emteeoh

TMann, I read the exact opposite. Scott Baker, on the Velocity builder's forum, said:

Uli Christen and a friend were invovled. They were attending an EAA Pancake

Breakfast at an airpark near Titusville.

Uli and his passenger survived the crash - how, I don't know by looking at

the photos of the aircraft engulfted in flames. As of last evening, both

Uli and his passenger were in an ICU burn center in Orlando. Scott Swing

learned that Uli was no burned badly, but that the passenger has burns

covering 80% - not good.

Details are sketchy - we all know how accurate news reports are on this sort

of thing. Scott and Amy hope to visit Uli in the hospital today. Perhaps

we will learn more details later.

That was posted at 7am today.

I don't know that what they do in an RX-8 is a good indicator. People modding RX-8s are, I would think, likely racing. Racing is a good way to blow out any engine.

I've found stuff on the web (including youtube) showing how to make and use molds for fibreglass parts... But everything I've seen has NOT had the foam sandwich layer thing. How are molded parts made with foam and fibreglass, like the velocity fuselage? Are they using some kind of spray-on foam? Or maybe injection molded foam? ( I keep imagining them trying to use the foam insulation in a can...)

Is there any reason why you are not tracking the plane's designation? In the extreme ideal case, you'd have several thousand canards in this spreadsheet. I would think that without some description per line of "which plane" you'll loose track.

I use gmail, with messages forwarded to my blackberry. I seem to get emails within about 5 minutes on my BB. Occasionally it takes a bit longer, but never more than 10 minutes in my experience.

I should make a comment too. I'm in Toronto, but flying out of YKF, and planning to start building a velocity SE-FG in the next year.

Why does the Long-ez have to have two seperate fuel tanks and not have a setting for "both"? I can't think of any advantage to having only "left" and "right" selections and not a "both" so I surmise that it must be required by the design. What I can't understand is why.

I'm having a hard time finding the *GOOD* conversations on it, but there are several conversation on this forum about the fuel selector. The arguments in favour of a both setting seem to boil down to reduced pilot load. The arguments in opposition are basically that bad fuel from one tank cannot contaminate the other, and if one tank is draining in flight, you won't drain both tanks. (there is a posting on this forum somewhere in which this happened to an Aerocanard, IIRC. The pilot had forgotten to put back on the fuel cap of one tank, and both tanks bled dry as a result) Further, any attempts to address these issues just lead to increased complexity, etc.

ok, I've spent two hours looking, and I can't find anything other than:

http://www.canardzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3496

But I'm sure there are better threads on the subject.

Wilksch must be ahead of the others.

Bill Allen, made first flight in his Wilksch powered long eze on saturday.

I dunno about that. DH has been flying a DH-powered Velocity for some time now (I think its almost 2 years now, but don't quote me on that). But one flying plane does not mean they have a reliable and manufacturable engine.

Of course, I dunno who Bill Allen is. If that's a customer, nevermind me.

Yeah, not trying to be rude to emteeoh, but the optics and lens provide enough of a challenge.

But the difficulty is the reason for looking at alternatives. Although I certainly studied optics in university, its not something I would consider one of my strong points. Software though... I can do that! Why make it tough when I can make it easy? (also known as "when all you've got is a hammer...")

we have the EFIS to do the job (which ever one we select)...the trick is to DISPLAY the image in HUD format and get a nice clear image...

I'm not sure you do have the EFIS. Not all EFIS have an extra video-out to attach an external screen, most need to be mounted with a particular orientation, and none of them are, AFAIK, specifically designed with output that will translate well to a HUD. To get a nice HUD, we are likely going to need to do some fancy foot-work somewhere. I see 4 general options:

1) Find an EFIS where we have sufficient customisability to choose colour-schemes, and probably eliminate some info so that the HUD is readable and not too cluttered.

2) Try to correct for the non-optimal colour-scheme using optics

3) try to correct for the non-optimal colour-scheme using electronics

4) build our own EFIS.

i just thought of a way to possibly eliminate the brown and the blue. what if we overlayed a green colored "gel" infront of the EFIS. this is essentially a green filter (transparent green plastic) that is used to color spotlights, etc.. anyway, this would try the displayed image completely green.....

Why not just use a monochrome screen? Are you hoping to eliminate the artificial horizon?

Mine is 3 disks too. Disk 1 is all the plans, disks 2 and 3 are all the CPs.

Software is lighter than optics!

