The New Kolb Aircraft Company - UltralightNews visits the Kolb factory.

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The New Kolb Aircraft Company - Ultralight News visits Kolb Aircraft in Kentucky. 

While at Litespeed Danny Mullins invited me over to visit the Kolb factory. The factory is located at 8375 Russell Dyche Highway near London Kentucky. Danny had an appointment with Norm Labhart President and CEO of the New Kolb Aircraft Company, so he left me in the capable hands of Izek Therrien. 

It turns out Izek is from Canada, residing in Quebec the next province east of Ontario where I live.  Izek explained that the building we were in, one of several on the site, was the R & D, or research and development section of the new Kolb Aircraft Co.  While there work was in progress on modifications to the Kolb EXTRA, and Kolbra which will be unveiled at Sun N Fun.

While final assembly and quick build kit components are produced by Litespeed Aviation, Kolb Aircraft produces all of the fuselage cages, and welded components. These are produced from raw 4130 chromoly steel tubing by licensed mig welders in precise jigs,  ensuring a perfect fit and exact duplication of parts.  Kolb also stocks and supplies all of the raw materials used in the Kolb kits. 

In addition to stocking all of the raw materials Kolb is also responsible for  producing the wing ribs for all of the Kolb aircraft.  These ribs are are identical, in all of the Kolb aircraft,  except for the main wing positioning hole, which changes in diameter depending on the craft the wing rib will be fitted to. With all of the components pre-cut and supplied to Donny Sizemore, a long time Kolb employee,  it takes him 6 minutes to produce a wing rib!

According to sources Kolb is currently producing and delivering a kit a day! This requires a enormous amount of stock, and stock they do! In the case of some tubing a four month supply has to be purchased. Kolb also has to have on hand all of the necessary AN hardware, nuts, bolts, wheels, brakes, cables necessary to complete deliveries. How much stock - over half a million dollars!

This stock is moved along in an assembly like process. Starting from the placement of the order. Once in the system the order proceeds out on to the floor, where it is divided up into sub components.

The welders are the first to get the order. They are then supplied with all of the necessary tubing, already cut to size. For reference the tubes are all numbered, with the numbers corresponding to a mock up units located in the welding booth. These are then placed in jigs and spot welded. Once all the tubes are in place and tacked, the frame is then mig welded. When done the fuselage or component is checked by the welder, the head welder and the shipping department.  

Each subcomponent category is gathered up, inventoried and boxed. All of the tubing for the order is placed in large round shipping tubes. The AN hardware nuts and bolts into cardboard boxes. As each group is completed it then is moved into the shipping area where it is again inventoried and secured and placed inside its shipping container. To ensure delivery of an undamaged craft Kolb arranges for shipping via a carrier that knows that the boxes contain an aircraft and could be easily damaged, this has allowed the use of wood frame boxes using cardboard sides which saves the customer in delivery costs!

After the guided tour Izek took me over to his office. While Izek was kind enough to give me the tour of the plant his job at Kolb is to update and adapt the Kolb aircraft assembly manuals and drawings to today's technology. While the current assembly manuals and drawings are very complete, they are designed more for people who know how to read plans and drawings. This can be very confusing for the average lay person who doesn't work with this  type of material every day.

Using today's technology and computers Izek will be producing  manuals which will be available on the web on in CD format which will allow the customer to enlarge, reduce, zoom in, and rotate all of the parts and assembly components 360 degrees. This is the same process that is currently being used by Canadair and Boeing. This "Virtual" design will allow Kolb to design aircraft in the future on a computer - just like GM and others are doing.

What this means is the customer will see "pictures" instead of plans and these "pictures' can be seen in virtually any size, or angle. Picture yourself standing at the rear of a plane. With this technology and your mouse you can lift the tail so it is over your head, put it back down on the ground and bring the nose to where the tail use to be. Want to see a close up of the dash, just click and zoom in on it. Not sure whether the head of a bolt is suppose to face in or out.  Zoom in and you can see!

As you can see when the word New was added to the New Kolb Aircraft Company - it meant a lot more than just a change in ownership!