Q-talk 41 - LETTERS

Details

Category: Q-Talk Articles

Published: Tuesday, 31 August 1993 07:11

Written by Jim Masal

Hits: 2490

Dear Jim,

As always, I am late responding to your orders for renewal. However, as a result I have thought of you more frequently of late.

As a pilot of an Onan-powered Quickie internally I may be jealous of those who have all the extra power of the Rotax at their command. However, externally I seldom let that show because I don't want to spend the money to change a reasonably good deal. As you know the Onan has provided good service and as much power as it can. In December I went for a ride, 17 degrees F, and immediately thought I had the turbo charger version! It climbed like a rocket!! All I have to do is fly more in the winter. Flying qualities are excellent in cold weather. Even the cockpit is comfortable if you have a little sunshine. I left some of the clothes in the car.

Advice to those that have the option of flying in thick air. Do it, especially with the Onan. Along those lines, if you have doubts about how to complete your plane. You might be asking yourself, "Should I put in the Onan or buy a Rotax?" My answer is that I think the Quickie does very close to what is advertised, 400 feet per minute climb at sea level. So, if your climate, weight, and flying needs allow some caution the Onan will get you in the air and keep you there. I have lots of fun with the power I do have.

Postscript: Another month has gone by and I've had another chance for a ride. Every one is a great time!! At this time I need my bi-annual flight review. I hope the Cessna survives. It's like driving a Model A after driving a sports car.

Talked with Terry Crouch last night. Sounds like he will run out of excuses this summer and should be flying. I'm sure his plane looks spectacular. He mentioned you have something to get you around the countryside besides the Toyota. Congrats!! I look forward to the new stories that are bound to follow!! He also mentioned that he had recently received another newsletter. I have to get this mailed before the year is over. See you in Oshkosh ....

Charlie Lipke, La Crosse, WI

Dear Jim

Just wanted to let you know I'm still up here in the cold country. Haven't flown the Quickie much this winter because of the crummy weather.

I decided to pack up my spare prop so that in case I have an exceptionally poor landing I can call home and have the wife ship it to me so I can get home. I then came up with the idea that somebody else might get themselves in a similar fix and could use my prop. There are very few of us Rotax drivers so a prop would be hard to come up with on short notice. Here's the deal.

I'll ship my prop to anybody who gets stranded due to a broken prop if they'll pay the shipping and ship it back when they get home. The prop is a Warp ground adjustable with a Rotax hub and it's 46" long so it will work with the small wheels. Crunch my prop and you buy it for $150. Seems simple enough. If you think this is a good idea, go ahead and put it in the newsletter. My telephone numbers are (308) 352-4174 home, 352-4409 work. If you have a spare prop of your own, pack it up now so the wife can ship it to you when you need it.

R. Bounds, Somewhere in Nebraska

Dear Jim,

Thanks for putting on another great fly-in. You and Spud really do a great job. I also enjoyed getting the award for Best Quickie. That's not exactly what I was calling the little beast when it quit on the trip home. Maybe I should tell you a little more about the trip home. Crummy weather as usual. We took off (Hardy and I) early Sunday and headed west for God's country. About an hour out of Ottawa my bird got tired of the low throttle setting I was using and checked out on the front cylinder. Needless to say, it got my attention right away. Ellsworth was about 10 miles away and I managed to get in there on the 20% power I had remaining. Works out to about 400 ft per minute descent on one cylinder. The two guys working on their plane there got a charge out of my glider demo. Anyway, I changed plugs and launched again. I have this suspicion that 100 LL is not the ticket for a Rotax. I've been running it exclusively this summer and am getting terrible plug life. I'm going to go back to unleaded premium auto fuel and see if that helps. So, on with the tale. Hardy and I continued to Hays with my motor not running too great but OK. We had to land at Hays due to the bad weather so I took the opportunity to tear down my engine and de-carbon the pistons and rings. Took about 2 hours using some borrowed tools and reusing the same gaskets. I'm sure the locals thought I was nuts, tearing down my engine on the grass at a strange airport. Maybe they're right. We finally gave up on getting airborne about 5:00 and got a motel room. The weather looked a little better Monday so we rolled out the little birds and launched again. I circled the airport to verify my shade-tree mechanicing abilities and the Rotax ran fine. We flew west a little more together and then split up to head for home. I ended up dropping down through a hole and landing in Colby to wait on better weather and spent about four hours there. Pretty soon, here comes Howard, can't get any farther west than Colby so we eat dinner together again. Nice airport and nice people. After dinner, we took off again on our separate ways and this time I made it home. The weather was down to about 800 ft and rain at home but I slid in. Howard spent the rest of the day getting home to Denver and visited every airport on the way to either wait for weather or buy gas. Jeez, but flying is fun. Next year when Spud starts crowing about the nice weather he provided for the fly-in I'm going to throw some food at him. Any lessons here? First, watch the 100 LL in a Rotax. Second, de-carbon the pistons, rings and ports every 50 hrs. (I was overdue.) Third, fly high (10,000') if you drive a two-stroke, it ain't no Continental.