If the art is kept simple enough, and monochrome, I don't think resolution will be terribly important.

OTOH, there would be no need for a calibration system, and the CPU would not need to be as powerful, meaning less power drawn, cheaper, etc.

You could reflect an image off the canopy (using it as the secondary reflector/beamsplitter) but in order to do that, and still have a square image, your primary reflector would need to be optically matched to cancel the distortion that the canopy would cause.

 

If you write your own system... Most graphics systems render the image into a flat viewing plane. You could, instead, render it onto a non-flat viewing surface, so that the image that is displayed on the LCD panel is distorted. If you get the distortion correct, the final image that the user sees reflected off the non-flat canopy will be square. Such techniques are used in good VR helmets, because they use one panel and a big lense to display both whats in front of your eyes and whats off to the side so that users have proper peripheral vision.

Indeed I have! 2 ideas:

1) The BM EFIS/1 has a VGA out, last I looked. Mount a bright panel facing up, and then mount a prism over it, and you have something pretty close to whats done in a military jet, from what I know. Ideally, you'd want to eliminate most of the colours used and go with some very simple high contrast line art for the HUD... If I can't get that out of BM, there's alot of resources on the net for making my own EFIS. I'd just rather not re-invent the wheel.

2) The eyetap (www.eyetap.org). I think the design Prof. Mann uses lacks resiliency if the computer, lcd or ccd fails, but I think that's some minor changes to fix. The eyetap opens up more possibilities for synthetic vision, I think, but having never actually used one, I have a suspicion that it only working on one eye might be disorienting in some circumstances.

Personally, Unless your left handed, I would seriously think twice about this. You may be solving the problem of being able to write, but when your not writing, your now stuck with having to fly a plane with the left hand which has less dexterity than the right.

 

Is this such a big deal? I'm learning to fly in a katana, and am flying with my left hand at all times. I'm only ever tempted to fly with my right hand on the stick when doing the downwind checks.

According to this, DreamWings went under in 2001.

It seems to me that there is a fair number of templates and jigs that you'll want... I wonder if its worthwhile buying the plans now, and working on all those jigs well in advance... I won't keep you busy for a year, but a few months at least...

In the pic you can see the ''pitot pal'' receiver as the little black object frontmost. I favor this pitot over others as one can remove the actual pitot tube part and keep people from stepping on your pitot tube when parked nose down. The other two pics are showing the removable tube. With a removable tube you can pretty easily make sure the thing is clean, at least the business end. I will buff out a couple of these so that they look like chrome & have a couple spares in the map pocket.

How easily does that tube fall out? Are you not worried about that tube falling out and ending up in the engine and/or prop?

[RE: BRS]

Possible. No one has installed one in a COZY (yet), and certainly not tried it.

 

If you're really interested in building a COZY MKIV, you should join the COZY mailing list.

IIRC, I've seen some discussion recently on this forum about what would be needed to be done to a cozy to make it safe to deploy a BRS... It kinda sounded like a lot of effort if you didn't want the BRS to just rip the plane in half.

OH, this is my BAILOUT CHECKLIST

 

1) Pull the throttle to Idle,

2) Kill the mags

3) Mixture to Cutoff

4) Loosten Lap Belt and Remove Shoulder Harness ONLY

5) Pull knees out of panel holes and tuck up into chest

6) Duck Head and shoulders as low as possible, Release Canopy Latch

7) When Canopy is OPEN or Cleared, release lap belt and JUMP UP as hard as you can out of the seat.

 

I guess the people putting the canopy hinge at the front of their cozy will have some difficulties with #7...

So basically it is probably better to just keep the aircraft nice and slippery and forget about the ram air intakes.

 

Most modern supersport motorcycles come with some sort of ram air system. I guess it must be a marketing gimick.

i don't think its that simple. The hayabusa really does generate alot of HP at speed. Many a racer has *complained* about the difficulty of dyno'ing the hayabusa, in my experience.

That said, I should also point out that car!=motorcycle!=airplane. They're solving different problems, and in different environments. YMMV.

... but it really does sound like you should make a slippery plane and forget about the ram air intakes.

The 540 differs from the four cyl versions in that the cups for the vibration mounts are on the engine ears rather than on the engine mount.

You would not be able to bolt directly to the engine.

Just as an FYI, here's a post Andy Millin made to the velocity builder's mailing list today:

I am using a parallel valve IO-540. It has come to my attention that Lycoming makes two different types of engine mounting brackets for the 540 series. This includes the K series, 300 HP.

