A Beautiful New Waiex (HOTY) Makes First Flight
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 09:27PM 
Kip Laurie's gorgeous new Waiex with Jabiru 3300 power photo: Sonex Aircraft
First flight for Waiex N111YX was on May 20, 2010 photo: Sonex Aircraft
It’s kinda funny that just yesterday, in the Grand Slam Homebuilt post, I was saying how a lot of people don’t find the Sonex airplanes to be ‘electrifying’… and then this hot orange Waiex hits the scene! It was built by Kip Laurie from Atlanta, Georgia, and the first flight was less than 2 weeks ago on May 20, 2010. You may already know that I’ve been a fan of the taildragger Waiex for quite some time now, and even named it homebuilt of the year (HOTY) at the start of 2009! BTW, a 2010 HOTY will probably be named at the end of this year : )
I think the taildraggin’ Sonex is a fine airplane, but when you trade the straight tail for the V (and that tiny little rudder at the tail post!) I think an ‘ok’ airplane turns into a real hotty. And Kip’s airplane, with that simple but awesome paint really brings the Waiex to life.
The fact that this little airplane can be built for under $30K puts it very close to Grand Slam status, but in my mind, that’s ultimately reserved for a single-seat airplane that can slash build and operating costs to about half of that. It looks like the Onex (single-seat Sonex derivative) won’t be far from that, but it’s gonna need a V-tail option to have a chance of being electrifying. So far I don’t see any mention of a V-tail for the Onex, but they are still very early in the development process.
But the real point here is that Kip’s orange and white Waiex is one fantastic looking airplane - great job!
Reader Comments (4)
Hmm... It's a sharp plane, but from a purely aesthetic point of view it is still not quite in the class of BD-5 or EOS. However, as I said in a previous post, I don't care, I just want to fly!
Thanks for the nice comments...!
Kip
YX0082
Kip- You're welcome, and thanx for building such a sweet airplane. I saw it up close at the open house at OSH and it looked great.
Kip,
I saw it at the Sonex open house, too. Beautiful plane, and a panel to match.
Larry (currently building a taildragger Sonex)