Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
-1-
DOPE SHEET THE NEWSLETTER OF
CHAPTER 13
OF THE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION
SERVING SPORT AVIATION IN THE DETROIT AREA
Volume 54 Number 5 website; EAACHAPTER13.ORG May 2009
President........... Rex Phelps..... 586 469-3246 [email protected]
Vice President... Mike Fisher.........
810 392-2020 [email protected]
Secretary........... Cliff Durand........ 248 853-0232 [email protected]
Treasurer........... Don Miller....
586 463-9342 [email protected]
May 7 REG. Meeting* 7:30-10 pm
14 Officer Meeting** 7:30 pm
16 Ray A/P Cleanup day
17 Young Eagles 7:30-10 pm June 4 REG. Meeting* 7:30-10 pm
6 13 & RCCD get-together Shirey’s A/P
July 11 EAA picnic Ray A/P
22-Aug 2 Airventure Oshkosh, WI
Aug 22-23 Selfridge Airshow
*All Regular Meetings (not all are listed) will have
a pre-meeting Bar-B-Q/Setup get-together that
starts at 6 pm.
**Officer Meetings are normally held the following
Thursday at the chapter hangar .
11 Officer Meeting** 7:30 pm
REGULAR MEETING — 1ST Thursday of each month.
Our regular meeting place is Ray Airport, in the chapter hangar (#304) located on the Northeast corner of the field. Meeting time is 7:30 pm to 10 pm.
MEMBERSHIP AND DUES Chapter 13 dues are $25 per year for renewing mem-bers, this will pay to the end of the year 2009. You can make your check out to "EAA Chapter 13", and send it to our treasurer, Don Miller, 28840 Old N. River Rd, Harri-son Twp., MI 48045, 586-463-9342.
May 7 Meeting Presentation On Thursday, May 7, 2009 a member of the Yan-kee Air Museum will be presenting an interesting history of the B-24 construction at Willow Run Air-port. Over 8,600 bombers were constructed by the Ford Motor Company from 1941 - 1945. At its peak fourteen airplanes were rolled off the assembly line every day. You will also hear the complete history of the Yan-kee Air Museum and the opportunities to volunteer in the maintenance and restoration of their fleet of historical aircraft. Here is a link to the museum. http://www.yankeeairmuseum.org/ourstory.shtml
Welcome New Members
No new members joined in April. For the 2009 cal-endar year, paid membership is at 128.
Auction Recap
We raised $1,402. Some members even bought items and donated them to the chapter.
-2-
Young Eagles Camp Opportunities We are looking for a couple of youngsters who would like the opportunity to attend the EAA Air Academy this year. The only catch is that they must be in the 12-15 age range. The 16-18 year old camp is already full for this year. The great news is that starting this year, our Young Eagle points can cover the entire tuition cost, and even help with travel expenses if needed. Here are the dates for the Air Academy Camp: Ages 2 and 13 Session 1: June 15 – 19, 2009 Session 2: June 21 – 25, 2009 Ages 14 – 15 Session 1: June 27 – July 2, 2009 Session 2: July 6 – July 11, 2009 Session 3: July 13 – July 18, 2009 If you know of a child who is interested in Aviation and would be excited about going to the Air Acad-emy, contact me, or any of the Chapter Officers as soon as possible. Dennis Glaeser 248-953-0374
YE list
It's finally time to start flying Young Eagles again!
Our first event is scheduled for Sunday May 17th - see the attached flyer.
Please pass this info along to anyone you know who might be interested.
For future planning purposes, here are the rest of the dates we're planning this year:
ο June 13th (Saturday) This is National Young Eagle Day.
ο July 19th (Sunday)
ο August – date TBD (Saturday) - the Croswell Swinging Bridge Festival (held at Croswell airport - about 30 miles north)
September 13th (Sunday)
If you want to arrange an event on another date for your scout troop, church group, neighborhood group, home school group, … contact me and we'll see what can be arranged.
See you at the airport!
