Today's Message Index:
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1. 03:18 AM - Re: Elevator trim tab travel. (Stephen Behn)
2. 05:27 AM - Lightning Homecoming and Fly-In (N1BZRich@AOL.COM)
3. 06:36 AM - Shortened wingtips (Bill Strahan)
4. 06:40 AM - Re: Shortened wingtips (Bill Strahan)
5. 06:43 AM - Re: Shortened wingtips (Bill Strahan)
6. 06:45 AM - Re: Shortened wingtips (Bill Strahan)
7. 06:48 AM - Re: Shortened wingtips (Bill Strahan)
8. 06:51 AM - Re: Shortened wingtips (Bill Strahan)
9. 06:55 AM - Re: Shortened wingtips (Bill Strahan)
10. 07:15 AM - Re: Shortened wingtips (Bill Strahan)
11. 07:20 AM - Re: Shortened wingtips (Bill Strahan)
Message 1
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Subject: | Re: Elevator trim tab travel. |
Nick
Thanks for this info. hope you all enjoy the home coming.Id love to come, m
aybe one day!
regards
Steve Behn
Lightning 69
----- Original Message -----
From: Nick Otterback
To: Lightning-list@matronics.com
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2012 1:15 AM
Subject: Lightning-List: Elevator trim tab travel.
The travel as measured on several aircraft Here is 1.25" down tab, or up
trim. Measured from the elevator TE to the TAB TE.
The travel in degrees is between 25-28 on our aircraft, built as shown in
the manual.
Will revise the manual to reflect what works in flight.
thanks
Nick Otterback
Arion Aircraft LLC
R&D Technical Support
931-680-1781
nick@flylightning.net
Message 2
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Subject: | Lightning Homecoming and Fly-In |
Hey Lightning guys,
As of yesterday afternoon I'm back in SYI, Tennessee, for the
Lightning Homecoming and Fly-In. Great to be back here at the home of Lightning
and Jabiru. Spent some time catching up with Pete, Nick, Mark and "Moostang"
Mike yesterday afternoon and then Bear and I had dinner last night with
Pete and Barb.
Today I plan to fly the new demo Lightning with the latest stabilizer
design. Heck, I hope to fly it twice, once to just get the feel of the new
set up and then a second flight to take it through some of the flight test
profiles for the longitudinal stability tests that were required when I
first flew the 25 required test profiles for certification back in 2009.
That way I will be able to best answer anyone's questions on the flying and
handling difference between the two set ups. I'm certainly looking forward
to these flights.
As to the Homecoming and Fly-In, the weather looks great for today and
Friday and good for Saturday and Sunday. So all you Lightning owners,
builders and absolutely anyone else that is interested in the Lightning,
please plan on coming to Shelbyville, TN, for this event this Friday and
Saturday. As always, we will have lots of fun catching up on what has been going
on as well as flying this super airplane. And as you may have heard, the
Friday evening hangar party with beer and brats is always fun. If you have
never raced a creeper after having a beer or two, you have certainly missed
one of the all time greatest athletic, skilled, and educational events.
BE THERE, ALOHA
Buz
Message 3
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Subject: | Shortened wingtips |
Finally forced myself to do this. Step one, layup 5 layers of cloth or tape on
the taped off old tip, cover with peel ply and let cure. That gives a great
starting point for the mounting flange. If you're not making them removable,
skip that step...but you need some flange to mount to the wing. The black lines
on the white wingtip are my alignment lines to make the flanges.
Once that was done, I measured out 18" from the inboard end of the tip, which is
almost exactly where the tip begins it's upsweep into the winglet, and cut off
the tip and winglet.
That tip will be much shorter than the end of the wing, so you'll have to split
it and mount the two halves to get started, which can be see in the second picture.
The flange I made in step one is inside the wing end, and I've already
bonded the new tip to that flange.
And I see now my pics are out of order. I'm sure it can be figured out. I'll
make a separate post for each pic from now on.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=384619#384619
Attachments:
http://forums.matronics.com//files/img_2223_142.jpg
http://forums.matronics.com//files/img_2222_509.jpg
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Subject: | Re: Shortened wingtips |
Once the tip is bonded to the flange, make sure it's aligned with aileron and drill
and cleco the flange in existing mounting holes. Then fill that big gap
with some foam and prepare to get artistic. This tip was the one I tried to do
the first time about 2 years ago, which is why it's so mangled. I decided it
was easier to cut off the parts I was unhappy with previously, so there's more
foam here than on the other tip.
