400-HP Biplane: Not Your Grandfather's Single-Seat Pitts

Jim Kimball Enterprises is home to the kit version of the Pitts Model 12, Curtis Pitts's put-hair-on-your-chest redesign of the classic Pitts aerobatic biplane concept for the 360-hp Vedenyev radial engine. And if there ever was a company that was able to seamlessly meld the biplane tradition and constant development, it's JKE. So when they are about to launch something new, it's worth a look.

It doesn't hurt that their workmanship is outstanding -- so when they display a bare frame, it looks like something that should be hanging in the Museum of Modern Art. But this one in Jim Kimball Enterprises' centrally located booth at Sun-n-Fun, painted arrest-me-officer yellow, wasn't the "ordinary" Model 12. It was the prototype of something new, and something compelling: the Pitts Python, a higher-performance derivative of the Model 12, for those who find a mere 360-HP fully aerobatic biplane fills them with ennui.

Jim and Kevin Kimball are a lot of things, but boring ain't one of them.

We were eager to hear about the Python project, and Kevin Kimball was willing to tell us. "This is what the Python will look like," he said, showing us a rendering of the airplane (reproduced here) that's not on the website yet.

"In planform it looks like an S-1... it looks like an S-1 with Ultimate wings, doesn't it?" we asked.

Kevin laughed. "Just huge!" The original Pitts S-1 single-seat biplane clearly has a family resemblance to the Python, which is Jim Kimball Enterprises' own single-seat adaptation of their High-Performance version of the Curtis Pitts design. The resemblance stops at the planform. The Python has a big motor, and is sized to fit (some S-1s fly with a little 90 or even 65 HP Continental, and perform well if they're light).

The plane in the rendering is solid yellow, but the real Python won't be. "I've got the paint scheme sorted out, but I'm holding on to that." So there is a final paint scheme that's a mystery. Kevin explains: "We were going to build a 12 for ourselves, oh, a year or two ago. So we came up with a paint scheme, and we really liked it, but the scheme ended up on two customer airplanes before I had the chance to use it myself. So I'm hiding the scheme."

Who Are The Guys Who Do This Stuff?

Coming from some kit manufacturers, such advance claims might come across as empty boasts, but it isn't bragging if you really do it, and Jim Kimball Enterprises has a pretty good record of really doing it. (So they can get away with saying "Jim has always possessed the ability to excel in anything he touched," on their website -- he has). The site www.2wings.com [a Model 12 builder] offers an attractive poster of the first 25 Pitts Model 12 aircraft to come out of their kits -- some of them built in-house, some of them assembled by builders, all of them displaying that peculiarly Kimball marriage of 1930s art-deco style and 21st-century technological flair, not to Curtis Pitts's widely-praised design.

A number of Model 12 owners have accepted Experimental-Exhibition licensing, giving up the advantages of an Amateur-Built Certificate of Airworthiness, in order to have their planes completed in JKE's Florida shop, even though only one Model 12 is, as far as I know, actively flying in airshows this season (Debbie Gary). The typical Model 12 owner just loves to fly aerobatics -- and perhaps is a little addicted to power. They don't hangar the 12 and get into a Kia.

Apart from the Model 12, JKE has built aircraft ranging from replicas of the Gee Bee Model Z (built by Kevin and Jeff Eicher) and Wedell-Williams racers and the McCullocoupe, another hot-rod casserole of 1930s aesthetics and 2000s power. JKE has also restored dozens of vintage aircraft to Champion standard, including 25 Stearmans and 6 Beech Staggerwings. While the company started, in all seriousness, as Jim and the family's hobby, it nowadays depends more and more on Kevin's formal training (he has a degree in mechanical engineering and aerospace sciences, and an A&P license).

But while we can show you some photographs, we can't show you their build quality -- for that you have to look at a Model 12 or other product of the Kimball shop up close, yourself. (Look for part two, the interview)

FMI: www.jimkimballenterprises.com, www.pittsmodel12.com