dpaton

There's also still PLENTY of room at the state campground.

The way I understand it (purely theoretical, my only experience with UV and composites is on boats) is that if the bird is properly finished it should be just fine. Unfortunately, if there us UV damage to the structure, I'm not sure it's detectable without destructive examination, either with a test-to-yield method, or cutting it up and making section coupons for microscopic evaluation. Delamination can be tested for with a quarter and some tapping from what I understand, but a weakening of the structure....doubtful.

 

Hopefully someone with more know-how will step in and correct me if I'm wrong.

I know of a couple that have been tied down outside for 10-20 years that are still 100% flyable. The wing connectors in the Long are completely different from the ones in the Vari that caused so much grief. Have someone who knows the canards intimately give it a once over. Beagle (David Orr, the Canardfinger) can probably hook you up with someone very fast, and might even know about the plane. He keeps up on an amazing amount of information about the canard community.

Depends on what your existing fiel line size is. To match the filter, you should be using -8 AN fittings and line. If you want to match to what I think you have already (-6 AN) you should order the 1/4"NPT version of the filter.

 

The real question is, which size is right for the fuel flow for your engine?

 

-dave

AN and NPT aren't measurement compatible. One deals with ID, the other with OD. See this link:

 

http://216.242.145.16/products/content_p.phtml?pk=68

 

-dave

It's tight, but still a lot better than the back of a Warrior. My 6'4 frame is mostly leg, so I wasn't surprised by the size. I had a blast in spite of my foldedness though, which is what really matters.

Glos was kind enough to humor me with a ride today after work, my second ever, and my first in about 12 years. We've been chatting over email and here on the forum for months and months now, but today was the first time we found ourselves meeting in person. He's a very nice guy by the way. His Long-EZ was backed out of it's parking space around 6:30p and after a short bit of time to troubleshoot the intercom and my headset (not compatible it turns out) we were heading up into the wild blue yonder (off at ~65kias!). On the roughly forty minute flight (? ...I lost track, I was having too much fun) we headed WSW for a while, and I got a little stick time, making gentle turns like I've been practicing in the sim (X-plane). It was, as I've been told, lighter and easier than the pretend version, and I was impressed with the lack of additional control required (roll to the side and breathe on the elevator and you're turning). His bird is 20iish years old, and still flies like a dream. The return flight was uneventful, except for the news chopper that kinda cut us off in the pattern. Once we finally got around to landing it was nice and smooth, and life was good.

 

The downside? Yeah, that back seat isn't designed for someone who is 6'4....but it wasn't bad at all.

 

Thanks Rick, I won't forget today any time soon.

 

Pics are here

Super jealous...that place is bigger than my entire house, including the garage.

 

Good luck!

 

-dave

You guys want to contact the Beagle:

 

http://canardfinder.com/

 

-dave

No madness here Tony. The clearance I was talking about was the inside distance between NG30s, relative to the width of the nose gear. Of course, after I posted it, I remembered you're doing a custom nose gear, so you can make the gear fit the bay without any trouble. I only asked because Glos related the story of installing his new electric nose gear, and he had minimal clearance (1/64" or so). His retrofit was complicated for other reasons, but the clearance was tight enough he had concerns there too.

 

Roofing, siding, and concrete are the only things I don't do in large quantities, and my house needs all 3 of them in the next 5-7 years. I'm debating how I can afford $50k in house repairs, not even considering yet how to do it while working on a plane. Not my idea of a good time.

 

The RAF template work I'm doing is to unify the sheets into single documents. One or two for airfoils, one for each bulkhead, one for the other stuff. Right now there's a lot of cutting and taping one needs to acomplish to get the templates together. I'm aiming to fix that, and at the same time, fixing the image skewing and distortion that's present in all of them. My own version will be a modification of those. See the OpenEZ thread for more of my plans.

 

-dave

Heh...an Arrow spinner hmm? Excellent MacGuyverism...sounds like something I'd do. No foam and glass yet. Trying to balance home repair (roof & siding) with plane needs. Still planning on doing the canard and the wings before the fuse...since they won't change much, and the tub will be modified (extensively?). Right now I'm saving for Featherlite cores and a worktable. It's a sloooooow process, but I'm OK with that. Even if I'm not making plane parts every day, I'm saving a buck or two for the DP-EZ fund, planning things out on paper, or trying to get those damn RAF templates to cooperate so I can add the changes to them.

 

It's slow, but steady. I'll be building something before you know it.

 

Headed to OSH? I'm dragging my dad along from the 28th-30th this year.

 

The new bulkheads look nice. One question though. How high up onto the inside of the NG30s are you going to run the glass from the bottom of the fuse? I can't imagine it'll be fun to do the whole thing....and what about the clearance from NG30s to the nose gear?