Dennis Glaeser 248-953-0374
-3-
From Tech Counselor News — Ron Walters
The formula for fuel flow rate in a gravity feed system is; .55 X engine horse power X 1.50 = pounds of fuel per hour divided by 60 to get pounds per minute divided by 6 to get gallons per minute. In a pressurized system simply substitute 1.25 for 1.50. Gravity feed system needs to supply 150% of max. demand and a pressurized system 125% of max. demand.
Rusty Nuts
Machinist's Workshop magazine actually tested penetrants for break out torque on rusted nuts. Significant results!
They arranged a subjective test of all the popular penetrants with the control being the torque re-quired to remove the nut from a "scientifically rusted" environment. Penetrating oil ..... Average load None ..................... 516 pounds WD-40 .................. 238 pounds PB Blaster ............. 214 pounds Liquid Wrench ..... 127 pounds Kano Kroil ............ 106 pounds ATF-Acetone mix....53 pounds *The ATF-Acetone mix was a "home brew" mix of 50 - 50 automatic transmission fluid and acetone.* *Note the "home brew" was better than any com-mercial product in this one particular test. Our local machinist group mixed up a batch and we all now use it with equally good results. Note also that "Liquid Wrench" is about as good as "Kroil" for about 20% of the price. *
Chapter Project
Ren Sagaert came up with an interesting idea whose time may have come.
With the new rule for LSA’s the Chapter could le-gally build a RV-12.
First we would find a person that would want an RV-12 and purchase the Kit. Then pay to the chap-ter, say 10,000 dollars in installments to assemble it.
Secondly, since we have a couple RV-12 builders in the chapter that could be team leaders for weekly building get-togethers. It is thought that there would be ample membership interest for a simple project like this.
One of the great things about this is the airplane has to be built according to plans. There is no changing or adding or decision making. If we could work out the details, the money the chapter would make would offset what we would make for hangar rent, heat and electric.
For the price of the kit plus the donation to the Chapter the new owner will end up with an airplane. This includes a place to build it, can be part of the process if they want, and has all the technical help, and tools for basically the price of hangar rent. The reality is that unless he retired and single, it will be done much faster and no complaints from the family about tying up the garage for years.
For Sale: Fujitsu LT P-600 tablet computer. Pentium3 processor 600MHz, 256 RAM, 8 GB of memory. Windows 2000 operating sys-tem. Has inside/outside view touch screen (size 8.4" di-agonal). I have been using it for GPS moving map w/XM weather. Comes with latest flight soft/vista moving map software and all US sect/low alt/plates. Will need GPS antenna (~$120). Has 12v/110v charger, carrying case, and other acces-sories. Can be used as a reg computer. $300 obo. Peter Dugdale Tel#248-521-9205
Thanks to Louis Knapp and a lot of helpers, the old yellow hangar is gone.
-4-
GABBY'S CAFE at Dalton Airport will be reopening after a renovation in a few weeks.
One drop of fuel
How far does one drop of fuel go? Well it turns out that when we burn 7.5 gallons per hour in our 6 cyl-inder engine at 2,500 rpm, one drop is used each time the intake valve is opened. Of course that is 450,000 drops per hour.
Expanding our Flying Horizons
Are you ready to try something different? On June 6th, Chapter 13 is joining up with the Radio Control Club of Detroit for an afternoon of fun. Both clubs are meeting at Dave Shirey’s field for a picnic and fun fly. They will be bringing their radio controlled planes and buddy boxes and we will have a chance to safely fly their aircraft. Two transmitters will be hooked together by a cable. They will get the plane up to a safe altitude with one transmitter and then switch control to the one we’re holding. Anytime we get in trouble, they simply take control again and re-turn the plane to straight and level flight. They will also bring along aerobatic, scale warbirds, combat, and possi-bly jet aircraft for demonstration flights.
In return, they are hoping to catch some demo rides in some of our full sized aircraft. The plan is to alternate between full size plane rides and model planes several times throughout the afternoon.
