Wood strips fitted to horizontal stabaliser and elevator
Hi everybody, I have ordered the wood "kit" from Mark at Bearhawk aircraft and I just want to know if anybody have fitted them and if you can sent me your photos. I want to get it right the first time around
Thanks, This will help me allot, I will look for other sites as well. Mark told me that if I decreese the angle of incidence of the Horizontal stab to 3 deg , I can expect a 3-4mph increase in airspeed, Was this your experience?
I can tell you that we cruise very consistently at 125 KTAS from 3,000ft or higher, running lean of peak at 42 L/hr (11 Gal/hr).
A little more fuel (less than a gallon) easily brings than up to 130 KTAS, still lean of peak. BTW - going rich of peak only buys you a few knots more for close to 50% more fuel flow.
We set our tail at roughly -3 degrees incidence, and that seems to be perfect with an aft of middle CG location. At forward CG locations, you naturally need to trim up a little more elevator. To achieve this angle, I just left the little spacers out, and filed back the welded tube which passes through the leading edge of the stabiliser.
This is how we did it. We were fortunate enough to get the revised plans from Bob before finishing our tail so we got the dimensions of the new airfoil from Bob. Brent printed it out and I cut out wood shapes to match. Then I stained and varnished them. I then bolted them to the tail using brass bolts. Here are pics showing the wood installed in the Horizontal Stabilizer as I am covering it with Oratex silver fabric. You can also see the "finished product", at least so far as the major covering goes. rsz_wood_stringers.jpgrsz_wood_stringers_2.jpgrsz_horz_stab.jpgrsz_horz_stab_2.jpg
I like that approach - a bit heavier than the individual strips, but you're not relying on the glue bond.
I've just done this task the last few weeks - takes forever to do a nice job!
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