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emteeoh

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Everything posted by emteeoh

  1. Is composites canada the place in toronto on the queensway near islington? Assuming I am not confusing names... I would be carefull with them. I went in and spoke to them, and didn't get the feeling that you would necessarily get what you ordered. If it was close enough for boats, he wasn't going to put in the effort to make sure it was right for planes... That was my impression, at least.
  2. See... that's not at all what I hope to do, nor am I interested. Building an EZ is a long task, and there is alot of information that you need to incorporate into the existing plans. For example, there's about 80 newsletters from RAF some of which include changes that Burt felt were critical safety issues. Products such as the epoxy Burt used have gone off the market, and people have started using others. There's how many years of CSA newsletters to read? And so on. A new builder needs to read as much of all that as he can stomach, and then he can start building, even if he wants a "per-plans" plane. And although people are generous and share everything they've learned, its still alot of places and alot of reading to do. To me, what I hope to do, is share what I collect in one place, a sort of CP/CSA/C-A@yahoo/etc precis, and then incorporate it all into the plans, so that later new builders can just go and read the plans and build. The moment you start talking about changing the length, the size, etc, you've lost me. I hope that the builders before me will be willing to critique my summaries of what they did. That'll be my "committee"... I hope.
  3. Oh good. I thought it was just me.
  4. paper is sooooo last century. These days, its the structured orientation of a bunch of iron molecules.
  5. I would have thought that any "air pressure built up under the fuselage" would be a good thing, as it is lift, while air pressure in front of the canopy is parasitic, so using it, if you can, seems like a good idea.
  6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegemite#United_States_ban_rumour
  7. http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/RotaryEngineCertificationEyed_200088-1.html
  8. emteeoh

    Split-Kits

    I think most velos are built with a centre stick and the throttle quadrant on the pilot's left, which means the co-pilot cannot completely fly the plane on his own. To address that, some builders are doing side sticks and moving the throttle quadrant to the centre of the plane, or you can buy the yoke option and move the throttle to the centre of the plane. I understand that the new option from the "factory" is basically a riff on a builder's design, but don't quote me on that.
  9. emteeoh