Of course, the grills will be producing hot dogs and bur-gers and tables will be out for all the pot luck plates we all bring. Arrivals will begin at 9 AM with flying starting about 10 AM. If the weather doesn’t cooperate on June 6th, we’ll try again the very next day. We’ll work out more details at the May 7th meeting. If there are any changes, they will be announced in the June newsletter and the June 4th Chapter 13 meeting.
This sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Rex
-5-
Twenty Years Ago by Del Schmitz
It looks like we have another plane with a Ford engine powering it. This time it’s a Ford V6. The plane was built by David L Blanton whose father had been installing car engines in airplanes for many years. He has a Cessna 175 with a Ford V6 (3.8 liter) which had been flown to Oshkosh for five summers.
The plane we are talking about is the Blanton Sport Racer. The engine and re-duction was designed and tested by his father. David had as much time on his fa-ther’s 175 Cessna with the V6 as anybody.
David was anything but a newcomer to EAA and homebuilding. He quite literally grew up in his fa-ther’s shop, Javelin Aviation, learning by doing such projects as the BD-2, the first BD-4 and nearly the full range of light plane designs built in the US when they were in for installation of ferry tanks for deliv-ery abroad.
His first intensive exposure to homebuilding came on the Wichawk, a side-by side biplane his father designed and began work on in 1964. Soon set aside for other projects, the Wichawk lan-guished until Davy decided he wanted to complete it himself, which he did in the late 60’s and early 70’s. He later built a 160 hp Pitts Special, restored a 1939 Aeronca Chief and a 15AC Sedan, and finally a beautiful example of the Aero Sport II, which was reluctantly sold to finance the building of the Sport Racer.
Davy had an unusual educational career. He entered Wichita State Univ. after high school, but eventually dropped out to get married and began working, first at Cessna as a draftsman then later with an aviation consulting firm that was doing work on the Lear fan. He was back with Cessna again on the Citation III then finally with Beech on the Star-ship.
Along the way he began taking night school courses at Wichita State and at along last received his degree in May of 1987. “I was a 36 year old graduate with 3 children” he said with a big grin, “but I stuck with it”.
The Ford powered Sport Racer quite naturally grew out of his father’s work on the V-6. From the start he was quite excited over the performance and reli-ability of the engine and soon began thinking of in-stalling a similar power plant and reduction unit in a homebuilt. He spent about a month making prelimi-nary drawings. He drew up about 12, 22” X 34”
sheets, which was enough for him to start building the airplane. From the onset the concept was to build a plane “the old way, the way we used to build airplanes”. Another goal was to win the prize for liquid cooled planes. “That was more in the way of icing on the cake and not in any way a reason for designing and building this airplane” said Davy.
After the design was complete Davy showed it to a friend, Ed Merkle, to go over it from an aerody-namic standpoint. Ed recommended a few changes. The wing was made to a higher aspect ratio. He also had Dick Giede, a structural engineer, look over his work.
The radiator was mounted upright behind the engine and 6 or 7 inches ahead of the firewall. Flights during testing with temperatures as high as 105 degrees and did not show any ignition prob-lems. The engine cooled right from the start be-cause the radiator was mounted in a position known to allow air circulation through the radiator and exit effectively. During the testing the fluid level in the battery stayed normal.
The trip to Oshkosh in ’88 was a market survey of sorts. Davy had already been receiving ques-tions about his plans, but he didn’t want to get in-volved in a marketing program unless the demand was sufficient to make it worth his while. Response was so great he decided to make plans available and Hot Line said they would carry a notice.
Davy made a special point of saying how proud he was of his father’s tireless efforts to develop a less expensive alternative to the aircraft engine. He believes that effort came to be recognized as a tre-mendous service to the sport aviation community. He was grateful to be a part of it.
Editors note; because of Del’s health, this will be his last installment of Twenty Years Ago.
-6-
586 778-2027
[email protected] Address Service Requested THE DOPE SHEET
Robert Mahieu, Editor First Class Mail 23261 Harmon ST Clair Shores, MI 48080
stamp
here
The Saturday work parties have started!
