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Billski's Fiberglass Bird

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wsimpso1

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 18, 2003
Messages
11,353
Location
Saline Michigan
Working name is Aries. It is a two seat, side-by-side, low wing fiberglass machine intended to allow me and one other fortunate individual to travel and ski or dive.

The space behind the seats to the horizontal tail is sized to fit a bag with four pair of cross country skis and poles, and the rest of the baggage space is sized for 200 pounds of bags like you would use for fly-in's, ski trips, and dive trips. Interior is 46" wide, and set up so that either my pilot wife (5'5") or my ski buddy/Best Man (6'6") will fit. So, it has a rather long tail arm, and empty the CG will be quite forward.

The wing skins, fuselage skins, canopy and gullwing doors are vacuum bagged on molds while thinner things like the stabilizers and control surfaces are hotwired cores with the skins vacuum bagged on them.

The wings are Riblett airfoils 37A315; 15% thick and chosen for cruise CL of 0.3; the tails are 12% thick. Flaps and ailerons are pivoted below the wing. On the flaps it gives a nicely formed slot for a significant landing speed reduction, while the ailerons obtain a bunch of aerodynamic balance that way.

Pictures (which folks have been bugging me about for ages) will follow. Thanks for looking.

Billski
 
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