Brodhead Pietenpol Association

taildrags

Boy, now you've got me wondering how my aileron hinges are set up. I've got piano hinges all right, but my assumption is that there is only one way in or out for the hinge pin... from the wingtip end. I'll have to look to see how mine are done.

Oscar Zuniga
Medford, OR
Air Camper NX41CC, A75 power

taildrags

Shoot. I had an excellent opportunity of providing you with a data point when I recently changed out the vibration isolators on my A75's engine mount. I had the engine hanging from my hoist, free of the mounts but with virtually everything including the wood prop still connected to it and in place e...

taildrags

Richard; perfect! Getting the fuselage up onto a bench or table at waist height will provide just about the best working condition until you need to start fitting the landing gear and the plane needs to be just a bit higher (top longerons at about chest height). My Piet was on a table and sawhorse f...

taildrags

Richard, I'm not sure what those are or where the builder got them from, but they're used in several places throughout the airplane. They are stainless steel. I've never had an inspector mention anything about them and I assume that the builder's FAA designee didn't either, but I have replaced them ...

taildrags

Okay! Great progress since taking the wing out of the picture gets about half the workspace freed up but as you said, still leaves the wing where you can measure and examine.

-Oscar

taildrags

One more shot; this one looking into the spring bracket from behind. It is made up of several pieces and you can see that the two 'ears' that are bent up were going to be through-bolted but I guess Corky felt that the vertical bolt from underneath was plenty since there have never been fasteners in ...

taildrags

Mark; see photos. First one is a side view of pretty much the whole setup and you can see that the front end of the tailspring shares a mounting point with the bracket where the lower tail brace wires attach on both sides of the underside of the tail. If I understand Ken correctly, that's the weak p...

taildrags

Mark; I've got the leaf spring and Matco setup and will take some photos to post here, maybe add a sketch. You mention Super Cubs, I really enjoyed the time that I was able to spend in a Super Cub up here in Oregon. Flew it every chance I could. It was owned by one of the co-owners of a local FBO an...

taildrags

Ken; just think how much improved your landings and rollouts would be if you had just made those holes in your extensions another 1/16" farther out on the ends so as to precisely match the spacing on the rudder horn

-Oscar

taildrags

Every now and then something comes along here that really gets me excited and today the tailwheel steering is it! Talk about little light bulbs lighting up. Remember I said that when I got 41CC it had a Scott 2000 tailwheel on it and that Corky had added extension arms to the stock arms on it? I cou...

taildrags

Ken; those tailwheel control arm extensions that you have are pretty much identical to what Corky added to the Scott tailwheel that used to be on the plane. Now you've got me started on this and I'm going to have to go measure the spacing on the Matco arms that I'm now using, and the Scott arms with...

taildrags

Ken; now you've got my curiousity going about the rudder horn and tailwheel horn having the same control arm lengths. The plans show the holes on the rudder horn to be 10-1/4" apart but I don't know what the tailwheel horn holes are spaced on my plane and will have to check. I do remember when ...

taildrags

Mark; FWIW, here's my tailwheel setup. Very conventional, as you said, with a Matco tailwheel. This is an older photo... I now also have a tail tiedown release mounted back there, with a cockpit-operable release lever, for when I prop-start my plane unassisted. I patterned mine after the one Richard...

taildrags

Well Richard, you probably don't need any help or tips on how to stage the rebuild, but when I had to rebuild 41CC, my logic was to put the wings away for the time being, remove the engine and mount and stow them out of the way for the time being, and focus on getting a rolling fuselage back togethe...

taildrags

From what I have drawn up in CAD as best I could piece it together from the plans, that angle is 68.51 degrees.

Oscar Zuniga
Medford, OR
Air Camper NX41CC, A75 power

taildrags

Douwe: and it DID change while we were there! Daytime temps were in the high 80s when we arrived but then a cold front pushed through on Tuesday late afternoon bringing wind, temperature drop, rain, thunder, lightning, and a bit of small hail. After that there were pretty good waves on the lake, low...

taildrags

Richard, please post GPS coordinates of the sunbathing rocks.

taildrags

Blueflyer; those pre-made sets of cast aluminum hinges used to be available from Vitalis "Vi" Kapler, but he's no longer with us. Some years before he flew west, he offered for sale his stock of rough castings and the tools that he used to make the hinges from. I bought the works from him,...

taildrags

Seeing no new posts here, I wanted to be the first to post to this forum in September, so here goes. Only distantly related to Pietenpols, but I just got back from a couple of days of sailing on Lake Superior with a friend from Minneapolis and it was my first time to ever visit the states of Minneso...

taildrags

Clever setup, Dan! My only gripe is that it still employs the one thing I've had trouble with... bungees that lose their stretch over time. Or maybe it's the Harbor Freight bungees that I'm using?

-Oscar

taildrags

Richard, I think I'm going to have to start following you around. You drop great little tidbits everywhere you go! This is a really simple and straightforward way to apply a cockpit-controllable pitch bias to the walking beam and I'm going to see if I can rig mine up this way and dispense with my bu...

taildrags

I've tried a couple of different setups for elevator trim but none of them have worked out in all situations. The most trouble-free has been a bungee setup behind the seat, with the bungee attached to the top horn of the walking beam, which effectively adds nose-up trim and also keeps the elevators ...

taildrags

Richard, sitting in the cockpit, turn around and look straight back at the leading edge of the rudder and the horn back there. Get two large Crescent wrenches and slip each of them over the leading edge of each half of the horn and push down so as to bend the leading edges of the horn down into the ...

taildrags

Not sure I've seen that done. My horn is flat and perpendicular to the rudder, no bends.

