Preface
This website has been created to document the construction of a unique airplane: N34ER, or 4ER for short. 4ER is an E-Racer, designed by Shirl Dickey.
E-Racers come in several configurations: Mk 1, Mk 2, and King. Mk 1 was designed around a 230HP Buick V-8. The prototype experienced a number of off-field landings and is no longer flying. Mk 2 was designed for aircraft engines. The so-called “King-Racer” is a modified version of the Mk 1 or Mk 2 and features a wider fuselage, seats moved slightly aft, and more weight capacity.
As of this writing, the FAA aircraft database shows 20 E-Racer registrations, where exactly half are current. An analysis of E-Racer registrations is the subject of another article.
Purchase
An E-Racer was listed for sale on Barnstormers in January 2024 for $9,000. Eventually, the price was lowered to $7,000, which is when I saw it. It was located about 100 miles from my house. One Sunday, I swung by to look at it, and, on the following day, decided to buy it.
Previous owners of this project have collected pieces of other airplane projects. The purchase included a fuselage, two wings, four winglets, a spar, upper and lower strake skins for both sides, engine cowling, a full set of wing cores, landing gear, a few boxes of hardware, extra fiberglass and dacron, foam and fiberglass tools, a big box of scrap foam, and three sets of plans.
Plan
A common piece of advice is to not name animals that will become food. With any luck, the converse is also true: by giving this project a name, perhaps this project will be a little more personal and I will have a little more motivation to work on it. Choosing a tail number seemed like a good name for the project. I wanted the tail number to be as short as possible while ending in “ER”, for “E-Racer”. Cruising around the FAA N-Number Availability tool, N34ER was selected because it was the first less-than-three-digit number ending in “ER”.
When designing or building an airplane, a healthy balance of all factors must be struck. For example, many fast airplanes have poor low-speed characteristics. Some of the factors to consider are: weight, cost, assembly time, assembly space, maintenance requirements, reliability, retail value, available tools, quantity of friends, and many other factors.
At the start of this project, and not knowing better, my primary focus will be reliability, followed by weight, followed by cost and assembly time equally.
The project is broken into a combination of chapters and articles.
Prospectus
Over the next several years, I plan to build N34ER into a flyable airplane. To avoid burnout, I may set this project aside from time to time. In fact, I may even choose sell the project before it becomes a flying airplane due to the astronomical costs of insurance. Regardless of the outcome, I plan to further the state-of-the-art the E-Racer design by digitizing and documenting the design and assembly of the rest of this project.