1. www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes14 KITPLANES September 2016
Improvingthebreedthroughtheneedforspeed.
By Tom Wilson
Elsewhere this month Eric Stewart
presents an interview with artisan fab-
ricator and Sport Class pioneer Andy
Chiavetta, who expertly maps the rele-
vant,vibrant,Sport ClassracingatReno
each September.
To get a little closer to the action,
here we’re zeroing in on relatively new,
but already well-established Sport Class
pilot Andrew Findlay, his team, and
details of his Lancair racer pertinent to
Experimental builders. Andrew’s One
Moment Racing is of particular inter-
est because he combines the current
generation’s facility with electronics,
engine management, and team build-
ing with a competitive airframe and
better than average sponsorship. The
result is a remarkably fast and efficient
Lancair Legacy.
OneMoment’sPrincipal
One way to describe Findlay, man-
ager, quality and reliability at Stihl, is a
competitive young man with a bent for
engines. Growing up in McCall, Idaho,
his early interests were snocross racing
snowmobiles in winter, dirt bikes in
summer, and fast cars in between. These
continued through a mechanical engi-
neering degree from the University of
Idaho, where his team built a snowmo-
bile for the Society of Automotive Engi-
neers Clean Snowmobile Challenge.
Given all that internal combustion
snow blowing, it was logical Andrew
joined Bombardier as an engine engi-
neer, a move putting him in contact
with many of those still with him at One
Moment Racing. And those contacts are
important to this airplane story, as while
Andrew is certainly the center of gravity
in his Lancair, this is very much a tale of
team effort and talent.
Andrew had a meaningful run at
Bombardier, but ultimately his major
achievement was being “fired for
Findlay’s Flyer
Findlay’s speedy Legacy is still finding its 400-mph racing legs,
but it’s already a standout continent-crosser. Running lean of
peak, it gets 21 mpg at over 280 mph. (Photo: Kevin Dobler)
Andrew Findlay, left, and Mark Voss consult
the numbers after a Reno heat race.

2. Photos: Tom Wilson KITPLANES September 2016 15
insubordination,” a fact he led with
when interviewing with Mark Voss at
DeltaHawk. Apparently open-minded
andwithaneyeforcreative—ifdriven—
talent, Mark hired Andrew, only to have
DeltaHawk regroup financially within
months. Mark moved on to engine
maker Continental and Andrew to
power equipment manufacturer Stihl.
Airplanes, of course, were right there
along with the cars, bikes, and snow-
mobiles, and if the finances didn’t allow
a Lancair, that didn’t mean Andrew
wasn’t dreaming of flying high and fast
around the country, or taking it down
low around the pylons at Reno. Eventu-
ally Andrew found his Lancair in, where
else, Bend, Oregon. It had not flown in
years, was missing logbooks, had gone
through a gear-up landing and repair,
and consequently allowed a “smoking
deal” that made ownership possible.
Andrew quickly tore into the mechani-
cals and soon had a flying Legacy.
All hope was lost in 2013 when
Andrew took the Legacy through pylon
racing school, falling completely for the
310 mph rush around the Reno sticks. It
was “Game on!” says Andrew.
Always a professional engine man,
Andrew gravitated to hot rodding
the Legacy’s TSIO-550 Continental.
“My engine background made it too
easy at first,” admits Andrew. Simply
turning up the boost and adding ADI
(anti-detonant injection) made a tre-
mendous difference and earned a Rookie
of the Year tin cup. Since then Andrew
has added sponsorship from his Stihl
employers, McCauley Propellers, Tur-
bonetics, and many others, along with
enoughengineandairframedevelopment
to take his program well past those first
easy steps and hard up against the devel-
opment wall motivated racers know so
well.By2015Findlayfinishedthirdinthe
hotlycompetitiveSportClassGoldat357
mph, clearly with the potential for much
more from this young, talented team.
TeamPlayers
Likely the most populous team in the
Sport Class, it’s impossible to even list
the 30+ participants at One Moment
Racing. They range from Andrew’s fam-
ily to work colleagues and industry spe-
cialists, and certainly the depth of talent
andresourceshasbeenaplus.Butit’salso
an operational and logistic challenge to
keep so many people on the same head-
ing,atrickthat’sseeminglyworkingwell.
Naturally, a few One Moment team
members are key. Mark Voss, now the
certification guru and DER for engines
at Continental Motors, has remained
friends with Andrew since DeltaHawk.
