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Folding-wing biplane?

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IanJ

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 18, 2006
Messages
46
Location
Seattle, WA (5 nm N KBFI)
I've been pondering building a plane for a year or two now, and actually gave up on it half a year ago due to the huge ongoing costs of hangaring, insurance, etc. With the return of decent flying weather, I gave the idea another shot, and ran across the Sherwood Ranger, which is a wood and metal, fabric-covered biplane kit from England. The key thing that revived my interest, though, is the fact that it's designed with folding wings in mind. Not the "30 minutes' setup" folding wings, either, but actual "pull this pin and fold" type folding, without having to rerig or detach controls, etc. The Sherwood Ranger suffers from the fact that, as far as I can tell, only one has been built in the US.

There's also the all-metal FK12 Comet, which is less interesting to me, from the standpoint that I'd like to build a wooden (or mostly wooden, anyway) airplane. It's got quick-folding wings, but it's pricey and higher performance than I want. All of my flying these days is the "around the patch" type, with maybe the odd cross-country thrown in every year or two.

The folding-wing idea appeals to me largely because I can skip the $400+/mo hangar fee (assuming I could even get a hangar), and the fast folding setup means I would actually fly the thing instead of getting that mental-inertia stop of knowing I'd have to do all that setup. If I can easily load and unload the plane from a trailer, then it can live in a garage or outbuilding.

I've also run across the Fly Baby (which can be built as a bipe), but it's got a comparatively lengthy setup time, and is only available as a one-seater. The Fly Baby does appeal to me, though: being in Seattle as I am, there's a ton of FB knowledge available in the area.

I'm interested in a lightweight plane, as light as is practical to contain two human-sized people (ie, 400 lbs of person) and gas in the thing without busting the max load. Ideally, it'd have enough avionics on board to be able to fly in the Mode C veil (xponder, one COM, encoding alt or blind encoder, plus the normal VFR instruments). I'm not about to set myself up with a hand-prop engine if I can avoid it, so I can't sneak by with the "no electrical system" loophole.

So, what else is out there? Are there other planes that are lightweight, and really easily fold up? Am I courting disaster with a folding-wing setup? I'd love to have input from other homebuilders.
 
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