I just put my plane on the Atkins diet!!!!! There are a lot of things I could have done to save weight. My turtle deck is one area. It is about two inches taller than stock and way too thick as are my wing skins. Also I have a lot of unnecessary things like strobes, nav lights and landing lights, electric speed brake, etc, etc... As I was building, I had one goal in mind and that was to make a safe cross country flying machine. Passengers will be few and far between as my wife will not even fly in small spam cans. The kids are very light weight so when they fly with me that will be no biggie. The nose gear adds a few more pounds as does the aluminum wing tanks. I added 2 inches in front of the main spar to the fuselage as well as widened it by 3 inches. Maybe a lighter battery would help or I could ditch that heavy T&B indicator that I consider not needed and replace it with a simple ball slip indicator. There are a lot of things to lower the weight but I am happy with the plane the way it is and the easiest way to lower gross weight would be for the pilot to drop about 40 pounds.
Mark Jones -----Original Message----- From: krnet-boun...@mylist.net [mailto:krnet-boun...@mylist.net]On Behalf Of Mark Langford Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 11:34 AM To: KRnet Subject: Re: KR> final weight and balance OZ wrote: > So... your airplane came in 39 lbs. lighter than Mark Jones'. I'm not exactly sure what it was that I left out, but hope it wasn't important! All I can think of at the moment would be the kitchen sink. There are several places where rethinking and redoing things (like the airfoils) cost me some weight. I'm pretty sure I could build it 10-15 pounds lighter next time around. But keep in mind that I have all the nice stuff like huge electric flaps, full electrical system, giant 130 horsepower engine, landing, nav lights, and strobes, redundant electrical system, two fuel pumps, dual sticks, adjustable horizontal stabilizer, double-walled wing skins, etc. It all adds up, I guess. I just weighed my wings and they are 48 pounds each, but keep in mind that all bellcranks, cables, and connectors are part of my wings, rather than the airplane (like most other KRs). But surely your average KR wing must be far less, especially considering the size of my flaps, ailerons, and aileron counterweights. I've elaborated some more on the weight and balance at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/weightandbalance.html , and provided links to the spreadsheet and a pdf file of it for those who don't have Excel... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net -------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at http://www.maddyhome.com/krsrch/index.jsp to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html
