Tiki & Bart, Cowboy Up Hang Gliding, LLC, Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
www.cuhanggliding.com,
write:

Two words – WE PASSED!! Our Dragonfly is now a fully certificated
aircraft with an FAA Airworthiness Certificate.



We started this process in late September, working on it the whole time, now
here it is April 1 and we just had our Airworthiness Inspection. Let us just
say, bringing the Dragonfly up certification specs is not a walk in the park.
Thank you to the Mike Z for his special help and advice and a huge over the top
thanks you to Rhett Radford, whose supplemental expertise was instrumental in
getting our Dragonfly to pass. Rhett's plane was certified just two weeks ago.



Our DAR, (Designated Airworthiness Representative) is a former FAA Airworthiness
Inspector who has every inspection rating possible, as a matter of fact he just
inspected a MIG 15 and now he’s inspecting our Dragonfly - wow.



Anyway needless to say we are quite happy. And just to pass on some very
important information our DAR told us: after August of 2007 the FAA will not
guarantee that they will be able to process all the ELSA’s before January 2008.
This is a huge deal for anyone putting off the process.



It took almost seven months to get ours done – and Tiki was diligent about our
paperwork, but things happened; they got our address wrong; one box was missing
a printed signature, etc. Tiki was on the phone to Oklahoma City almost every
week from December to April – no joke – tracking our paper work. Basically,
folks should not wait until the last minute to get this done - six months out to
start your paperwork is the bare minimum.



One example – we thought we had everything done on our plane and the DAR was
coming in a week. We put a call into Mike Z and Rhett. Both told us of the
“hinge bolt” replacements. What!!!? Hinge Bolts!!!? All the hinge bolts on the
plane needed to be replaced.



Rhett then proceed to give us the AN numbers and amount of bolts and generally
where they go on the plane. Wow, what a life saver – we surely would have failed
had we not replaced these bolts. We had Spruce Aircraft overnight $130.00 worth
of bolts (actually the bolts were only $96.00 but the overnight shipping was
$32.00).



We proceeded to replace all the hinge bolts on Friday (our DAR coming on
Sunday). Then there were a couple of bolts we failed to get form Spruce and
lucky for us the Aviat Aviation (they manufacturer the Husky and the Pitts
Special) are just down the street from our hanger and they supplied us with some
really long (4” and 5”) bolts that we needed. Also there were a couple of
“little” (not so little) items that Rhett told us the DAR would “ding” us on –
so we fixed those also – lucky we did because we would have definitely gotten,
as Rhett says, “dinged-on” them by the inspector. Anyway our whole inspection
took three hours.



Lastly, we would be more than happy give the benefit of what we’ve learned in
our Dragonfly certification process to help any Dragonfly owners who are
undertaking the certification process. We aren’t experts and we did have the
benefit of Rhett shoring up the seams, but we did it all and we passed. And
while Bart wrenched on the plane - Tiki took extensive notes throughout the
whole process – including the necessary bolts and where to put them.



Weather permitting Tiki will be taking her check ride for her Private Pilot’s
license next week and we will be set for our towing season here in Wyoming.



Oh BTW our “N” number? N412HG (for one to hang glide).







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