wrote:
Greetings-

I'm looking for a set of VP-2 plans. Anyone have a pristine set
they're willing to part with for a reasonable price?

-David

Hello,

If you're thinking of building a VP-2, you may benefit from my limited
experience with this airplane. Perhaps, with the advent of newer, more
powerful engines (Rotax 912, etc.), the VP-2 may be capable of safely
carrying two people, but on the other hand, I'm not an aeronautical
engineer, and maybe horsepower was never the issue.

Thirty years ago, when I was building a VP-2, no one actually flew them
two-place. They were considered, I found out to my chagrin, to be
"roomy" single-place airplanes.

I ordered the plans from Evans and got 600 hours into building (about a
third of the way, in other words) before actually getting a ride in
one. I badgered a VP-2 owner at the Oshkosh airshow into giving me a
ride. He was very reluctant (which should have been a clue), but he
relented. At the time, I was only a student pilot, and probably didn't
ask too many questions about safety.

Anyway, we white-knuckled it around the pattern, barely above stall
speed, and barely above the treetops the whole time, using mostly
rudder and almost no ailerons to make the shallow turns, because, I
figured out later, the builder/owner/pilot was fearful of stalling the
inside wing in the turns. We got off the runway in a reasonable
distance, as I recall, but had to fly several thousand feet in ground
effect before we had enough airspeed to risk pulling up to clear the
trees at the end of the runway. The plan had been to remain in the
pattern, flying several laps with all the other homebuilts, but after
clearing the trees, it was obvious that we needed more altitude before
attempting any turns, so we had to fly straight out for quite a number
of miles, something like 6 or 8, as I recall, before we had enough
altitude, only a few hundred feet, to attempt a turn back to the
airport.

After landing, the fellow admitted that he had never taken anyone up
before. I was the first, in something like 200 hours of flying his
VP-2. He apologized to me, and vowed to never fly it two-place again.
I did a little belated research, and discovered he wasn't the only one.
I realized that I had chosen the wrong design, because I expected to
have a safe two-place airplane. I never completed my VP-2 project.

Regards,
Bill