On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 02:33:04 GMT, clare @ snyder.on .ca wrote:


Corky,
It's not the water you see that hurts, it's the water in the air rhat
gets sucked in and out of those tubes as they heat and cool. As the
tubes cool they suck damp air in, and the moisture condenses out into
the tubes.
If you don't drain them at the low point the water builds up and it
WILL rust the tubes. Better to leave both ends wide open, and allow
the structure to breath, than to leave a few pinholes and not protect
the tubing.

Well that's good information, thanks Clare. Don't think it will
change my mind at this point but it's nice to know how the process
works.

The Christavia has so many tubes and they are of such thickness that
I'm reasonably sure the airframe will outlive me and my son, as long
as I don't create new openings by gronking it against a mountain or
something.

I compared the fuselage to a Wag-Aero 2+2 and was shocked to see how
beefy the Christavia was by comparison. The problem is that the
beefiness comes at the cost of additional weight I wish I did not have
to deal with.

Corky Scott