A thermodynamicist, Mark’s touch is
everywhere on the Lancair, especially
in his ability to quantify involved engi-
neering processes into spreadsheets and
ultimately to computer modeling. A
gifted team player, gentleman, and effi-
cient thinker, Mark is also smitten with
air racing and a Pete Law disciple.
André Prager is One Moment’s mad
scientist, full of vision and vested with
the energy and skills to make dreams
real via 3D printers and classic fabrica-
tion. André is central to the Lancair’s
re-contoured, more aerodynamic belly
profile and new intakes, to name just
a couple things. Also a Stihl employee
untilrecently—wherehebuiltaturbine-
powered chainsaw and hyper-juiced
electric blowers of epic coolness—
André has been scooped up by Google
X for their Wing project.
Bob Fair, Andrew’s newly minted
father-in-law, was instrumental in return-
ing the Lancair to flying condition in
the summer of 2015. He removed the
old engine, installed a new mount, and
generally prepped the plane in prepara-
tion of the team coming to Bend to finish
the engine install. He also added a few
speed secrets of his own from his many
years at Reno.
PowerPlay
Andrew’s Lancair started as a standard
Legacy with TSIO-550 Continental
power. Aerodynamic tweaks are found
throughout, of course, including that
loweraftfuselagefilledinforreduceddrag
using André’s profile. Like most Sport
André Prager is the free-ranging concep-
tualist at One Moment Racing.
Continental’s 550 is Sport racing’s most popular engine. Findlay’s differs from most by
foregoing air-to-air charge coolers in favor of heavy doses of ADI.

3. racers,however,OneMomenthasmainly
developed more horsepower, and as this
hot rodding also translates into excellent
cruise speeds and fuel burns—Andrew
is still daily driving the Lancair—we’ll
mainly confine ourselves to the noisy end
of the airplane in this article.
Generally speaking, the big Conti-
nental has had its compression ratio
reduced to a boost-friendly 6.5:1 via
Ly-Con pistons and ported cylinders,
uses Continental’s fuel system (for now)
and intake manifolding, greater capac-
ity Turbonetics turbochargers, and a
slightly modified Light Speed Engineer-
ing ignition system.
Being an engine engineer Andrew
is conversant with the fundamentals
of engine design and tuning, and has
brought some of his ground-based
motorsports tools to the cockpit. Fuel-
ing, for example, is measured more
directly via oxygen sensors and is typi-
cally addressed in terms of air/fuel ratio
rather than the more removed metrics of
gallons per hour or EGTs.
A feature of Andrew’s engine philoso-
phy is dispensing with air-to-air charge
cooling (intercoolers) in favor of anti-
detonation injection exclusively. The
big advantage is eliminating the drag
of ducting all that cooling air past the
charge coolers, plus the boost penalty
imposedbythechargecooler’scoretothe
16 KITPLANES September 2016 www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes
The cockpit is typical Legacy inside with a few interesting bits added. Among the toggle
switches at the far, lower left are the spray bar and backup spray bar switches. All spray
water is manually activated. Among the colored rocker switches is a red “race power”
master switch for the ADI pumps, which are on separate buses and computer (primary)
or manually (backup) controlled. The ADI master is there to avoid accidentally triggering
“water” during less than race power, as it will put the fire out. The boost knob is yellow,
the silver rim is boost with Innovate air/fuel instruments to the right. Vertical Power VPX
e-circuit breakers control power to all systems; there is no telemetry to the pits.
The five-gallon water/alcohol ADI tank
straps in place of the passenger seat; the
prominent orange and three lobe black
device is a video camera suction mount
and the cylinders under the tank are the
primary and backup ADI pumps. ADI is
central to Andrew’s race power, but is not
used outside of Reno. Barely visible behind
the ADI tank is the 10-gallon spray bar
water reservoir. Distilled water is used for
spray to reduce mineral deposits all over
the under-cowl machinery.
There’s another 24 gph of water being
sprayed on the exterior of the engine, too.
The spray bar circuit is one big loop with
16 emitters, starting with three 2-gph
nozzles inside of each of the cowling’s
two cooling air inlets as shown here.
It’simpossibletodenytheprofessionalStihlgraphicsofFindlay’sLegacy;theygivetheplane
a standout presence. And yes, it would be easy to dismiss the big Stihl signage as a lucky
breakbyaguywhoworksthere,butthatwouldbemissingtherealitythatStihlfindsReno’s
racingdemographicsahappyfitwiththeirproductsandmarketingplans.
