Hotel Mike flyby!

If you can excuse the running with the camera in the beginning..... This video is the only time I have seen the airplane from the ground. I had no idea what it even sounds like. Sure takes a lot longer to turn around than the Cub did.

Enough building - Let's Fly!

With almost 40 hours of flying on the airplane I rarely have to take the cowling off anymore.

The airplane is an excellent design. Absolutely no problems related to the airframe or flying ability. The stability tests were a breeze.

And fast? I learned not to get behind a Cessna in the pattern. You'll be doing 360s.

After flying a J-3 Cub for decades, I expect climbing to be work. Not anymore. Catching a sunset from 4,000 feet is a ten minute job.

If you've ever built an airplane before you know: After a few hours of flying the hard endless hours of labor and struggle and brainstorming are difficult to remember.

Prop Balancer

Only 10 hours of use and the prop had to be refinished! Even on clean pavement the nose wheel kicked up a lot of stuff until installing the nose wheel fender, which works very well. The only drawback was that pushing the plane backwards causes the nose wheel to swing 180 degrees. Not anymore. The fender gets in the way. But I still recommend the fender.

So now, with all the repair work, is the prop still in balance?

The whole deal with a prop balancer is arranging a center hub that fits the prop center hole securely and rides on two 'knife edges'. Turns out to be simple. I used 1/8" aluminum plate, but 1/4 " plywood would do. The trick is putting the 1/4" steel rod snugly in the center. For this you need a lathe. Sorry. Don't even try this without a lathe.

Both discs fit OK, but still, four small pieces of 1/8" masking tape on the edges made it fit nice and snug.

Now the steel tube rides on 1/2" aluminum tubes mounted on wood. All this is scrap you've got laying around from building the airplane. The aluminum 'rails' have to be perfectly level and parallel, of course.

The amazing thing is to watch the prop balancer work. Just set the prop in place and stand back. It moves all by itself, slowly and surely, until the heaviest part is at the bottom. Lead weight is seen above taped to the light side temporarily until the prop no longer moves by itself. Then a small hole is drilled in the hub and the lead set inside and finished with a glued in wood plug and varnish.

This setup is so sensitive that you MUST close all doors and windows to avoid any drafts. A coat of varnish on one blade will make a noticeable difference.

WHEEL PANTS

The airplane isn’t finished until the wheel pants are on.  Heat issues require leaving them off while taxi testing and on early flights, but now that that’s over……                                                                             Sam James seems to be the best name in wheel pants.   My Cozy pilot neighbor, being the racing type, actually removed a perfectly good set of wheel pants to install a set of Sam James, so they must be good.

    The instructions clearly say to solve any wheel alignment issues before fitting wheel pants.  I tried a laser but a string seemed to actually be easier and quite accurate.  The plans say you can heat and twist the landing gear.  I say that’s fine if you know what you’re doing.  I chose to remove the axle, put a glob of flox behind it and slowly re-tighten the axle bolts just until alignment is correct and let it harden.  Later, replace the bolts that came up short with longer ones.

Cutting holes is unnerving, but you can repair your mistakes.  It’s fiber glass!

Instruction are simple enough.  Build this jig.  It all comes together, but there is no end to cutting, fitting, sanding…  you know the drill.

These pants are designed for the Long EZ.  You even get a choice of wheel/tire size.

The fairing starts with clay.  I traced the teardrop outline on the pant surface and start pressing clay into shape. It’s really very simple.  Glass it when you are happy.                                                                                It was my personal choice to split the fairing so that it is completely removable.  Some day I’ll be grinding into the gear leg to replace the brake line. This requires a third mounting point.  You have two mounting points on either side of the axle.  The third I had to invent without drilling into the landing gear,   thus, one more nut in a glob of flox on the landing gear.

The rest is body work and painting.  The plans estimate of 25 hours installation time seems about right.

Cabin Heat – Forward airflow

The elevator torque tube, not being concentric in operation, means a large opening in the fuselage up front and cold feet.  Here's my solution.  It seems so simple.                                                    

First seal the entire canopy with soft, open cell foam from the hardware store. The canopy has no problem closing and it’s air tight.  Next, get the cabin air flowing forward.

This is a fuzzy shot of the torque tub opening.  I have fared the hole back so air tends to flow out, not catching and blowing in.  The canard then gets a small set of fairings to divert air away from this hole. 

A small NACA duct under the wing feeds air to the oil cooler and 60 percent of that air goes into this plenum and  is piped through the firewall with a butterfly valve controlled by the GIB via push-pull cable.

Scat tube takes the hot air to the front opening of the hell hole.

A piece of 1 inch foam board forms the seat back which has a U channel cut so that heat comes up and into the cabin behind the head of the GIB.  Heat could possibly be fed into the hell hole and allowed to find it’s way forward at a lower level. but I’m not sure heating up the landing gear is a good idea.  This picture also shows a second seat back specially built for the little lady, who seems to be shaped differently than a man. The principle is the same. Fiberglass reinforces the foam where necessary.

The key is in the  fairings under the canard.  I made a set out of aluminum and duct taped them on to experiment.  They are about 4 inches long and keep air from slamming into the  elevator tube.  Even before fairing the hole I had warm air around my feet.  No cold draft at all. Now I’ve made them officially out of fiberglass.

Nose wheel Fender

With only 11 hours on the finished airplane I’ve had to refinish the varnish on the prop once already.  Granted, I’ve done a lot of taxiing, but the nose wheel is famous for kicking tiny pebbles up into the prop.  So while the fiberglass is going, we build this.

Proper spacing is corrugated cardboard covered with duct tape and glassed over.  The fender has to go all the way around until it almost touches the ground.  Then all of this has to fit in the wheel well when the gear retracts.  And it CAN NOT bind on it’s way down!

Exhaust Augmentation

  

I don’t understand how Long EZ pilots keep temps down while idling.  There is very little air flow for cooling before take off.  A few have used exhaust augmentation and it seems like the solution.

Mine consists of  an aluminum heat barrier around the exhaust pipe. It is 20 inch wide flashing rolled into a cylinder and riveted.  Foam spacers keep the pipe concentric. What diameter?  Double the diameter of the pipe seems right.  That makes it slightly larger than the intake diameter, which is ram air.  These cylinders get glassed to the lower cowl and spacers removed.                                                                        Lastly I will glass over the aluminum and fare it into the lower cowling.                                                          Theoretically, the main opening should now be sealed off!  I’m going to have to experiment with that.

Downdraft Cooling Plenum Finished.

The finished product. The cowling slides right on, the dipstick is air tight and so is the plenum. 

To access the spark plugs requires removing the plenum lid, a ten minute job.

The difficult part of down draft cooling

It would have been easier to form the plenum lid from foam and cover it, I think.  My way required going back too many times to strengthen edges and create the mating surfaces.  Note the ridge on this opening.  When the top cowling lowers into place it must meet this face.  Hopefully sealing can be accomplished with a bit of weather-stripping.

The real difficult part is getting the cowling on over the dipstick in such  a way that it is air tight.  The thing is just IN THE WAY!!  Finally, I shortened the dipstick tube 1 1/4 inches.  Now I can fiberglass right to it and it is down out of the flow of air.  Again, the upper cowl will have to join these surfaces in a tight fitting manner… somehow.  I’m sure somebody knows a better way to  get air from the cowl intake to the plenum.