    Split-Kits

    Velocity is now offering split kits. I had a little trouble getting details about it once I heard, and its not up on their website, so I thought I'd share the highlights from Ken Baker's email: A word on the winglet kit: the Winglet kit was developed as much as an introductory kit as it was an integral part of the finished aircraft. We feel that offering a winglet kit offers many benefits to the potential Velocity builder as a "first sub-kit." First off, it's a relatively low cost item - so you can get your feet wet and find out if the project is for you without fully committing yourself financially. Beyond that, the construction methods used in building the winglets are easily mastered and are indicative of many of the steps that will be used later on in building the kit. The kit was developed to be as user friendly as possible. We include a Michaels Engineering epoxy ratio pump, all of the epoxy that you will need, fiberglass, pre-hotwired winglet cores, winglet NAV antenna, coaxial cable, micro-balloons, mixing sticks, mixing cups, brushes, an instructional DVD set, Builder's Manual, and a Velocity Logo hat. The sub-kits are broken down for the XL as follows: 1. Winglet Kit: $950 2. Canard Kit: $2900 3. Left Main Wing Kit: $6250 4. Right Main Wing Kit: $6250 5. Fuselage Kit: $24,850 Fuselage Kit Options: >Retract Landing Gear: $9000 >Fastbuild Fuselage: $9000 >Dash-5 Package: $3500 6. Fuel Strake Kit: $5000 These prices do not include crating or shipping charges. Each sub-kit price is subject to change at any time. That is, as price increases effect the full kit base price, the sub-kit prices will be adjusted accordingly.
  10. cozy1200 did pretty much the same thing. IIRC, he has videos on his site.
  11. A few things to say: 1) a wiki would kick ass. I'd contribute, if only as another way to familiarize myself with the plans. Between a 7-week-old baby boy and a start-up, my attention span is about 10 minutes at a time. Perfect for editing a wiki, terrible for building in the only workshop available to me 20 minutes away. 2) I'm unhappy about my contribution to the discussion of copyrights. Marc, I don't think that continuing that debate is a useful way to spend your (or my or anyone else's) time. Given that neither of us are lawyers (AFAIK), its a battle of midgets, so to speak. That is to say I wish I hadn't brought it up, and I'm trying to leave Marc with the last word on the subject. 3) Raiki: I love your chapter 4. Did you integrate the fixes I pointed out? I'm also curious if anyone thinks it violates Burt's copyrights. 4) Aiman commented about the time it would take to make the video project. I don't think it has to be long, relatively speaking. For example, this summer, Jack had an unfortunate fire, and is now building a new e-racer. Given my limited knowledge of the e-racer, its very similar to, but more complex than the Long-EZ. Jack's build started in about August, and he expects to be flying, approximately, in june. He's said that he works 25 hours a week on it. Imagine if he'd just had someone shadowing him with a camcorder and mailing a tape off once a month to a video-editing-volunteer. 5) SAF: I really like the idea of even just creating an errata document: for each step of each chapter, have a summary of "best practice" changes, hopefully with links to the source of the idea. 6) Owning a copy of at least the TERF CDs should be barrier to entry. Even if someone had updated all the plans, etc, I still would read the originals. 7) Bruce: there are different licensing terms that could be arranged. If the open-ez project truly doesn't violate TERF's rights, and the authors want to give it away for free download... well that doesn't mean that the authors couldn't also authorize TERF to be the sole party able to commercially re-distribute the results. (See the Creative Common's licenses for examples) Unfortunately, I don't know how to do a non-profit, collaborative effort with a product that must be purchased from TERF, unless TERF controls who participates. They could host the wiki and sell login IDs I guess.
  12. copyrights... I'll point out that I am not a lawyer, I am an IT professional who, due to activity in the OpenSource movement, learned more about patents and other forms of intellectual property than he ever wanted. Take the following with a salt-lick. I've been chewing on this overnight. When I get down to it, I don't think the Long-EZ plans actually are copyrightable. Ideas and process are not copyrightable, only expressions are. So chapter 1 is clearly copyrightable (its mostly a description of the beauty etc of the plane) but chapter 2 (a bill of materials) is not. 3 is probably copyrightable. 4 onwards are a recipe more than anything. (I do think the templates are copyrightable, though. So really, we've got the conversation bass-ackwards.) However, I also think the argument is moot. Open-EZ'ers need the support of the community to succeed, and if the pilars of the community think that the Open-EZ'ers are thiefs etc, no matter what the legal arguments might be, then Open-EZ will fail. Pissing off Marc is a bad way to start. Vortal, we can redo the manual. Its a process question: 1) if we try to just update the plans a little, we'll run into the copyright argument, which will never end until it goes to court. 2) We can write it, in our own words, step by step. 3) someone could video tape the entire constuction and release a video-manual. (I'm thinking about doing this. Chapter 3, at the least, on youtube would kick ass, IMHO) 4) We could explore ways to preserve the copyright. Call TERF and work with them. Or maybe call aircraft&spruce. They have the rights to the cozy plans. we could, with their co-operation, make a cozy mk 0.5 or something like that.
  13. I have no first-hand experience with them, but judging by what I've read in some of the rocket builder blogs (armadillo and unreasonable rocket), the DGPS'es are not terribly reliable, and VERY noise and vibration sensitive. AFAIR, both ultimately scrapped them in favour of gyros.
  14. Its been a while since I played with them, but as I recall, you could isolate the two radios using a simple circuit called a hybrid. They used to use them to build telephones. It is, as I recall, 3 coils of wire around an iron core (ie: a transformer, more or less). In the telephone, its set up so that signals from the line go to the speaker but not the microphone, and signals from the microphone go to the line, with a weaker signal going to the speaker ( so that you have some feedback as to how loud you need to speak). Anyhow, as long as you can find some info about its design, it should be a simple part to obtain, or at worst, hand-wind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_coil
  15. I realize its not a huge improvement, but I just watched an annoying avweb video in which someone (David Nubio is what it sounded like) from RR said it used 24gph. So a velocity XL with the optional fuel tanks (giving it 93gallons) can actually get almost 4 hours if you burn your reserves. Also, it weighs about half as much as a io540. That's all close enough to useful that I wouldn't be surprised to see someone trying to put one on a velocity in a few years. And besides, we've already seen both a velocity and a cozy with a jet engine (not to mention rockets). This actually seems a bit more practical than that.
  16. SAF... As I understand it, the canadian laws won't require that you *DO* the parts that are permanently enclosed, but that they be inspected by the MD before they're permanently enclosed. And ignore the 51% rule: that's an american thing. I still don't get the canadian rules, but my impression is that you really just need to be involved in the project. Some people would have you beleive that if you act as a project manager, thats enough. Of course, I am not a lawyer, nor am I a builder, so take everything I say with a bucket of salt. Also, you should see if there is an RAA chapter near you. You might be able to find a few interested people there. I went to one brampton ON meeting, and there were (IIRC) 1 VE builder, 2 LE builders and 2 or 3 LE flyers. Given that the room couldn't have had more than about 30 people in it, thats a good percentage. You might get similar numbers in your local QC chapter.
  17. I doublechecked, and I think I misunderstood one thing about them: it doesn't look like they require a deposit for a pre-order! Not so shady, *and* it makes the sugardaddy scenario (or something like it) likely.
  18. Do not confuse the following 2 statements: "They have not sold a single engine." "They have not shipped a single engine." They have been in business for a long time. And if they were completely dishonest people, they would have dissapeared ages ago. If they were completely honest people, they would have closed up shop, appologized for wasting people's time, and possibly declared bankruptcy. Unfortunately, they are in between, and so have little to show for the money raised, but probably have little left to spend in maui.
  19. Just saw this on the velocity mailing list: Brett and Elizabeth Ferrell made an unscheduled landing on a road in southern Indiana. They both are fine and the airplane has some damage to one wing. They were on their way to Rough River when they lost oil pressure and the cabin filled with smoke. I am overjoyed that Elizabeth did such a great job handling the emergency and I thank God they were unhurt. I am sure Brett will fill us in as soon as he gets a chance. Dave Bertram N350TX
  20. check in the velocity builder's forum (tvbf.org) or just call velocity and ask about it. There's some installation photos on velocityXL.com wiki Velocity's website is still being revamped after the buyout, so the online store is missing lots of stuff.
  21. Also, what kind of plane was it? It looks like it might have been an early velocity...
  22. Does that mean your pants are in a knot, or chucks?
  23. Updates from Armadillo! http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=361 There's photos and some videos of the first few flights.
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