History

This beautiful sport aircraft, was built by Craig Cook, a professional machinist, welder, and fabricator. Craig is a business owner, with more than fifty years designing and manufacturing sports equipment for the bicycle and golf industries. The build took twenty three years, but the result is worth the time.  Upon completion of the first test flight, the professional test pilot said it was the best home built he had ever flown.

During the 40 hours of testing, we were happy to find out that she flew very straight without any aileron imputes at all. Overheating can be a problem with this design, but we had no such problems in steep, long clime outs in the neighborhood of 3500 feet per minute Initial rate of climb. Large oil cooler, tight engine baffling, and piston oil squirters all helped to keep temps reasonable. At gross weight you can count on being at pattern altitude on the crosswind.

The fuel capacity is 29 gal. per wing. These are the largest tanks Harmon offers, giving the Rocket in excess of 4.5 hours of duration at 200 knots cruise. The six cylinder IO-540 engine burns slightly more fuel than the typical four cylinder engine, but at a higher air speed and a very smooth 2340 RPM cruise. The constant speed prop is balanced at this RPM.  The engine is balanced as well, including spin balancing the crank shaft on a special balancing machine.  The test technician ran three IO-540’s on the same day and commented that this on way by far the smoothest of the three.

The exhaust is modified with the tail pipes having ball joints added on both sides. This reduces the tendency of the tail pipes cracking and breaking over time.  The ends of each pipe are turned down to reduce the noise along the belly and reduce exhaust deposits.

The baggage compartment extends aft one more bulkhead from the stock arrangement, to allow for longer cargo such as a fishing pole or gun case. It also features a dome light which is handy at night. The interior lighting is dimmable with separate controls in front and back cockpits.  There is a specially designed vent in the tail to suck air and heat out through both cockpits.  The rear cockpit has rudder pedals, stick and throttle as well.