Very kind of Larry to have noticed and mentioned my little contribution to the Affordaplane project that Jon Croke at HomebuiltHelp.com undertook. Jon set his sights on building a no-foolin', honest, 254 lb legal ultralight and came within just a few pounds of making it. As the build progressed I have seen lots of places where weight could be trimmed to bring it within the limit, including (but not limited to) drilling lightening holes in metal angles where structural loading allows that; rounding the corners of pieces of squared-off metal angle since the excess metal adds nothing to the strength; using exact-length AN bolts to reduce the use of too-long bolts with stacks of washers after final fitting is done. Things like that. It's all do-able not only on the Affordaplane, but on most homebuilts if care is taken and attention is given. As Mark Langford says (and John Bouyea reminds me), "Don't think in pounds and ounces. Think in grams." It all adds up!
Just for the heck of it and not that it's in any way transferable to the KR world, I've attached a .jpg of my CAD drawing of the basic engine mount configuration that I came up with for the beautiful little water-cooled Polini Thor 202 that Jon selected for use on his Affordaplane. The solid rectangle above the engine is the radiator, which played no part in the work that I did but it had to be accounted for. In closing and so as to keep this post KR-related, I'll put out a little teaser of a coming attraction. Very recently (last week) John Bouyea and I undertook a magical mystery tour that I'm going to call "Operation Sunbeam" that involved longtime KRNetter, KR owner, and pilot extraordinaire Mike Stirewalt. Stay tuned for more on this as the KR Gathering approaches, and go to krgathering.net for more information on the annual event that's coming up September 12-14 this year. More later on "Sunbeam"... Oscar Zuniga Medford, OR
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