Thesponsorshipstartedtentativelyin2014,oneyearafterAndrewappearedattheNational
ChampionshipAirRaces.For2015AndrewmoreaggressivelypitchedtheStihlmarketeers,and
becausethefitbetweenRenoracefansandStihl’spremiumpowerequipmentwasstrong,they
optedformajorsponsorshipontheLegacy.ItworkedsowelltheLancairwasfrontandcenter
inamajorStihltelevisioncampaignandthesponsorshipiscontinuing.Theplanewasalsoabig
hitduringliveappearancesforStihldealers,whichhelpedconvinceStihltobringJMAssociates
totheairraces,resultingintheone-hourNBCSportsvideoairedinearly2016.Thecoverage,in
turn,wasgreatexposurefortheairracesandExperimentalaviationingeneral.
WhileStihlhasmadeamajorcommitmenttoairracing,it’simportanttorealizeStihl’s
effortismainlydirectedatcorporatehospitalityandpromotionaleffortssuchastheNBC
Sportsfootage;underwritingtheraceplaneexpensesissecondary.AlthoughStihlremains
thetitlesponsor,OneMomentRacingremainsmainlyfundedbyAndrewandwhatever
helpheearnswithMcCauley,Turbonetics,andothersponsors.Abornracer,Andrewenjoys
supportinghissponsors,travelingnationwideduringtheyearonhisownnickeltoattend
engineeringmeetings,presentatseminars,ormakepublicappearances.“We’vecreateda
monster…awholeindustryisbehindus,”hesays.“It’ssocool!”
—T.W.
CuttingitwithStihl

4. intake air. The plumbing is hugely sim-
plified as well, and an often overlooked
benefit is the water’s mass impacts the
turbocharger’s turbine harder, resulting
in a couple pounds more boost pressure.
The downside to ADI is the increased
weight of five gallons of 50/50 water/
methanol mix—most of which is
pumped overboard via the exhaust pipes
during the race anyway—along with
managing the ADI flow relative to the
engine’s needs.
“Still,it’sworthit.”AsAndrewpoints
out, a stock Legacy’s charge cooling is
designed to chill 140 to 150°F charge
air during extended cruising. This is a
minimal requirement not in line with
the burly temperatures and air volume
while racing. “Typically discharge tem-
perature is 350°F out of the turbo, and
the ADI takes that to 130°F,” notes
Andrew of his race settings. He uses
180°F as the inlet temperature redline.
During cruise inlet temps are just 130°F
and no ADI is used.
An easy way to tune the ADI meter-
ing is to “flow the ADI at 15 to 20% of
the fuel flow, then adjust the ADI to the
CHTs and engine response,” Andrew
advises. His self-developed ADI system
uses a stand-alone computer control-
ler from automotive aftermarket tuner
AEMtometerADIflowbasedonintake
manifold pressure. It begins ADI flow at
5 psi of boost—that’s about 40 inches
manifold pressure at Reno’s 5000-foot
KITPLANES September 2016 17
ADI—which is critical to the Continental’s health at race power—is normally managed by
an AEM controller signaled by this manifold pressure sensor and its mate on the other side
of the engine. Should this system fail Andrew can switch on a separate backup pump—
which he must remember to switch off when pulling the throttle back or risk drowning the
engine. The ADI is injected at the back of the intake plumbing, giving it about four feet of
manifolding to vaporize in. Two nozzles—one large, one small—are fitted to each turbo
discharge pipe; four nozzles are used to give finer ADI tuning capabilities.
Each cylinder has its own spray bar mister. They emit 1 gph each and are principle in keeping
CHTs between 400 and 420°F while pulling 600+ hp during a race. Even with spray water the
CHTs climb if the A/F ratio leans below a rather fat 10:1. So do the TITs. One Moment finds
their target CHT temps important in avoiding cylinder-to-head integrity issues.

5. altitude—and ramps up ADI delivery
until maximum flow is reached at 15 psi
of boost. A second pump provides man-
ually controlled backup.
Magnetos aren’t up to sparking this
engine that alternately runs at both ends
oftherich/leanspectrum,nottomention
the high boost. Therefore a Light Speed
Engineering Plasma crank-trigger igni-
tion is used, but with hotter MSD coils.
They help fire rich mixtures, which dur-
ing engine transients may reach all the
way to 9:1, with 10.5 – 11:1 being the
typical racing A/F ratio range.
