QuickTalk 29 - A POSSIBLE CURE FOR QUICKIE PROBLEMS

Jim Prell's creative mind has been at work again: Here's a possible cure for all the Quickie airframe and powerplant problems...Plus...a great deal of money can be saved by purchasing airframe parts, quite cheaply, from previously broken Quickies.

1. The tailcone is attached to your lower torso with one of the strongest and time-tested units available...suspenders. To prevent the angle of attack of the rear wing from changing, suspenders are liberally saturated with epoxy resin. Suspenders are then covered with 3 layers of UNI. EXTREME CARE must be taken that epoxy resin doesn't saturate the snap-links which clip to your belt.

2. The canard is fabricated by merely hack-sawing out the useless fuselage center section, which the owner probably broke in a rough landing anyway. Two four-inch OD pieces of T-6 aluminum tubing are floxed inside the outboard sections of the canard, and to these are attached a 1.5" diameter 4130 steel tubing handgrip, stoutly held in place by two pop rivets.

3. Due to the extremely simple engine mounts used, a great many engines can be thoroughly tested, but because of the intense vibration put out by some of these engines it is recommended that only people with false teeth use this type of mount (denture adhesive makes a superb vibration dampener...superior even to Kevlar).

4. The REAL advantage of mounting the canard as shown is this. Say you're doing a "normal" Quickie takeoff and you begin to notice (as usual) that you don't think you can clear that #$%^&* barbed wire fence at the end. Now, instead of just mentally flapping your wings, you CAN frantically flap your arms...,which may not do a thing to help your rate of climb, but at least you will have gained the moral victory of doing SOMEthing before you hit!!! A second and more important reason for mounting the canard this way is because you may fly into a light rain shower. When the canard stops producing enough lift to fly, you merely let go and rid yourself of this dead baggage and crawl back into the tailcone which, according to accident statistics, is the safest place to be in an aircraft crash.




You can order a PDF or printed copy of QuickTalk #29 by using the Q-talk Back Issue Order Page.