Brodhead Pietenpol Association

taildrags

The wing root ribs are set in from the butt ends of the outer wing panels by 1/2".

-OZ

taildrags

From the 3-piece wing plans, the centersection spars are 29" from butt to butt and the inboard ribs are 25-1/4" between their outer faces, so each rib is set inboard 1-7/8" from the spar ends.

-Oscar

taildrags

Nice job of color selection, very nice installation of the fasteners, and the cover looks nice and taut. Let's have a PIREP once you fly it!

-Oscar

taildrags

Here's Douwe's:

taildrags

In my opinion, if no dimensions are given for gussets in a specific location (or in general), then "close enough is good enough" and an eyeball estimate will work when it comes to constructing this airplane. And recognize that there are variations on the same theme. For example, some build...

taildrags

PIREP: my first experience flying in cold temps with the new cockpit cover (thank you, Ken Bickers for the construction tips!). My report: talk about a world of difference! For me and my plane anyway, having the front cockpit covered during taxi and in flight made a tremendous difference in my comfo...

taildrags

Zoomboy: if you'll scroll down through the topics on this forum, you'll find posts under "Tiger Moth style tank" or something like that. Several builders (Douwe Blumberg; Kevin Purtee) have bumped up the top of their centersection tanks to get increased fuel capacity. Douwe reported that h...

taildrags

Sorry to hear about your wife, Richard. Hate when that happens... hope she gets better and can go home. This is our first November 15th without my mother-in-law. It was her birthday today and she would have been 94. She, too, lived independently in the same house she had lived in since about 1950. S...

taildrags

Chuck; thanks for the photo of the cottered hinge pin. Yeah, that's gotta be a 1/16" hole and those usually cost me a few drill bits when I make the attempt to drill them, especially if I can't use the drill press. Wrong feed and/or wrong speed, and -snap!- bye bye drill bit. Also, those hinge ...

taildrags

PS, I think when my plane is sitting idle in the dead of winter this winter, I'll get a drill block, pull off the ailerons to get to that half of the hinge, and go look at how Cessnas are drilled and drill mine for small cotter pins or safety wire.

-Oscar

taildrags

Bobbyt; I ran out to the hangar to look at the aileron hinges on my plane. Let's see how I can put this. There used to be a TV commercial for women's brassieres, the main feature of which was "there's no visible means of support". Such is the case with my full-span aileron hinges :) The in...

taildrags

JimBob, I have not thought about that for my Piet and am not planning to do that on the plane that I'm building- but those are nifty instruments and why not use them on a Piet? I've thought about (and written about, in the BPA Newsletter) some concepts for using newer construction techniques for thi...

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

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