Andrew fitted his own potentiom-
eters into the ignition system to allow
+/-10° of ignition timing (Light Speed
offers the same capability, Andrew
simply used different potentiometers).
“They’re real handy when going cross
country. I run 44° of advance and super
lean of peak, usually at 17:1 AF. The
[previous, higher compression] motor
could do 18:1,” says Andrew.
In 2014 the team’s issue was not
enough air to and from the turbos;
Mark’s analytics gave target values for
the induction path from the cowling
to the turbos, plus the needed turbo
output. Shown the data, Turbonetics
responded with larger, slower-spinning
18 KITPLANES September 2016 www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes
After lack of airflow limited the Lancair in 2014, Mark Voss and André Prager gathered
data, then defined the size and position for these new pressure recovery inlets, which
André CAD modeled and built with the help of a 3D printer. The two new ducts add some
smoothly faired frontal area, but give excellent pressure recovery. NACA ducts were con-
sidered, but rejected as less desirable.
One Moment Racing finds “a big fat spark”
especially helps when the air/fuel ratio
goes very rich (9:1) when transitioning
from cruise to race power, hence this forest
of MSD coils added to the Light Speed
Engineering crank trigger ignition.
One Moment Racing is not a typical team name, and Andrew explains it as describing the
mentalstateofbeing“completelyinthemomentandinthezone.Withthatairplaneyou’re
alwaysinthemoment.”
Back in his snowmobile and motorcycle racing days, Andrew found mental exercises,
andnowyoga,speedhisabilitytoreach“thezone”wherefocusedconcentrationimproves
performance.Thesameistrueinairracing.Histeam’snamethusreflectshisinterestinthe
psychologyracingbothdemandsanddelivers.
—T.W.
NamingRight
You may notice all those MSD ignition
coils partially block airflow to the stock
Continental oil cooler. The offset is four
spray bar nozzles misting the cooler, the
top two each flowing 2 gph and the lower
two at 1 gph apiece. Mark Voss says the
bone-dry Reno air is a big enabler because
the evaporative cooling from spray water is
so powerful there. With spray water the air
entering the oil cooler is typically 50°F, and
sometimes in the 40s.

6. KITPLANES September 2016 19
compressors,plusintegratedtheirwaste-
gatestotheturbohousingtosaveweight
and simplify. After considering NACA
ducts Mark and André developed new
pressure recovery cowling inlets for the
2015 race, pleasing Mark greatly as the
inlets exceeded expectations.
In fact, the new inlet/turbo combi-
nation worked so well the problem at
the 2015 race was the fuel system could
not supply enough fuel for the boost
available. Many workarounds were tried
attheraces—theteamwastime-crunched
in 2015—but found the Continental fuel
system was far past its designed flow and
controllimits.Thereforenomorethan65
inches of manifold pressure could be run.
To reduce pilot workload, the pneu-
matically actuated wastegates were
rigged to give no more than 65 inches
when the control was fully closed and
the throttle wide open. This kept the
As Sport racer twin-turbo installations go, Findlay’s is relatively sim-
ple and compact. Turbonetics uses data supplied by One Moment
to assemble the appropriate compressor (a little larger for 2015 and
unchanged for 2016) and turbine sections. They also integrated
the pneumatically operated wastegate. There have been minor
exhaust manifold cracking issues, but that’s par for turbo fitments.
Insulated from heat, the wire at 2 o’clock on the compressor volute
is for an rpm sensor. “We use the (turbo) rpm to plot where the
compressors are on the speed/pressure ratio map. Maximum rpm
for the turbos is around 136,000 rpm. The sensors output a signal
we measure with a multimeter,” explains Andrew.
Standard issue on cars but rare on aircraft, the oxygen sensor on each turbo exhaust pipe
tells Andrew precisely what his air/fuel ratio is rather than inferring it from EGTs. The sen-
sors are high-performance wideband units (able to read a wide range of A/F ratios, rather
than the narrow range used on production cars) from Innovate Motorsports. The A/F ratio
is displayed both on the dedicated Innovate instruments in the lower right of the instru-
ment panel and on the Dynon SkyView display.
New in 2015, McCauley’s propeller was
designed and built specifically for One
Moment in an impossibly short two
months. Its three, heavily twisted, wide-
chord blades are optimized for 600–700 hp
and 400 mph. Diameter is a diminutive 64
inches and it turns 2900 rpm. Simulations
show 15–20% more thrust than Hartzell’s
race prop that nearly all other Sport racers
run, but One Moment has yet to make the
necessary horsepower to prove the point.