Yes, I'm using cheap insulation foam. It doesn't really matter since it's A) not
structural and B) not going to stay there!
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=384620#384620
Attachments:
http://forums.matronics.com//files/img_2225_517.jpg
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Subject: | Re: Shortened wingtips |
>From the previous pic, the foam had a flat spot, so I added a bit more foam and
then sanded to this final shape.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=384621#384621
Attachments:
http://forums.matronics.com//files/img_2233_105.jpg
Message 6
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Subject: | Re: Shortened wingtips |
2 layers of glass over the foam, showing the Right wingtip now, just happens that's
the one I took the picture of.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=384622#384622
Attachments:
http://forums.matronics.com//files/img_2245_727.jpg
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Subject: | Re: Shortened wingtips |
A quick shot, showing the original long tip (yellow) in foreground, the new shortened
tip on the plane, and following that diagonal line, the long tip from which
the short tip was chopped off sitting on the table on the back wall.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=384623#384623
Attachments:
http://forums.matronics.com//files/img_2252_163.jpg
Message 8
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Subject: | Re: Shortened wingtips |
The best thing I can say about this is: Wear a dust mask, use 36 grit sand paper,
take a shower the moment you're done.
This pretty close to a final shape. There's some waviness, but overall I'm getting
happy with it at this point.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=384624#384624
Attachments:
http://forums.matronics.com//files/img_2253_785.jpg
Message 9
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Subject: | Re: Shortened wingtips |
Between the last picture and this picture, I tore out the foam from inside the
tips, sanded down to glass, and put in a layer of glass on the inside. I final
drilled the mounting holes while the tip was held in with clecos, and then installed
nutplates. The closeout rib was the last step, and the tip was ready
to fit, as seen in this picture.
I only put a screw in every other hole because I still have to take them back off
to put the nav lights on. But this was good enough for a flight this morning
once I taped over the hole the nav lights go in.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=384625#384625
Attachments:
http://forums.matronics.com//files/img_2260_137.jpg
Message 10
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Subject: | Re: Shortened wingtips |
While countersinking holes for rivets on the nutplates, I accidentally countersunk
one of the holes for the screws. It was a nice mistake, because it's often
a pain to get these screws started since the holes don't line up perfectly until
several screws are in to pull it into shape. So I lightly countersunk the
screw holes and they go right in. Always nice to learn a new trick when doing
this stuff.
As to the flight, it was delightful. I don't have any of my landing gear cleanup
on right now, and I was happy with the speeds. It wasn't a big difference,
but definitely faster. The bigger difference was in roll rate and control harmony.
I REALLY like roll now. I've had the rounded wingtips on this plane as
well, and this feels the same in roll to me. And now pitch and roll forces
are MUCH more in line at anything below 130 knots or so. Once you get much over
that speed, the roll still gets pretty stiff, but it takes less deflection
with these tips to get the roll you need.
Which also means my autopilot is happier. It's sometimes bumpy where I fly, and
at times the autopilot servo clutch is slipping when large corrections are needed.
I had a nice layer at 1800' today while testing that was bumpy as could
be. Wind speed was shifting direction about 90 degrees and going from 8 to
36 knots in about 1000 feet, so some big diversions were guaranteed. Autopilot
worked noticeably better based on my experience in that type of thrown-against-the-belts
flying.
I'm happy. But, if I'm not happy I can always take these off and put the old tips
back on.
If you aren't restricted by LSA requirements, I highly recommend considering this
mod. I didn't do a full stall exploration on today's flight, but decided I'd
add 5 knots to all speeds in the pattern until I examined it in detail. Clearly
too much based on how long I landed, so I'm guessing the stall speed is
at most a 2-3 knot increase when using 30 degrees flaps. Makes sense to me since
most of the lift is coming from the large inboard wing with the flaps extended.
I'm sure it's a bigger increase clean.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=384626#384626
Message 11
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Subject: | Re: Shortened wingtips |
Oh, one last thing. My hangar just got 3 feet wider!
[Laughing]
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=384627#384627
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