---------------------------------------------------------- Lightning-List Digest Archive --- Total Messages Posted Thu 10/04/12: 11 ---------------------------------------------------------- Today's Message Index: ---------------------- 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 _____________________________________ Time: 03:18:27 AM PST US From: "Stephen Behn" Subject: Re: Lightning-List: 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 _____________________________________ Time: 05:27:27 AM PST US From: N1BZRich@AOL.COM Subject: Lightning-List: 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 _____________________________________ Time: 06:36:36 AM PST US Subject: Lightning-List: Shortened wingtips From: "Bill Strahan" 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 ________________________________ Message 4 _____________________________________ Time: 06:40:40 AM PST US Subject: Lightning-List: Re: Shortened wingtips From: "Bill Strahan" 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 ________________________________ Message 5 _____________________________________ Time: 06:43:26 AM PST US Subject: Lightning-List: Re: Shortened wingtips From: "Bill Strahan" >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 _____________________________________ Time: 06:45:55 AM PST US Subject: Lightning-List: Re: Shortened wingtips From: "Bill Strahan" 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 ________________________________ Message 7 _____________________________________ Time: 06:48:14 AM PST US Subject: Lightning-List: Re: Shortened wingtips From: "Bill Strahan" 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 _____________________________________ Time: 06:51:44 AM PST US Subject: Lightning-List: Re: Shortened wingtips From: "Bill Strahan" 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 _____________________________________ Time: 06:55:22 AM PST US Subject: Lightning-List: Re: Shortened wingtips From: "Bill Strahan" 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 ____________________________________ Time: 07:15:11 AM PST US Subject: Lightning-List: Re: Shortened wingtips From: "Bill Strahan" 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 ____________________________________ Time: 07:20:05 AM PST US Subject: Lightning-List: Re: Shortened wingtips From: "Bill Strahan" 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other Matronics Email List Services ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post A New Message lightning-list@matronics.com UN/SUBSCRIBE http://www.matronics.com/subscription List FAQ http://www.matronics.com/FAQ/Lightning-List.htm Web Forum Interface To Lists http://forums.matronics.com Matronics List Wiki http://wiki.matronics.com Full Archive Search Engine http://www.matronics.com/search 7-Day List Browse http://www.matronics.com/browse/lightning-list Browse Digests http://www.matronics.com/digest/lightning-list Browse Other Lists http://www.matronics.com/browse Live Online Chat! http://www.matronics.com/chat Archive Downloading http://www.matronics.com/archives Photo Share http://www.matronics.com/photoshare Other Email Lists http://www.matronics.com/emaillists Contributions http://www.matronics.com/contribution ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These Email List Services are sponsored solely by Matronics and through the generous Contributions of its members.