Earthstar Forums

High guys, I just posted a picture of Fred's stabilator tips that he gave me at Sun-n-Fun. They fit quite nice, and were painted when I painted the wheel pants and spinner. The plane looked so cute this summer at our Arlington EAA Fly-In that I won a champion E-LSA plaque that's hanging in the hangar now. With the full engine cowl, it looks faster than it is, even on the ground. Now all I need is Fred's rudder tips and I will be "full dress".

kb

Kess,

Your plane is beautiful. Can you tell us a bit about the products and methods
you used to get such depth and gloss? I'm guessing that it's not Poly-Tone,
which is what used on mine.
 Dick O'Reilly

Thanks Dick, the paint looks better in photo's and at 20' away. The plane is painted with an automotive Poly-Urethane. The plane had been painted for a couple of years when I bought it, so when I was getting ready to paint the engine cowl, spinner, and pants, I took a sample down to an automotive paint supply shop, and they scanned it and mixed up a small batch. I used a touch-up small spray gun, and learned to paint again.

kb

Hi Kess
Thanks for posting the pictures. Your plane looks great slippery as an eel!I have the rudder tips in mockup and will make parts this winter when I make all the changes to my JT2.
I was wondering? Some of the nay sayers at our field say that flying from grass can cause problems with pants. Clogging up or building up with mud dirt grass etc. Any truth to it that you know?
The nay sayers don't have pants..but you know how opinions go.
I like your big spinner. Do you have any before any stream lining data like cruise speed and how it compares to all your streamling speeds now?
That would be interesting.
Thanks
Fred

My I posted a while back of the incremental steps in gaining more airspeed for free. The biggest gain was in the complete blending of the rear wing-root area to the fuselage. That one gave me 7mph more indicated. The wheel pants have helped about 3mph more. The engine cowl and spinner don't seem to have added anything. I'm just one for enclosing engines for looks and less wear and tear of weather.

By the way, Mark still has the mold to build a 503 engine cowl, and it's probably cheaper buying his, than inventing one from scratch. I bought mine as a bare bones fiberglass shell, and adapted it to my Gull. It was designed for the JT/JT2 airframe, and in the Gull 2000, It bottomed out on the top of the engine, with 2 1/2 inches left to go. I modified it for my plane and installed the hinge. The monster spinner was given to me by my hangarmate, and I had to re-work it for the Ivo prop.

kb

Oh, about wheel pants. I think only mudded out rutty strips would be hard on pants. The up side is that the wheels can't fling up small rocks with the pants. My runways are mostly paved. If I was going to a back country flier, I would take off the pants and put fatter tires on, still gotta watch them rocks, though.

kb

My field is a desert mix of sand and rocks, and I mean rocks! Anywhere from
quarter-inch to two or three inches, although we do a pretty good job of
grooming those out of the way, and they are easy to see and avoid.

I think a flat sheet of aluminum maybe 8-10 inches long running straight back
above the mains beginning at or just ahead of the gear leg would do a good job
of deflecting rocks away from my prop and hopefully even the leading edge of the
horizontal stabilizer, which suffers the most damage.

I haven't tried to design a deflector and mount yet, however.
 Dick O'Reilly

If you happen to catch the weekly "Flying Wild Alaska" on the discovery channel, you can see some interesting things on the back of the wheels of their Cessna's. It's a simple thing to keep rocks and snow clods from flying into the elevator.

kb

There is also a crop duster tv series and their one plane has a kind of a mud flap looking thing.
Fred

That's it! Mud flaps, I almost forgot. My first ultralight had no belly, and my feet were the brakes. After getting my crotch wet everytime I flew in damp weather, from the nose wheel, I decided to build a mud-flap. It just went in trail at cruise, and lowered again when I landed. Now imagine one on each side of our trusty fliers, and that would certainately keep some munge of the stabilator

kb