Thanks all--
But I do want to give credit where credit is due. Alot of the kit hoses are being built in our production shop in Milwaukee. When Steve at Aircraft Specialty and I merged some divisions into AS FLIGHTLINES a few years ago, we wanted to set up a production shop to build hose and rigid tube assemblies. One of the reasons was to redirect some of our efforts to developing new kits, as well as new types of hose configurations. But we also wanted to produce the best hose assemblies for experimental aircraft on the market today.
The group that builds these are aviation mechanics and technicians, with an IA on staff. They have the components and the equipment to produce very high quality assemblies, whether its hoses or CNC bent rigid tubes. Now---I still build some assemblies---some custom or very unusual ones, but actually most are now build by the production crew. Some of you have recieved hoses built by them, and have commented on the appearance and accuracy of the hoses. Steve and I went to alot of effort and expense to set this up to benefit you, the builder. Because of that, we are able to develop some new items, like our new integral silicone firesleeved hose, and our new truebore convoluted teflon hose for large diameter and inverted oil applications. Both new versions of these hoses underwent alot of testing, both on the bench and flight testing before we started building them for customers.
Each hose is assembled using a CNC hose crimp press with some custom dies to match our crimp collars (as well as a very well known aerospace hose provider), pressure tested on a HydroStatic test bench, and now with a laser etched data tag.
Most of what I do now is to concieve and prototype new hose and tube components, like the mentioned integral firesleeved hose and the convoluted teflon assemblies. WE also developed -2 hose ends for teflon hose, for those of you that have -2 oil pressure and primer hoses. For our European clients, we are working on metric stainless hose ends for teflon hose to be used with Rotax European spec and other applications.
For more details, please visit
www.asflightlines.com for our joint venture website. As always, we are available by email and phone most of the time.
Tom and Steve.