 

-dave

Tony-

 

That looks really nice. I might ask to crib your CAD templates for the OpenEZ if you keep this up. Toooooo sweet. And Smooooooth.

 

Are you going to carve out the very end of the nose, or leave it intact? How about the pitot tube? Just curious thoughts running around my head as I stare at your pretty pictures, dream about my own EZ, and reread the PPL PTS again.

 

-dave

Randy-

 

Since I'm the one doign the template stitching, I guess I'll answer here.

 

The template distortion is very real and very noticable, especially on the instrument panel, since it has a larger number of alignment points than any other template. The template files I'm working from have been compared to RAF originals, and the distortion is present in all checked versions. It's due to the way that copying technology worked back in the late 70s, before precision digital printing made its way into the mainstream. All template sets have distortion. As for the TERF CDs, there is some distortion in those, mainly in the scale of the drawings. If you print out the pagfes full-bleed onto legal paper, you'll see that the templates in the plans stack are slightly smaller than required. It's a fact of life...we're dealing with unlicensed and unblessed plans, and trying to build something new and better from them. There's lots of DIY involved.

 

The template status is...well...static. I've been swamped with work for the last few months, and I just haven't had much time to work on them. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things this summer, and produce something real before the end of the year, but it's a volunteer effort and subject to the whims of my life. Tony has done a masterful job of documenting his various mods with CAD drawings, and in the mean time, his stuff might be a good educational tool.

 

I don't have original templates, but the ones that are remaining similar to the originals will be compared by someone with more access than I have. Some of them will be changing a lot, especially since the eventual 'final' version will include things like a longer nose, and perhaps a width adjustment and a length stretch, to help accomidate the larger/heavier engines (O-320, Mazda, Turbo Subie, etc) everyone seems to be using. Feel freee to continue this thread in the OpenEZ area...since that's where the discussion of the project really belongs

 

-dave

http://canardfinder.com/

 

Beagle is pretty much the accepted master of canard trading in the US.

In my experience, you need to find the right person at your Kinkos. There are a half dozen regular folks behind the counter at mine, and I talked to them all before I got the guy I talked about in the other thread, the geeky kid who was totally into the idea of a DIY airplane, and took some extra time to ensure that everything I wanted printed was correct. It still won't be cheap, since I believe that the printout needs to be made on 36" paper stock, or there abouts, but I'm sure it can happen.

 

Unfortunately, all I can offer is that, since I haven't printed my copies out yet.

 

-dave

I was just curious if anyone had heard of this before.

Without seeing Burt's original master drawings, I don't think there's any way to positively know what the airfoil was supposed to look like. I've done some pretty careful analysis of the printing distortion from the templates I have access to, and the changes are decidedly minimal from what I believe is the original master, but without an accurate master to compare it to, I'm guessing.

 

Dave R. may have had access to more than I do, so I can't reliably refute that claim, not do I want to.

 

Does anyone have an accurate drawing of the Berkut wing profile that they could share for comparison? I'm only asking out of curiosity. I don't want to build a Berkut, but I am curious to get to the bottom of this. Any profile will do, as long as I can match it up to one of the templates I have.

 

-dave

Jon Matcho said:

I have never heard that before. I understood that changes were made specifically to address flight characteristics. I heard this 2nd or 3rd hand as well.

That could be quite possible as well. Like I said, it's all heresay. The official news of the new wing design for the Long (CP23 I think) only included that it used a mod'd Eppler 1230, and that the sweep was much less than that of the Vari.

Jon Matcho said:

Very much looking forward to your updated drawings to incorporate into the next scheduled Open-EZ revision (#6). There are several other minor modifications planned (cosmetics), which are outside of your work, which I look forward to releasing. I'll have to merge in with your work, but no problem. Take your time -- I'm in no rush, and everyone already has the ability to begin building an Open-EZ.

Indeed. My mods are mainly for convenience I think. There have been thousands of planes built with the templates as-is, and they fly just fine. I just like the idea of one part, one drawing a little better.

That said, Tony has already done the work once, but those aren't nearly as Kinkos friendly as the PDFs are

My going will continue to be slow for another month or so due to daytime job commitments. I've given up on my original target dates, and now I'm just working to completion. I think I'll be releasing the unified drawings one set at a time, so that there is some progress to be shown, and hopefully so that folks can get what they need when they need it. The IP will likely come last however, since it's the very worst in terms of distortion, much to my chagrin.

-dave

To the best of my knowledge, the mod to the Eppler 1230 involved flattening the lower side of the TE and a few other tweaks to make the airfoil easier to construct on a flat bench in 2 car garage. The benefits on the plane were secondary and minimal. Of course, I've never seen an offical report on this from RAF, so consider it 2nd and 3rd hand, and as reliable as the game of telephone was when we were all kids.

