Virtual Event: STOL Kit Maker Reveals Secret to Company’s Success

This fireside chat recap is from FLYING’s “What’s Next in General Aviation” Virtual Event on Wednesday.

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: How Just Aircraft built its business as the popularity of STOL continues to grow.

DETAILS: FLYING’s Thom Patterson talks with Gary Schmitt about how Just Aircraft grew from an idea to one of the most popular STOL kits on the market.

SPEAKER: Schmitt is co-founder and co-owner of Just Aircraft.

BIO: Schmitt has been excited about STOL since 2002 when he co-founded Just Aircraft with designer Troy Woodland. When Schmitt and Woodland met, they both were interested in developing a new STOL airplane. That collaboration eventually resulted in Just Aircraft and its Escapade STOL kit. The company ships kits around the world from its facility in the South Carolina foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

KEY QUOTES FROM SCHMITT:

“I talked [Troy Woodland]  into building a side-by-side. The one he had at Oshkosh was a tandem. But you could see that the quality was way up there and I was like, ‘This guy knows what he’s doing.’ It took a little convincing. But I think he realized there might be a market for that. Of course, my wife was like, ‘I don’t like flying in that tandem airplane, looking at the back of your head. I want to be right beside you.’ So he actually built a side-by-side—called an Escapade—and that was the first side-by-side airplane that Just Aircraft built.”

“After the Highlander, the next thing we explored was the SuperStol. We had to change the attach points for the landing gear because we came up with a shock absorber system—I say ‘we’ but this was mostly my partner. If you think about it—the Pilatus Porter—we kind of used that as a pattern, if you will, for our main landing gear. It really does absorb and cushion your landing. The other thing we did was: we came up with a different airfoil than the Highlander which has slats on the leading edge and the slats are moveable so when you slow the airplane down enough and have a high-enough angle of attack on the wing, the slats come out and they enable you to slow down even more.”

“We realized we needed a little more aileron control, so we put  spoilers on, that are attached to the ailerons. So, when you move the ailerons, the spoilers come out of the top of the wing and kill some of the lift off the wing which enables you to make a lot safer and slower turns at slow speeds.”