Flea style "Piojo Flying MiniBike"

Fritz, help, I want the Piojo back......

 

Think peaceful thoughts my friend. I'm just kicking around ideas. I like the simple Piojo too.

 

Split all the "ancillary" threads off to other thread titles, leaving this thread constrained to the current "standard" version Piojo. Have all the other ideas (could the Piojo be equipped with a rotor for VTO, and then floats for fishing in the Bering Strait???) in other threads.

IMHO Everyone on HBA who is participating in these "realistic aircraft" design exercise threads should take a moment to realize what is happening on two of these threads in particular.

The Ranger has gone from a typical wandering and diluted discussion about general ideas... and has made it through that stage into a "realistic possibility" stage... and then has made it into the "actual workable design" stage... and then jumped out of imagination and into actual "parts being cut and glued together" stage. I think that may be a first for this HBA forum.

The Piojo is on the same track, having started as part of a flying motorcycle thread with 200 different configurations, getting some DNA from other threads about the Pou du Ciel, and something realistic and feasible is emerrging to become a potentially "actual workable design". IMHO it's proceeded halfway along the same path as the Ranger.

So my point with this post is perhaps we should do the same thing here as we have done with the Ranger, and agree that the Piojo has now earned a thread where significant deviations from what is "standard" should not muddy the waters.

As with the Ranger, my idea is NOT to squash anyone's creativity (especially Sockmoney's new quick disconnect version), just that these ideas should be in a thread of their own.

 

Also not that while there was much initial input it took ONE motivated person to make it real.

 

Just because I like you guys.

 

Most Fleas have a series of detents or notches on the control column and a bungee cord that hooks into them. "Trim" is adjusted by moving the bungee up or down the the control column. I've seen this on Balerits and such a mechanism is described in the HM 360/380 plan book.

 

In the event of a control linkage failure that still leaves you in a plane that’s going to dive into the ground. I never used to think about this stuff until a Nieuport 28 replica accident a couple years ago caused by a single turnbuckle unthreading in flight. To be fair, in a small Flea you could probably just reach up and grab the trailing edge of the wing...

 

Include grab handles on it as a safety feature?

 

What about just using proper aircraft style hardware, pushrods, clevises and bellcranks, the same kind of parts that all of the other airplanes that don't fall out of the sky use? Unless the main wing pivot point is really put at the wrong place, the control forces should be well well well within the load-bearing capacity of a 1/4" AN bolt

 

The common sense, it burns!

 

It's interesting to note that in a 1971 update to the HM 360 plans, they recommend moving the front wing main spar 4 cm to the rear to better balance control forces. Previously the front and rear wing spar location were the same distance from their respective leading edges.

 

I wouldn’t have it any other way, though I still fail to see how a little redundancy in pitch control is a bad thing. Especially when the failure mode results in a dive.

 

Pull then the BRS or any other kind of chute.

 

Yes, true enough, I'll have to concede that with no argument

 

News to the Piojo?

 

It's waiting for someone to build one.

 

VB ?!?

 

I would love to, but there are other projects I have at higher priority levels.

Also, I would make modifications to it that would make it not a Piojo. I would use ailerons on the rear wing, which would offend and inflame many of the Pou purists. Also I would put some kind of sides or "walls" next to the seat so it didn't feel like the pilot would fall out of the aircraft.

 

The Piojo already has ailerons on the rear wing. And you've got a lot of fuselage between your knees (motorcycle feeling) and seat belts that I think (hope) would prevent the "falling out" feeling.

The *seat will probably have some sort of "butt walls" anyway...

*from the Aircraft Interiors isle at Costco

 

OK, that's sounding good so far.

If you have the Piojo's cut files and associated design stuff worked out when I get finished with going through the airworthification on the Ridge Runner I just got, I would genuinely consider it. Workshop space and workbench real estate will be the de facto obstacle.

But I happen to have a spare Rotax 277 engine, and access to a KFM 30 horse/redrive engine, and I actually happen to have (new acquaintance) access to a guy actually flying Briggs V-twin redrive conversions he will be offering for ultralights. I watched one of his 30HP Briggs engines fly a Quicksilver and it was very impressive.