 

 

The airfoil templates underwent some distortion in the copying process, and have been distored on every single Long built since 1979 (along with almost every other template sheet), except those that took the time to calculate the distortion and redraw the airfoils completely, as I am (very few builders I'm guessing).

 

As it stands right now, the biggest component of the distortion, by an order of magnitude, is a small change in the length of the taper to the TE, and is well within the range of builder tolerance. My taped together airfoil prints are cut apart and reassembled, and are currently hanging on a wall in my garage under a sheet of vellum to be redrawn onto new paper for rescanning when I stop working until the wee hours every day here at work. The difference, aerodynamically, between my redraw and the plans airfoils will be insignificant, and my reasons for working on the airfoils are purely in the interest of completeness (they're one of the easier parts of the template concatanation to do as well). The flying character of the wing will be unaffected.

 

-dave

Cool... waiting patiently...

I've been slowed significantly with some insane work hours recently...I havent' seen the sun in a week or two. It should be letting up soon...I hope...

 

-dave

Can anyone help me with this.

I haven't ordered parts for mine yet (still working on the unified templates), but AFAIK, the Wicks parts are the 'right' ones these days. There have been more than a few chances to the composites landscape since 1979, and these are the results thereof. I'm unconcerned. Wicks has been providing these parts for a very long time...I trust them.

 

You will want the decimal tape measure from the Cozy Grrrils tool kit though.

 

-dave

I can see the TE of the rudder...if that guy without his shirt on would just move, we'd be able to see the whole thing.

 

-dave

Fair enuf, guess I'm wrong again!

No worries, I'm wrong at least 3 times a day, which is why I try and quote a specific source with every statement of important fact I make. Plus, it makes searching for posts easier ;-)

 

-dave

The designer flies his with no rudders, I just like having another dimension to flight with the RC's (knife edge)

Looking at the size of that V-tail, a standard 2 servo mixer would mock elevator and rudder motion without any trouble for most things.

 

That said, knife edge with a V-tail will be tough no matter what. I had a .60 powered stick model that would do everything under the sun but that. I swapped the V tail for a T and it did knife edge too. Just my $0.02.

 

-dave

Erm, not sure this is as per the actual history......Long-Ez was the same as the definitive Vari, with the option of 'high performance' rudders (as in bigger and more rudder-looking) as per the Cozy plans version.

By the time the plans were released, that was true. When it was originally built, the Long had a rhino rudder and Vari like swept wings. After the initial flight testing there was poor control in all 3 axes, and the wings were completely rebuilt with the Long style attach (the original had Vari style wing attach points to go with the Vari-ish wings) system and with the new profile and sweep. Rudders were put on the winglets and the improvement was marked. The report appeared in CP23, page 2, 1/1980. Relevant portion below.

 

-dave

 

The original configuration of the Long-EZ used VariEze wings placed out on a centersection spar that was 4 ft longer than a VariEze. The wings were swept more than a VariEze to support the heavier engine. It had Rhino’ rudder on the nose and no control surfaces on the winglets. That aircraft 79RA, was built in four months in the spring of 79 and made its first flight on June 12, ‘79. It did not fly well. Directional stability was weak. Dihedral effect was excessive. Adverse yaw was high. Roll rate was sluggish. Early airflow separation on the wing caused pitch instability at low speeds. The stall speed was too high.

During the next five weeks, N79RA made 51 flights, testing the effects of over 30 different modifications. Modifications included many configurations of wing leading-edge cuffs, wing fences and vortex generators. The winglet "can't" angle was changed. The ailerons were rigged to various neutral positions. Some of the changes resulted in improvements in pitch stability and lateral-directional flying qualities.

However, we were unable to improve the stall speed, landing attitude and roll rate to a satisfactory level. By August we were convinced that to get the Long—EZ we really wanted, we would have to build an entire new aft wing.

The new aft wing, first flown in October 79, had the following improvements:

(1) Less sweep

(2) More area

(3) A new Eppler airfoil similar to that on the Defiant.

(4) Longer ailerons.

(5) Improved winglet juncture to eliminate airflow separation at wingtip.

(6) Overlap—type wing attachment to centersection spar, allowing incidence adjustment and eliminating the expensive fittings.

Well, tried already is a misnomer...it was tried and discarded because on the real aircraft it was tried on, there were a lot of problems with aerodynamic performace.

 

The advantage to a fully pivoting control surfact is that it can provide more control authority for a given amount of deflection. For something way up on the nose, I'd want as much authority from as little deflection as possible, for visibility reasons. For your model, you can probably go either way.

 

Out of curiosity, can you post a pic of your model? I'm curious what kind of canard has a V tail, and why it would need more yaw control, as the canards we fly here need almost no rudder in most turns.

 

-dave