Robert Bounds, "Frantic Flyer"

Dear Jim,

Well, here's my dues for the year. I know I'm a little late but here it is. A few things have changed since you heard from me. The best is that N858LD is flying and flying well. First flight was on July 7, '91. What a thrill it was to fly that plane for the first time. I wasn't planning to fly it that day, but after 10 hrs. of taxi testing, I lined up with the runway for another taxi run and just didn't pull back on the throttle but pulled back on the stick instead and lifted right off the runway for the thrill of a lifetime. After about a half hour the oil temp. climbed to red line so I came in for a landing. Corrected problem by opening three louvers on the bottom of the lower cowling to allow air to flow around the oil sump area. Problem solved, never climbs above 200 degrees even at 100-degree temp. Then came the vibration problem to solve. Know this took some time to solve. First I loosened up the engine mounts (they were too tight, no movement in rubbers). This help a little, but still not acceptable. Next I tried static balancing the prop by adding AN970 washers in place of the AN960's. This is what brought it in the acceptable range. It was a trial and error procedure. I have about 60 hrs. on the aircraft to date and love every minute of it. If only I had about 10 more horsepower. Who knows what will happen in the year ahead. Those Rotax installations sound real tempting.

Lawrence Brunet

Hello Jim:

May I express the usual accolades for the continuing great job you do for us builders. Don't give up the ghost just yet, I have a few more years of building to do.

I believe the following suggestion was submitted years back but I think it may be worth mentioning again. That is the mounting of the vertical fin. The suggestion then and now is to mount it in the bottom half of the rear fuselage section before putting the top half together.

As we all know, the plans suggest cutting a hole in the top and dropping the vertical stabilizer into it and floxing the heck out of it. I wanted a better and more secure fit so I floxed and taped the bottom of the fin to the bottom half and then fit the top shell over it. (See photo)

Several advantages resulted. The first was the feeling that I had a better installation. Another was it was so much easier to route the rudder cables from the pedals all the way to the rudder. You can see the entire length to make sure you have the most direct line of sight installation for the cables. It also makes fabricating the rudder cable disconnect a cinch. I also routed my electrical and antenna leads at the same time.

Fitting the top shell over the tail is quite easy. Cut a hole big enough to slip over the top of the vertical Stab and then keep trimming as it slides down the tail. You can get a glove fit with it.

Going into year 12, but I am dedicated to getting another Tri-Q2 in the air in 1994. I hope, I hope!

Jerry Marstall, Fairview, NC

A real easy magneto timing buzzer can be made from a Radio Shack magnetic buzzer and an earphone. Get a RS 273-026 magnetic buzzer, a set of headphones and a 9-volt battery. Connect the headphones from the P-lead to ground so they are in parallel with the magneto points. Connect the 9-volt battery + to the buzzer + (red) wire and connect the negative battery side to ground. Then the negative (black) wire from the buzzer connects to the P-lead. Now, the buzzer will be buzzing all of the time, but in the headphones the sound level will be much louder when the points open. When the points are closed the sound in the headphones is almost gone. You may want to put the buzzer inside a box so the direct sound does not override the headphones. Almost any headphone set or earphone will work. However, the buzzer must be the magnetic one. The piezoceramic ones don't work well here.

