REFLECTOR: Wgt and Bal

[nmflyer1 at aol.com]

Brian, 

Considering all you did, it sounds pretty good. I think it is pretty easy to exceed the proposed weight on the 173, specially when you outfit things nicely. 

I built my own wings/winglets/canard. I was staring at them for a while before I decided to fill the weave in the wings with Superfill. I bought a 3 gallon kit, and used a taping knife with Lots of pressure to force the filler into the weave, without filling above the top of the wing. 

Once I was done, you could see the stripes in the wing from the Triax, with the superfill in the valleys of the layup. 
I then sanded all of it lightly to knock off the high spots and prep for the next batch. Believe it or not, the wings, winglets, canard took almost all 3 of those gallons. I swept up the shop after sanding and only recovered about a dixie cup worth of material!? I think that step alone saved me over 10 pounds. 

I'm curious to see how my bird weighs out. I'll let you know when I get to that point. Right now I am prepping for paint and upholstery, and finishing up a little wiring. I'll wait to weigh mine until it has paint and interior. Is yours painted? 

I'd like to see it.... Hint.. 

keep up the good work.??

Kurt Winker
173 FGE Aluminum V-6


-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Michalk <michalk at awpi.com>
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list <reflector at tvbf.org>
Sent: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 9:41 am
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: Wgt and Bal



Well, it came out as bad as I had hoped.

This is a standard elite, fixed gear, Franklin/IVO.
confor foam seats
sound deadening material overhead and on firewall
dual batteries
turbo
dual intercoolers
wings built by Charlie Gray ... last set he produced

My empty weight with unusable fuel and oil is 1550lbs.
I was secretly hoping to not hit 1600 lbs.

The balance if pretty good.  Juanita flying solo will be at the aft
limit.  I'll have to test that to see if it's prudent for her to carry
ballast.

I was surprised to see the ARM move by about two inches while filling
the main tanks.  First 5 gallons, the arm is 125".  At 30 gallons, the
arm is 123.2".

There are tons of modifications.  All add their own two cents worth of
weight.

Terry Miles wrote:
> Brian,
> 
> How did the wgt and bal come out?
> 
> Terry
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> To change your email address, visit http://www.tvbf.org/mailman/listinfo/reflector
> 
> Visit the gallery!  www.tvbf.org/gallery
> user:pw = tvbf:jamaicangoose
> Check new archives: www.tvbf.org/pipermail
> Check old archives: http://www.tvbf.org/archives/velocity/maillist.html



_______________________________________________
To change your email address, visit http://www.tvbf.org/mailman/listinfo/reflector

Visit the gallery!  www.tvbf.org/gallery
user:pw = tvbf:jamaicangoose
Check new archives: www.tvbf.org/pipermail
Check old archives: http://www.tvbf.org/archives/velocity/maillist.html

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.tvbf.org/mailman/private/reflector/attachments/20081123/e9af75b6/attachment-0001.htm