Virtual Factory Tour

The staff of Express Aircraft welcomes you.

Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.

It all starts here with the fabrication of the major composite airframe parts and these are the guys who do it. Tony directs the crew making spars that take massive amounts of fiberglass cloth and resin materials and a lot of labor, but that is where the payload of the Express comes from, a stout spar.

All the composite parts are made in our own factory using a vacuum bag technique that produces parts with the least amount of heavy resin while maintaining full strength of the part.

Vacuum bagging starts with laying the fiberglass cloth into the mold and then infusing it with resin under a plastic diaphragm that is pulled down against the part with a vacuum pump.

Our fiberglass finish people, like Air (yes that's his name), will take care of those little variations of the surfaces of your aircraft to make it nice and smooth. Samay is bodyworking wheel pants. One of the major resources we expend is elbow grease with a lot of hand sanding to get the shape just right.

Mike designs control panels and spends some time in the machine shop making custom parts. He then assembles panels in the avionics shop, then installs them in your airplane out in the hanger.

Our chief mechanic, Shawn, inside a fuselage installing the heavy pins that hold the wings in place. Then he is pressing bearing races on to flap torque tubes. Something as simple as these torque tubes may require pieces or operations from four vendors and some we do ourselves.

Before bodyworking the wings we leak test them by filling them with fuel. It takes a long time to drain 70 gallons of fuel by gravity.

We provide finishing services such as final fiberglass work on your kit and installing windows.

Jan is an independent contractor that installs interiors in our aircraft. First she and her helper prepare the materials and sew up the seams. Here she is applying leather to the trim around the windows.

Click to see how our spring aluminum landing gear legs are made by Grove Aircraft Company.

Our Welding Shop is tucked into the wooded hills on a private airstrip.

Critical metal parts are Heat Treated to aerospace standards at PacMet.