Message #77

Date: Dec 02 1999 22:59:01 EST
From: "Mike Lund" <crafters@elgin.net>
Subject: Re: Fly Baby Fakers

Howdy Ron- I am in the same boat spar-wise, plus I get hit with 40%
exchange, customs, brokerage.... usual x-border joys, only to find the gouys
at customs have hacked it up to make sure it can't be used for furniture or
something (dont laugh--with the softwood trade agreement I've heard of it
being done. iddiots thought 12' was too long for a plane, so lets give 2x6')

I can get it locally at up to $65/ board foot for certified (nah, think I'll
pass).

 What I am doing is going with a mahog and birch built-up spar. A core of
3/4" mahogony, with laminations of 1/8" baltic birch ply each side. It adds
a bit of weight, but if you use the front and rear faces as datums and just
make the "innards" 1/2" shorter It should work out just fine alabiet about
6-7lbs per wing heavier (but $500-$600 cheaper!!!).
 --After pricing suitable softwood around here, I have a distinct feeling
I'll be using very little of it. Plane might end up a bit on the heavy side,
but I am a 165 lb beanpole, have been since 15 and likely to stay that way
so I can afford to splurge a teeny bit on the empty weight.

Besides, 1/2 the fun is the fiddling with it ;-)

Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: william hunt <angelsonmysix@yahoo.com>
To: FlyBaby <FlyBaby@listbot.com>
Date: Thursday, December 02, 1999 10:04 PM
Subject: Re: Fly Baby Fakers (was Fly Baby vs. Volksplane)


>FlyBaby
>
>Hey Everybody, New member here. Anybody from
>Massachusetts or New England please chime in. I have a
>finished fuselage and am about to start the wings. Two
>questions 1. aircraft Spruce wants almost as much to
>ship the spars as it is to buy them, lots of boat
>shops out here would they possibably carry spruce that
>would fit the bill? 2. Looks like my best buy on an
>engine is an O-235c, am i looking at a weight problem
>(I am building exactly to plans,I think it looks great
>the way it is). Hey that Volksplane looks excellent!
>
>--- Ron Wanttaja <ikvamar@gte.net> wrote:
>> FlyBaby
>>
>> Frank Stutzman wrote:
>> >  What are the interface difficulties you mentioned
>> > in your note, Ron.  Rigging aileron linkages are
>> the only thing that I can
>> > think of that would be that much of a headache.
>>
>> The main one I was thinking of was going from a box
>> spar (wide) to a
>> plank spar (narrow).  Unless you come up with some
>> massive kluge that
>> joins the plank spar to BOTH the front and rear webs
>> of the box spar,
>> you'll have to just connect it to one web of the
>> forward spar and one
>> web of the aft spar.  Access to the end of the spar
>> pin is complicated
>> by the box, unless you make a long enough spar pin
>> to go through both
>> both the webs in one spar.
>>
>> Matching the airfoil shape will take a bit of work,
>> too.  The front spar
>> is a bit forward of the maximum thickness of the
>> airfoil, which would
>> make it a bit easier than if it was right at the
>> thickest point.
>>
>> Finally, if you project the box spar all the way
>> through the cabin,
>> you'll see that it needs to occupy some of the space
>> currently used by
>> the control stick and linkage.
>>
>> None of these is unworkable (after all, there has
>> been at least one such
>> Fly Baby built) but could really, REALLY slow up
>> your building process
>> as you try to solve these problems.
>>
>> Ron Wanttaja