Category: mechanical

Wheeley Casters

You want my wheels?
For What?
I’ve turtled the buggy twice. once on smooth surface and once in softer sand. Both times the wind was under 10 mph and it would have been an easy reverse. Until I have mastered the three wheel reverse I’d still like to fly.
So…

I’ve designed a prototype set of wheeley casters for the trike buggy.
One inch aluminum square tube clamped to the bottom of the frame.
3/4 inch square aluminum strut inserted and pinned
The wheels are very light blown plastic toy wheels.
When the conditions warrant I can put them on in 2 minutes.

I look forward to trying them out.



Improved foot steering

The skies were ugly this afternoon so I used the time to try an idea I got from Johnny Fetz.
What I did was add a pulley to the foot steering line. It increases the travel by 50% it also increases the friction but I don’t think it will be a show stopper, I can hardly wait to see how it flies.

I had an e-mail conversation with Alex Varv yesterday he is sending me a set of filters for the airbox. NO CHARGE! Nice Guy.

Added some length to the tubing on the bungee holding the bottom of the air box to keep it away from the offending nut.

Flight 198 & 199 Props strikes netting again

It was raining last night and cool today but the skies cleared by mid morning and at 5:30pm I was loading the rig. At Simms it was 60 degrees warm and sunny with little or no wind. I set up quickly and started a normal inflation. I believe the wing was up and stable when I heard that Tic Tic Tic sound which I’ve come to recognise as the prop cutting my netting. I probably should have aborted but the ticking stopped almost as soon as it started and I couldn’t discern any problems with the motor. As soon as I had started my turn to clear the wires, I looked up at the wing and back at the cage to check for problems. Sure enough the Port top quad was cut. I could see a little loose line but the grid was intact so I figured that I wasn’t in immediate danger of the line wrapping into the hub and stopping the motor. Never the less I didn’t stay up long I turned back to the truck and killed the motor just prior to touching. Nice glide and even nicer touch down. I checked the play in the motor and it seemed a little sloppy but the mounts were tight. However when they were “pulled it seemed like it was a little too stretchy. Good for a rubber band but certainly not as stiff as the new mounts I’d ordered with the frame last week. At least I can dismiss the idea that my frame was already damaged when I cut the net at Snow Mountain Ranch. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll replace the motor mounts and restring the cage.

I cut the lines away and launched again. Nice flight…I did some more low passes and flew most of the time with the trimmers out to keep it sporty. Landing was dead stick from about 100 feet Damn it feels good to fly without the the motor!

Big number 200 here I come !

getting it all back together

New frame looks and fits great.
Prop was near horizontal with three washers on bottom 2 mounts
cleaned up choke,throttle lines with twist split plastic
4 hours to mount engine.
Found and repaired tears in the screen on the air box filters.
Fitted piece of fuel hose over nut which was abrading the filter caps.
Removed battery and had to zip tie switch panel because there are no holes in tubing for battery.
Andy McCavin might not make it due to storm

Grounded Again!

When I landed in the bog the stress from stopping so abruptly, tweaked the rig. It’s possible that the tubing was compromised before I took off and thats why my prop got into the netting. I’m going to show it to Vince the welder but I’m 99% certain that it’s time to replace the frame. There is a noticeable bend in the horizontal and three welds are needed to just repair the obvious tubing damage.
I was able to take the motor off in 2 hours and even if it takes 4 to put it back together I could possibly be back in the air by Friday.
Needed stuff:
1) FB simonini frame
are the velcro straps at the bottom already on?
Pulley for the pull start?
2)Convex nylon washers
3)All new rubber motor mounts

New Strobe

Now that its warmed up I’ve been flying later and later in the day and really should be using a strobe. But…I only need it when I need it and I hate to have equipment hanging on the rig “just for show”I found a strobe thats priced right ($20) and installs in 10seconds. On my FB cage it can be clipped right into the netting andwith a couple of zip ties it could go just about anywhere. I’ve flownit two hours with no visable wear on the netting.Made by Leland, USCG approved and sold at West Marine its designed tobe attached to life vest with a very clean stainless steel clip. Ituses one “D” cell battery.It is visable for slightly more than a 180 degree arc so to get maximum visability you might want to use one on each side up and down.
Here is the link
http://www.chiefsupply.com/Flashlights/Specialty/60610#features
Photos to follow

171

The jet was 155 and the motor was bogging down. If felt ok in the driveway but I could tell during lift off that I didn’t have the power. So it’s back to the 150.
First sunset flight in Colorado this year! I didn’t stay up long because of the motor but the air was good. I did one touch and go before calling it quits. I just didn’t feel right with the motor missing.

