Aaron

is a window cleaner, I think any ammonia-water based glass cleaner will do for this purpose.

It's still utested. The DeraKane is tricky stuff. it's pre-promoted, and I've been having trouble getting working times longer than 20 minutes or so, thats a little short considering I'm winding carbon tow by hand... Oh yeah, I have about 6 pounds of carbon tow (Hexcel 12K) if anyone's interested in playing around with it.

John, The renesis is intruiging, but you have to build in a certain amount of caution when getting specs from mazda's marketing. The power quoted (250 hp) is at 8000 rpm. These engines are very linear in power output, if they're anything like the other engines in the 13B series. Stock you'll have around 190 Hp at 6000 RPM. Of course the turbo will add some back, but there are other considerations you'll need to worry about. One thing that worries me is the idle. In the past, Peri-port engines have been very tricky to get to idle properly, which is why they're used in racing applications where Idle doesnt matter. Mazda solved this with some new engine management software, it may take Tracy some time to duplicate that. The other thing is availability-Every street racer out there is trying to get their hands on a Renesis, all I need to do is order 2 rotors from Mazda. By the time I'm ready for it I hope these concerns will be addressed. I'll be looking to your plane to solve some of the more basic concerns of fuel delivery , cooling, and anything else that crops up (like how to implode a strake, you never know when that skill might come in handy Anyhow we should take this out of the coffe house before the ol' timers start calling us nuts again

John, you stole my idea Actually I hope to use renesis rotors for the same thing, they're about 1.5 lbs lighter. That may not seem like much, but in terms of rotation energy at 6000 rpm it's huge. Less stress on the bearings, apex seals, and stationary gears. Of course, I'm not 98% done So whens the first flight?

Turns out those renesis numbers are still a bit flaky...I'm about 75% sure of the compression ratio and about 90% sure on the rotor weight.

For the rotary engines: Year| Engine |Compression |Rotor weight Non-Turbo 79-82 12A 9.4 10.15 lbs 83-85 12A 9.4 9.60 lbs 84-85 13B 9.4 11.58 lbs 86-88 13B 9.4 10.04 lbs 89-91 13B 9.7 9.54 lbs Turbo 87-88 13B 8.5 10.04 lbs 89-91 13B 9.0 9.54 lbs 93-95 13B 9.0 9.54 lbs Lifted w/o permission for Atkins Rotary website: http://www.atkinsrotary.com/enginepart.htm Renesis is 9.7:1 and the rotors weigh in at approx 8.2 lbs

John that was a fluid mechanics course you're trying to remember. The theromodynamics course was where you learned that air/air heat exchangers are big, inefficient and heavy, compared to water/air systems

Cat's Meow is running a MT prop from Germany,500 hours so far on it, owner seemed satisfied. Had one problem at first, the blades had to be shipped back to Germany to get the problem fixed. MT now has a facility in florida that can service though. I have no idea as to the cost. It looked like it had been cut down (square ended blades)

While pretending to work I've been surfing around, looking for Canard websites and such. Every so ofter I find one like so: http://www.ecobb.net/for_sale2.htm showing a flying cozy for sale in the $100,000.00 range. Now I understand all the arguments that it's worth every penny, and I agree. My question is- are there buyers out there at that price level? Does anyone have any idea how long these stay on the market? Does the market fluctuate wildly or is it steady? TIA, Aaron

Don't keep us in suspense! How'd it go?

I spent Friday out there instead of Saturday. I talked at length with the builder of Cats Meow...Interesting stuff. Sorry I missed you. What did you think of Cat's Meow?

at least it wasn't plaid

It looks like there are tiger-stripes on the fuselage sides, what causes that?

Yes the RX-8 has a new version of the Wankel-Designated "Renesis" for the RX-8 While the published HP is 250, it's important to note thats at 8500rpm. Most aircraft-conversion guys (crook et al.) suggest not redlining the engine and running at a more conservative 6000 rpm. Unlike most piston engines the Rotary has a very sloped power curve, almost a straight line, se we can estimate at 6000 rpm the renesis makes around 176 HP (non-turbo)- not all that much more than the old school RX-7 engines at that RPM. The engine is lighter, and stronger than the old engine making it an interesting candidate for an airplane. But they've made some very interesting changes in the intake of the engine, I'm concerned it will be hard to run without some special programming (as other periph. port rotaries are hard to idle) As to the smoking- it wouldn't surprise me, If they've succeed in getting a harder material for apex ands housing, they could burn less oil.