 

 

 

The dynafocal 1 mount uses Lycoming part number 70456. $369/ea. new from Lycoming. This mount has a 30 degree rake angle and a mounting hole 1.380 I.D. This is the mounting bracket that Velocity has designed their tubular engine mount for. Velocity also includes the Barry mounts for this bracket in the kit. If you are planning on using the Velocity install kit, you might want to make sure you have the correct brackets.

 

 

 

Dynafocal 2 uses Lycoming part number 72306. $473/ea. new from Lycoming. This mount has a 20 degree rake angle and a hole 2.000 I.D. Different size, different geometry. You can’t just buy larger Barry mounts and bolt everything together.

 

 

 

From what information I have found, the brackets were specific to the aircraft installation, not the engine model. So, you can’t just say IO-540-C4B5 and be guaranteed you will have the correct brackets. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. You need to check.

 

 

 

As there was a possibility of having the wrong part, my luck held. Ha!

 

 

 

I have spent the last couple of days working on getting the 70456 brackets. I have spoken with G&N, Mattituck, Wentworth, White Industries, Don George, Aircraft Specialty Services, Colorado Air Parts, Reno Aviation, Air Parts Inc, etc… I bet I called 15 different places.

 

 

 

A couple of years ago this was a non-issue. Engine building shops had ample supplies of both types and many were willing to do a straight up swap. Well, times have changed and the RV-10 happened. Van’s engine mount is designed for Dynafocal 1 and they have been soaking up the available supply. If a shop has them, they are not eager to give them up. They have plenty of the 2”, 72306.

 

 

 

I was very fortunate to speak with Derrick Slack at Penn Yan Aero. This wonderful man was willing to make the exchange with me. I did get the distinct feeling that he might not be able to make the same trade in the future.

 

 

 

FWIW, A.E.R.O. now makes a billet version of our 70456 mount. Non-PMA, experimental use only. Looks great. $93.75/ea.

 

 

 

Maybe Velocity will look into offering Dynafocal 2 in the future. Maybe people are moving enough to the Continental that this is a non-issue???

 

 

 

Another note just for general knowledge:

 

 

 

Velocity provides the Barry mounts 94110-02 with our install kits. Barry lists this as the mount for the 300 HP IO-540s. They list the 94110-01 as the mount for the 260HP IO-540. First, I had every confidence that Velocity sent the right mounts. But, since another part was listed for the application I figured I would like to know the difference. I wrote to Barry controls. Here is the reply:

 

 

 

-------------------------

 

 

 

To answer your question, the spring rates of the two isolators are similar and dimensionally they are identical. The major difference between the two parts is the rubber used to fabricate them. The 94110-01 is a natural rubber isolator, the 94110-02 is a butyl rubber isolator.

 

 

 

Natural rubber has better tear resistance than butyl rubber, but butyl rubber has a higher temperature limit than natural rubber.

 

 

 

I hope this has been helpful, please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

 

I'm having trouble with this whole ears thing. I mean, it seems to me that they're mounts for mounting the engine to the engine mount.

Would it not be saner to build the engine mount to hold the engine sans ears? At the least, its like 4 less bolts to fail.

Lynn- I knew the mounts were important to make sure they were included as part of an engine "deal" for that 250 dollar reason...but didn't know there were two different types of mounts.

Are the Lord mount 'dough nuts' the equalizing part here? Or are there different Lord dough nuts for the two types of 540 core mounts. What are the names for the two diff mount arrangements?

Girrrls. What are the mounts that you are building to?

Velocity mentioned absolutely NOTHING about this- all they wanted was to know if it was a parallel or angle head engine....so I am glad this surfaced. I need to have everything match obviously.

Sorry to ressurect this tangential conversation, but check out http://www.kal-soft.com/velocity/weblog.asp?pic=1207 . It looks like Andy Millin is running into this very issue with his IO-540.

Compare these images with to my shop as it was when I first started:

 

this sorta reminds me of the before/after ads for weight loss. You haven't lost that much weight, you're standing straighter, and wearing clothes that are too large for you! That shop isn't messier, its poorly lit!

uhhh ..... more like this:

 

yes, that is a linear slide rule. My point is that this is a slide rule too:

AFAIK, its pretty standard to teach all pilots how to use one. Thus, basically all pilots know how to use a slide rule, or at least they were taught how to.