Oscar Zuniga
Medford, OR
Air Camper NX41CC, A75 power

taildrags

Dan; I think what Clay is referring to is that with increasing density altitude, the wing has less air molecules available to generate lift to keep the plane aloft with the same power setting. The only way to generate more lift without adding power is to increase the angle of attack of the wing, whi...

taildrags

Mike; I just texted you with info.

Oscar Zuniga
Medford, OR
Air Camper NX41CC, A75 power

taildrags

Dan Oliver: there are at least four things that affect how much the Piet wing can be pivoted without a lot of new things happening. One: as the wing is pivoted aft, it gets lower and approaches the top of the pilot's head. Yes, you can stretch the cabanes to make them taller and yes, you can include...

taildrags

Due to the way the vertical cabanes bolt to their fittings, the wing on a plans-built Grega GN-1 Aircamper cannot be moved fore and aft by pivoting as it can on a Pietenpol Air Camper.

Oscar Zuniga
Medford, OR
Air Camper NX41CC, A75 power

taildrags

Wish we weren't so far apart geographically, Richard. I'd gladly have you fly 41CC to see what you think of the handling vs. Four Kilo Papa. I'm curious to know how much difference there is between Ford A Piets, Continental Piets, and Corvair Piets. My plane weighs about 636 empty and has the wing c...

taildrags

If I remember correctly, the mating barrels for the landing gear pivot points on the gear that is now under Ken Bickers's Piet was a very nice tight fit. I thought that set of gear legs was quite well made.

-Oscar

taildrags

I can tell you what happens when they don't align closely enough and the next size overbore leaves play, because that's what my landing gear have. When I taxi over uneven terrain, the gear clunks. It's not big clunks and they aren't loud, but they are clunks. With the plane parked in the hangar, if ...

taildrags

Walter; aqui se puede conseguir- https://www.pietenpols.org/ . Avisame por mensaje si te puedo ayudar conseguirlo, dirigido a taildrags@hotmail.com .

Oscar Zuniga
Medford, OR

taildrags

UglyElvis: the Prince prop that I have is a 68x42 and was originally built by Lonnie Prince for an O200-powered Skyote. The Skyote was designed to use a C90 engine, so that's close to what you have. I bought the prop to try on my A75 and to have as a spare. The A75 is rated full 75HP power at 2600 R...

taildrags

Is a metal prop required to keep your plane's CG in the proper location, or do you just prefer metal props? I think there are some Gregas out there that tend to be tail heavy and need the weight up front. The reason I mention it is that I have a Prince P-Tip prop that might suit your C85 but I'd hav...

taildrags

Now see-? This is how we all come to the party and bring good things! Thank you, Dan! I reserve the right to get smarter!

-Oscar

taildrags

Bobbyt; not sure where you got the weight figure from, but let's go with it. If 6 ft of it is a pound including mounting hardware, then let's say four 6" pieces are a third of a pound. Add back in a little for whatever you use as gap seals to achieve the same effect and you might be up to half ...

taildrags

I may not live long enough to encapsulate that many pickleballs.

-Oscar

taildrags

Larry, I would say that it depends on how long you want the pickleball to remain watertight. Cheap, quick, and easy would be to wrap it with packing tape or duct tape, but over time it may leak as the tape adhesive ages.

-Oscar

taildrags

One-six Charlie Bravo, this is Experimental Four-one Charlie Charlie. Uh, where'd you get that art on your airplane? Looks like we must have had the same idea. I call my Air Camper "Scout".

taildrags

Fellows, I apologize for appearing to stall for time here, but I really can't plug in the abacus and boot it up until I know if we're trying to figure out whether to float the Piet on salt water, or on fresh. The density is different. I also want to know the gross weight of the Air Camper on which t...

taildrags

Ken, it's going to be hard to beat ping-pong balls for lightness of weight and ability to fit into smallish voids. I would steer clear of anything heavier or larger. Now, if you want to we could explore the idea of helium balloons because they could be inflated to conform pretty closely to the shape...

taildrags

If I remember correctly, it was Corky Corbett who raised that interesting design question. Since I now own his plane and have actually flown it over water on various occasions, I should probably have investigated the answer more closely but I really can't remember! I'll have to consult with Professo...

taildrags

Pat: that may not have been exactly the right thing to say in this crowd. "Recent upgrade of php versions"-? Many of us think of "php" as Paul H. Poberezny, rest his soul in peace and may his version never be upgraded!

-Oscar

taildrags

Yes, I got that too, until I decided to throw my own argument instead of counting errors

-Oscar

taildrags

Just the sort of scratch-building and head-scratching project that I love! Something tells me you'll be getting requests to make and sell an ignition kit

-Oscar

taildrags

Pieters; I just finished reading the current issue of the BPA Newsletter and specifically, Richard Roller's article on how he built a crank-triggered HEI electronic ignition, with manually-selectable retard for starting, for his Ford A engine. Absolutely awesome design and execution! Beautifully cra...

taildrags

My Piet has the fuel tank up in the nose, so I can't speak authoritatively on this subject. However, from what I have read of William Wynne's writing about his experience when his Piet went down and fuel spilled out of the fuel lines from the tank in the centersection and went all over both cockpits...

taildrags

John; here's my opinion on your questions. 1)Yes, it appears that those parts are not used because the part 9 looks like it does the same job of sealing the grease in the bearing. 2) Not sure, but you do need 2 of them... one for the inner bearing and one for the outer. 3) It would have to be assemb...

taildrags

Well that makes perfect sense!

-Oscar

taildrags

Okay, so I finally got my front cockpit cover fabricated and installed. My thanks to Ken Bickers for the excellent narrative and photos of how he did his, and also the source information for where he got the fasteners and tools. I followed Ken's design but limited mine to only one cover for the fron...

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