“It’s frustrating,” laments Mark Voss. “We
were converging on an optimum setup (in
2015). It’s when you learn a lot.”

7. turbos from over-boosting and sending
the EGTs past 1800°F and the pistons
melting out the exhaust pipes.
Most of the Sport Class at Reno runs
a Hartzell race prop, but looking for
the next step ahead, and with an estab-
lished relationship with McCauley,
One Moment Racing has been working
with the McCauley Blackworks team
to develop a new high-speed constant
speed. This was born of necessity as an
engine failure sheared off the old prop
somewhereoverUtahat17,000feet—on
Andrew’sbirthdaynoless.ThatwasJune
20, 2015, and after a successful 28-mile
glide to Wendover, Andrew was talk-
ing with McCauley, who really stepped
up to the plate. As Robert Rucker, busi-
ness leader at McCauley Propeller Sys-
tems put it, “The team started designing
the propeller in July of 2015 and in less
than a month, the custom race propeller
was finalized and rolling down the pro-
duction line.” That’s amazingly fast to
design and build a prototype prop, and
so far it’s proven efficient, quiet, and not
fully tested as One Moment was fighting
fuel issues at the 2015 races and wasn’t
making design power.
TheChallenges
If Andrew and team were playing catch-
up in 2015— it wasn’t until two weeks
before Reno in September that the new
engine and prop were on the plane and
ready to fly—then it’s understandable
that 2016 will mainly see refinement of
last year’s hardware.
For the 2016 races One Moment is
continuing with the Continental fuel
system augmented by a larger fuel pump
and increased automation, likely of a
mechanical fuel control nature.
This latter point is to help with a
major issue: transient engine response
during race starts where the power must
rise rapidly from cruise to full-throttle.
With the ignition and fuel systems com-
pletely segregated and almost wholly
manuallyadjusted,thismeansAndrewis
juggling the throttle, propeller, mixture,
wastegates, ADI, spray bar and ignition
timing controls. Obviously this is far too
much for a two-handed human hanging
onto a stick to manipulate, especially
when computers do such things so well.
Eventually the team will end up with
an integrated electronic fuel injection
system with the bandwidth to handle
idle to hair-on-fire power settings, but
such improvements require more time
and money to develop than has been
available so far. In the meantime, if you
see the Stihl Lancair lagging at the start
you know why—the few naturally aspi-
rated competitors have hammered the
throttle while Andrew and most of his
turbo competitors are anxiously twist-
ing knobs. If anyone is going to develop
a sophisticated aftermarket single-lever
power control, these guys are it.
That’s why it’s worth keeping an eye
on what racers such as Andrew are up
to. Dusting pylons is likely not your
goal, but the speed and efficiency mods
these racers develop transfer directly to
daily aviation. J
www.kitplanes.com & www.facebook.com/kitplanes20 KITPLANES September 2016
OneMomentRacingwasbehindtheeightballatRenoin2015,butaquickreviewofthe
majoreventsleadinguptotheracestellswhy.
Winter:LancairflewtoBahamasvacation
May30:AndrewandJackieFairmarried
June17:Pylonracingschool,Reno,Nevada
June20:Enginefreezes,propellerdeparts,Wendover,Utah
Summer:NewTSIO-550sourcedandbuilttoracespecification
September7:NewMcCauleypropellerinstalled
September20:FinishedthirdinSportClassGold,Reno,Nevada
Thenewengineandpropellerweren’tevenontheagendawhen2015began.TheLancair
wasalsofullycoveredinStihlsignagedesignedbyDreamSchemeDesignsandinstalledby
Aircraft Wraps in September. “I don’t know how it all happened, but we have an amazing
team,”saysAndrew.
—T.W.
Busy2015
When 400+ mph is the goal, aerodynamics take on a whole new importance. Custom
fairings, gap seals, and plenty of tape help clean up the airframe, but the flap actuators
remain dragging out in the breeze even though the flaps are taped shut at Reno.
Beringer wheels and brakes are a welcome
upgrade to the One Moment Lancair.
Andrew reports a “nice light touch on the
brakes, very smooth. Now that we have
those, it rolls around easier on the hangar
floor—and they look awesome.” The land-
ing light telltales the Lancair’s dual personal-
ity as racer and sport plane, something that
will eventually change as the class eventually
modifies itself into pure race status.

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