#170

What a day
Blew first two launches. I was trying to use the prop wash to build a wall and it absolutly wasn’t working for me. The wing came up hard to the left both times and I was unable to react near fast enough to get under it. If I had tried to turn hard enough to follow the wing I would have been 30 degrees …or more…off the wind. On the second muffed launch I managed to do a slow mo tip over. (NO DAMAGE).
Third try I walked the wing back and re-set properly. I went back to giving myself a couple of feet of slack and this time when I started the roll the wing came up easy and I was able to stableize it with just a little brake input.
House Keeping:
1. change jet back to the 155 and see if the plug changes to the right color of brown.
With out bogging down at the top end…
2. install garmin antenna.
Race number 1 of the summer series is going to be my throwout race.
I blew it at the start starting with the B fleet. John Sieb was helm and I don’t think I helped him enough. Very high winds steady from the North gusting to 20+knots. Two boats capsized and the new Freedom 24 went down with one man missing for 20 minutes. It’s resting on it’s keel /dagger board with the top 20 inches of mast above the surface. Everyone is ok and the paramedics delt with the guy who was swimming….So all is well.

85 Titan

High Humidity and low cloud cover. Nil winds
Taxi was a little long with one take off bounce, but the wing was well centered and so was the buggy. I stayed low below the clouds probably 300 to 400 feet. The whole area over by the marina was socked in. The new exhaust is quieter and the whole unit feels stiffer somehow.
After the flight I was feeling nostalgic and walked around the field to the site of my last foot launch . The crash site was very apparent with bits of cage and tubing scattered around. I picked up a big piece of sun bleached prop and took it home to hang in the shop as a keepsake.

Last Chance before the Salton Sea

1/13/06
Loveland….No Fly Day

We got to the field about 9:30am and watched Brian assemble his trike because he was having trouble with the electric starter on regular motor. Once it was all together he launched and came right back down due to turbulence. I had purchased a small canister of helium from Sam’s Club so we launched a pilot balloon and watched it duck and weave all the way up to 500 feet where it caught a northerly current which quickly pushed it out of sight. Doug and Brian had business in Fort Collins, so I was left at the field with Barton George to wait for the afternoon flight. Barton had driven up from Colorado Springs where he was a pathologist at Fort Carson Army Base. Like me, he was a new pilot and full of enthusiasm. So full of enthusiasm, that he could not stop talking about it. He showed me the devise he had invented to balance his propeller and copies of articles that he had printed off the internet. Nice guy, but the nonstop hanger stories from a pilot with less than five flights was starting to get on my nerves. Eventually I decided it would be a good time to work on the carburetor. Big mistake, when I tried to fire up the motor, the pull cord broke. There was nothing to do but take off the starter and repair it. I’m always intimidated by machinery the first time around but nobody was going to fix it for me, so I undid the harness and dove in. Expecting it to explode into a cloud of parts and springs like the first time I’d opened an old camera, I was delighted to find it was a relatively simple mechanism. I did put the Pawls in backwards and had to redo it, but other than that little goof, it was back together and ready to fly when Brian and Doug returned.

Barton was the only one to fly that afternoon. I remember his landing because he came down within five feet of the truck and the way he flared caused the wing to turn slightly causing him to do little dance on touch down. To his credit he stayed on his feet. When it was my turn I just couldn’t get up. The first time the wing came up crooked and I aborted. The second time I stumbled and went to my knees with the wing collapsing on top of me. The third time the motor died when I started to run so I packed up and drove home frustrated.