KRnetHeads, This year I'm volunteering to do a weight and balance demo at the Gathering. This stuff is critical, as several KR builders have been killed by aft CG issues over the years. This is relatively easy to fix, but you have to know you have a problem first. We can start with a 400 pound electronic shipping scale I'll bring, but we need two more scales. Two more 400 pounders would probably suffice for a tri-gear plane, but for a heavy tail-dragger, we really need two five hundred pounders to get the job done. Anybody have a 500 pound (or greater) electronic shipping scale you can bring? My goal is to have a demo showing how to perform an accurate weight and balance, using somebody else's KR. After that, the guy that owns that plane hangs around to ensure that the next guy in line does his correctly, and so forth. We'll need several tape measures and plumb bobs also (I'll bring two of each). I've done some research on 500 pound scales, and if I were going to buy one (and I still may), I'd likely buy a Siltec PS500 ($170 at http://www.n56ml.com/wb/ . I weighed mine with a single 400 pound scale, but that required some jockeying with a bathroom scale and some extra steps to get there.
I'll also bring an Excel weight and balance file that can be tweaked for each plane, and saved for the owner. If there's any interest in this, please let me know, otherwise I won't bother with it. Details on weight and balance can be seen at http://www.n56ml.com/wb/index.html, and the spreadsheet is available from that site for N56ML. I recently tweaked it in about 10 minutes for N891JF, most of which was spent measuring the plane and getting the datum correct, and will do a full-blown weight and balance on the bird after I'm done revamping it...but before I fly it. Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
