be used for vacuum infusion of fiberglass and carbon fiber parts.

Excellent opportunity to change a few details.

Sam is a great guy, but I don't think he ever got beyond the notion of intake throttling.

Some of the latest props have very wide blades, so there may be a need for clearance adjustment.

Some of the plenum intakes, in particular for the short cowls, appear to be poorly shaped for optimum pressure recovery. I have one set of pressure measurements for a short cowl indicating pressure performance well below the average for standard RV cowls. Easy to correct with a little care. See the plenum intake redesign from Bill Lane.

Why not incorporate a variable exit option?
 
I?m interested in the plenum for the RV-10 and suggest designing it to fit the ShowPlanes cowl. I was told years ago the 10 James cowl molds were destroyed.

Correct. My understanding is that Will James got so much noise on the RV-10 cowl that he just stopped making it. A lot of this noise was from a handful of builders with ?strong opinions? on VAF.

Too bad. The James Cowl on the RV-10 I built has performed beautifully for the mission I built the plane to do, high efficiency cruise. In fact, if I ever build an RV-10 again a go/no go decision will be dependent on the availability of a new James Cowl. I don?t see Van?s updating the stock cowl anytime soon.

Carl
42073923-3-A6-B-4-A78-AFB5-7-BD83-E73-CDFB.jpg
 
Too bad. The James Cowl on the RV-10 I built has performed beautifully for the mission I built the plane to do, high efficiency cruise. In fact, if I ever build an RV-10 again a go/no go decision will be dependent on the availability of a new James Cowl.

Carl, didn't you already tell us you could not fly the 90 knot inbound to OSH without getting too hot for comfort?

An RV which won't do it comfortably is best described as "crippled".
 
Carl, didn't you already tell us you could not fly the 90 knot inbound to OSH without getting too hot for comfort?

An RV which won't do it comfortably is best described as "crippled".

No - never said that. It can fly at 90 knots all day long. I just don’t like doing that. Perhaps I phrased what I said wrong.

I launched out of Phoenix at 110 degrees then a climb up to 14,000’, no issues.

Carl
 
All I can say is "wow!" That's a really nice looking cowl!

Indeed it is, in particular matched with that spinner.

No - never said that. It can fly at 90 knots all day long. I just don?t like doing that. Perhaps I phrased what I said wrong.
I launched out of Phoenix at 110 degrees then a climb up to 14,000?, no issues.
Carl

I hear ya' brother. Those inlets are what, about 4.5"D? Although the results are acceptable to you, the data says the few builders with the 6" inlet cowls probably do better.

It's an interesting case of styling vs performance. The smaller inlet ring and sharp edged exterior profile won't perform as well as the larger inlet and a rounded exterior profile, but the pointy look is fabulous.

Given the opportunity to revise a design for the -10, I'd be looking at a 6" low Vi/Vo inlet with Cessna/Mooney style baffling and no plenum. See the TTX, the Acclaim, or our own Mark Frederick's latest Rocket cowl. None are ugly or slow, and they all cool very well.
 
Congrats. Glad you are continuing this great line of products. The quality of SJ products was high, which I have the gut feel you will maintain. Please keep the prices down. :D

To Sam James, thank you for the seminars at OSH and answering my phone calls with great advice and information.
 
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