On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 lindo@Radix.Net wrote: > >I may be taking Dave's design and > >incorporating a center section with Ryan STM style landing gear. > > I would like to hear more about that idea. Would this involve stub wings? > The Ryan ST serese has always been a fovarite. Well, thats about all it is right now - an idea. And probably not a good one. Wouldn't be my first, though ;-) Yes it would involve stub wings, pretty much as suggested by Bowers in section 9 of the plans. Bowers suggested 9" stubs (as measured from the fuselage). I'm currently noodling with 24" stubs in an an attempt to increase the wing area to keep the wing loading not too far from the original design. I would also like to do away with the compression strut that bower suggests, but I think doing so would mean making the center section honking strong (its gotta support flight loads as well as the g stress of a bad landing), and extra honking heavy. I've got some back of envelope sketches of the landing gear attachment fittings, but need to get a real engineer to look at them. I think that right now they are WAY overbuilt. In order to do this right means some real work. I'm going to have to get a proper engineer to critique it. And before I trust my butt to it, I'm planning on putting a full size mock up of the landing gear and center section though a test to distruction series. Like I said previously, none of this is going to happen any time soon. Frank Stutzman Hood River, OR