I enjoyed the Oshkosh trip this year but I missed all of the Quickie meetings. I especially like the wine & cheese party of past years.

Working with the FAA regulations with this Mooney sure makes me wish it was an experimental.

Steve Whiteside, Ringwood, NJ

September 25, 1993

Dear Jim,

Here are a couple of tables that I made up from measurements taken of Q-200/Tri-Q's at Oshkosh (thanks for helping, Jim).

I wanted to determine if the angle of incidence between the flying surfaces, and in reference with the canard might have an effect on performance. I thought Oshkosh would be a good place to measure some aircraft.

As we all know, it is difficult to determine if we have installed the wings and canard in the correct position, and after being glassed in, is it correct? We are dealing with three components, the angle of incidence between the 2 wings, and their relative angle with respect to the fuselage. Since there are virtually no good drawings available in the plans, I needed to establish a reference plane (for field measurements), which I arbitrarily chose as the fuselage over the header tank, 9" aft of the firewall. This was named Deck Angle. The measurement locations taken on the wing and canard were also somewhat arbitrary. I was mainly trying to find a consistent place to measure from. These measurements don't have a direct relation with the plans, which state the Water Lines should remain level. Therefore these angles are only meaningful as points of reference.

Please note that the deck angle is not the same for each aircraft and this could be simply attributed to the fact that the ground was not even. (A better method would be to roll all of the aircraft onto a hard surface and measure in the same position.)

For measurements, I used a $20.00, gravity fed, Empire protractor level. I then measured the underside of the canard with the center of the level 9" aft of the L.E. and at butt line 24, for both the right and left canard. It should also be noted that since the ground was uneven it is certainly possible that a twist was introduced into the canard while parked and the discrepancy between the right and left canards should not necessarily reflect of the builders skills.

The wing was measured on the top at BL 30, and the level centered 9" aft of the leading edge. The speeds were the ones posted by the owner on the "Look All You Like, But Please Do Not Touch" prop card. Also keep in mind that these measurements may not have anything to do with speed. Certainly the engine condition, propeller, and streamlining are major factors concerning speed.

I'm going to leave the analysis of all this to the reader. I hope it might be useful to builders trying to determine if what they are doing is correct (or at least in the ballpark).

Sam Hoskins

RAW MEASUREMENTS

CORRRECTED TO DECK ANGLE 0?

¹ Old Canard & Revmaster
² Old Canard & Revmaster
³ Old Canard & Revmaster

Dear Jim,

Since this is my first letter to you in over five years, it should be no surprise that it is to offer my project for sale.

When I started building over twelve years ago, I was single and a student pilot. Since then my lifestyle has steadily encroached on all of my aviation interests to the point where I feel I should hang it up for a while.

Jim, you do a fantastic service to the QBA membership. You facilitate communication of good information that encourages safe flying and building, and you provide inspiration and motivation in a no-B.S. fashion. I have benefited tremendously over the years and hope that you keep at it until the last guy drops out.

Phil Bryan

Dear Jim:

As for SN 0229, I traded the Onan and some cash for a Rotax 532 and radiator. I had an engine mount fabricated, but then work came to a crashing halt.

Numerous personal changes (divorce, poverty, etc.) have given plenty of excuses to avoid finishing the plane. And, somewhere in there I picked up a new hobby - sailing - and, of course, the remains of a sailboat. Too many projects, not enough time!

BUT, I still plan to finish and fly this aircraft. Thus, I look forward to the input, edited by you, of the QBA membership. Please reactivate my name (enclosed is $20.00 to lubricate the machinery). From all of us: THANKS!

Respectfully,

Mark A. Pearson, Carbondale, IL 62901

You can order a PDF or printed copy of Q-talk #41 by using the Q-talk Back Issue Order Page.

• Prev
• Next