flyvulcan
Well-Known Member
Background to the project:
Back in 1991, Nick Jones followed on from his 4 seat speedster White Lightning kit aircraft with a single seat speedster called the Lightning Bug. It created a buzz at the time due to its exceptional performance, achieving (allegedly) over 200 knots with it's 90hp AMW engine.
Here are some photos of the prototype:
I wanted to buy one of the kits at the time it was released but my then wife knocked that idea on the head.
After only 16 kits were produced, Nick Jones stopped production of the kits due to liability concerns.
Fast forward to the start of 2008 and I had been working on the design of a small jet aircraft for about two years with a few more years of design work to go. I decided to take an alternate and fast route to a jet by modifying an existing piston engine design. The design had to be one that would allow jet-like performance. The usual suspects came to mind, i.e. BD5 but the Lightning Bug still held a great appeal to me so I started looking for one of the remaining aircraft or kits. Even though owners of registered Bugs were listed on the FAA database, I was having a lot of trouble contacting them. I finally got on to one owner who only the week before had made a handshake deal to sell his Bug (N63974). Whilst the deal was not concluded, he honoured his handshake deal and his Bug was passed on to its new owner. I contacted the new owner and made him an offer but he has steadfastly refused to sell the aircraft to me, even though I have made regular offers for it over the years. It is in his shed, gathering dust and it will likely never fly while he owns it (he is well into his '70s).
After 6 months of concentrated searching, I finally sourced a kit and contacted the owner. He agreed to sell it to me at a fair price. While negotiating with this gent about the Bug kit which was located in North Carolina, I contacted a few builder assist shops in Florida about doing a bit of work on it before I shipped it to Oz. When I contacted one of the shops based at Merritt Island airport, next to Cape Canaveral in Florida, the guy said "a Lightning Bug? There's one of those in the next hangar". Well bugger me, it turned out to be true! So after 6 months of hard searching, within one week, I had sourced two kits.
The owner of the kit at Merritt Island was none other than Johny Murphy who owned the prototype Bug (shown in the photo above). He had force landed the aircraft following an engine failure during the Sun100 air race at Sun'n'fun 1991 but hit a cow during the landing roll and tore off the left wing. The aircraft was a write off but Johny got out ok. He liked the aircraft so much that he took delivery of one of the production kits with a view to building it to race. He never got round to building it and offered to sell me the kit, along with the remains of the prototype Bug.
So now I had been offered two kits. During my search for a Bug, I had noted on a forum that there was a bloke in Adelaide called Milton King who had expressed an interest in the Bug a few years before. Since Adelaide is my home town, I tracked down Milton and told him that I knew of Bug kit that was for sale, was he interested? To cut a long story short, we bought both kits and shipped them from Florida to Adelaide.
Here is my kit laid out on the lawn of Johny Murphy's hangar at Merritt Island, being inventoried. The prototypes wreck is in the background.
![DSC_1070[1].JPG](https://cdn2.imagearchive.com/homebuiltairplanes/data/attachments/28/28213-d8b12295ec66e946d29324464e2f93cd.jpg "DSC_1070[1].JPG")
![DSC_1071[1].JPG](https://cdn2.imagearchive.com/homebuiltairplanes/data/attachments/28/28214-2b9b05d66764c9ff4882d58ff98a06cb.jpg "DSC_1071[1].JPG")
Milton chose to complete his Lightning Bug stock, albeit with a Jabiru 3300 to replace the original AMW engine which is no longer in production, but regardless, was notoriously unreliable.
Here is Milton's project as it was a few months ago.
To be continued...
Back in 1991, Nick Jones followed on from his 4 seat speedster White Lightning kit aircraft with a single seat speedster called the Lightning Bug. It created a buzz at the time due to its exceptional performance, achieving (allegedly) over 200 knots with it's 90hp AMW engine.
Here are some photos of the prototype:
I wanted to buy one of the kits at the time it was released but my then wife knocked that idea on the head.
After only 16 kits were produced, Nick Jones stopped production of the kits due to liability concerns.
Fast forward to the start of 2008 and I had been working on the design of a small jet aircraft for about two years with a few more years of design work to go. I decided to take an alternate and fast route to a jet by modifying an existing piston engine design. The design had to be one that would allow jet-like performance. The usual suspects came to mind, i.e. BD5 but the Lightning Bug still held a great appeal to me so I started looking for one of the remaining aircraft or kits. Even though owners of registered Bugs were listed on the FAA database, I was having a lot of trouble contacting them. I finally got on to one owner who only the week before had made a handshake deal to sell his Bug (N63974). Whilst the deal was not concluded, he honoured his handshake deal and his Bug was passed on to its new owner. I contacted the new owner and made him an offer but he has steadfastly refused to sell the aircraft to me, even though I have made regular offers for it over the years. It is in his shed, gathering dust and it will likely never fly while he owns it (he is well into his '70s).
After 6 months of concentrated searching, I finally sourced a kit and contacted the owner. He agreed to sell it to me at a fair price. While negotiating with this gent about the Bug kit which was located in North Carolina, I contacted a few builder assist shops in Florida about doing a bit of work on it before I shipped it to Oz. When I contacted one of the shops based at Merritt Island airport, next to Cape Canaveral in Florida, the guy said "a Lightning Bug? There's one of those in the next hangar". Well bugger me, it turned out to be true! So after 6 months of hard searching, within one week, I had sourced two kits.
The owner of the kit at Merritt Island was none other than Johny Murphy who owned the prototype Bug (shown in the photo above). He had force landed the aircraft following an engine failure during the Sun100 air race at Sun'n'fun 1991 but hit a cow during the landing roll and tore off the left wing. The aircraft was a write off but Johny got out ok. He liked the aircraft so much that he took delivery of one of the production kits with a view to building it to race. He never got round to building it and offered to sell me the kit, along with the remains of the prototype Bug.
So now I had been offered two kits. During my search for a Bug, I had noted on a forum that there was a bloke in Adelaide called Milton King who had expressed an interest in the Bug a few years before. Since Adelaide is my home town, I tracked down Milton and told him that I knew of Bug kit that was for sale, was he interested? To cut a long story short, we bought both kits and shipped them from Florida to Adelaide.
Here is my kit laid out on the lawn of Johny Murphy's hangar at Merritt Island, being inventoried. The prototypes wreck is in the background.
Milton chose to complete his Lightning Bug stock, albeit with a Jabiru 3300 to replace the original AMW engine which is no longer in production, but regardless, was notoriously unreliable.
Here is Milton's project as it was a few months ago.
To be continued...
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