Reminds me of some fun I had driving back from college. my car had a tendency to overheat, so I'm driving through Arizona at 110F all the windows down and the heat turned on high. When the heater core blew, water and glycol coated the inside of my windsheild, while my legs were being scalded. Luckily I was able to put my head out the window so I could continue to see the road. Make sure that heater installation of yours is bulletproof, John. It might just decide to go on you when you're on final, and that could really ruin your day especially if you and char fly naked.

AS&S sells "Promoted Derakane" basically it's resin premixed with promoters, the only thing you have to add is catalyst. How much catalyst is hard to find out. I started with 80g of Derakane 411-350PA, and added 2grams of catalyst, to make a tiny flat layup for testing. resin was originally at 85F Note: all temp readings done with an infared noncontact thermometer. My garage was around 90F, humidity was about normal for Houston. My first impression was "wow, this stuff wets out SO much easier than aeropoxy" My next was "Hmmn, the cup temperature is 110F.. I should hurry up." 30 seconds later the cup was at 140F and had solidified. Total working time was about 10-15 minutes. A few minutes later the cup reached 270F, and eventually it peaked at 280F. Lesson learned-it takes VERY little catalyst to work with Derakane PA. Tonight I'm going to test at 1g catalyst /100g resin too see what kind of working time I can get. My eventual goal is to have several test strips made of 6 layers of BID. I'll post cure them to different degrees to see which ones can retain shape under a fixed load at 300F. This would make a great science fair project for anyone with high school kids...

So once you get them in the family room, what then? Cut an 11 foot wide hole in the wall? Congrats though, that's quite an accomplisment (the planes, not the hole)

10 amp fuse? That some serious heating! Was the 10 amp taken from product specs or was it a guesstimate? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it works fine, I'm just curious what the real current draw is.

A race is the way to settle this

From my smoking days 1/2 cig is roughly 4 mins, thanks for the insight (yeah I should've bought your hair dryer...) So with the hair dryer, no more tiny bubbles?

I'll post a pic tonight, but I did my first layup this weekend, just a simple 6 ply BID layup to check technique. Rutan's book says it should be 10.5 -11 Oz, anything heavier and you're adding useless weight to the plane. my first one checked in at 11.5, so I have some work to do. My question is this-how do you get the dang air bubbles out? I'd stipple and stipple and stipple, but it only seemed to add bubbles after a point. should there be _NO_ bubbles at all or are a few acceptable? the bubbles are less than 1 mm across. There are no white patches of glass. Any thoughts or tips would be appreciated.

My vote is for a new thread here though.

So hows everything look, any obvious gouges in the housings, are all the seals where they should be?

Mount the engine on the stand, and use that chain trick to hold the flywheel in place as you tension the puller. 1) use a tap to chase the threads in the flywheel, than make sure you thread the bolts all the way through the flywheel. Use grade 8 bolts if possible. 2) Tension the puller up to the most you can put on it using the breaker bar. Since it's mounted to a rolling stand, the way I did this was to put one foot blocking the stand from rolling and then I would pull the breaker bar towards me 3) with the tension on it, whack it with the biggest hammer you have. Not just once, you want the flywheel "ringing" when it breaks it will jump 2-3 inches One more thing, go to the autoparts store and ask the oldest guy there what the best penetrating oil is. They used to sell one made from whale oil which was fantastic, but all the whales are gone now Getting a better penetrating oil will go a long ways I think.

On the EXHAUST side, yeah you're trying to retain heat,because as gasses cool their pressure drops, and the amount of work you can get drops as well. On the intake side, you do everything to get it cool, despite the turbo's work of compression heating things up. I don't know what youre saying about heat differential. The intake charge is heated because it is compressed by the compressor wheel. The goal is to make sure theres a higher density gas flowing into the engine, thats all. If you assume PV=nRT, your goal is to decrease the V term. you can do that by decreasing the Temperature, increasing the pressure, or some combination of that. So, like the old McDonalds sandwich, you keep the hot side hot, and the cold side cool, got it?