aerobatic kit planes

"Maxwell" wrote in
:


"Bertie the Bunyip" wrote in message
.. .
wrote in news:a4e90596-4834-48d2-9236-
:


I've done a little welding but nothing my LIFE depended on!


You learn,. And you learn how to read the weld so if it looks good,
it is good.

Very bad information. How a weld "looks" has very if anything to do
with it's effectiveness.


Wel, if you're gas welding and it looks good when you;re making it, it's
a good weld. There's no other way to tell short of x-raing it and nobody
does that.


I had the same concern when I started learning to do aircraft
welding. I talked to the guy who dsigned my airplane, Dudley Kelly.
He told me to get some lessons and then weld it up and not worry. In
his words "If you get 25% of each joint right it will still exceed
design specs"

This is going to be entirely load or design dependant. Yes, two
sleeved tubes, laterally loaded can easily survive with just a couple
of tack welds, but if the joint is in tension 25% is seldom even
close.

Well, the thing is overbuilt to the nth degree. It is what Dudley told
me and he was a design engineer for Convair!
You can take it up with him when you die.


You should see the welds on old pipers! They're crap!
And Bellanca were using MIG to weld their fuselages for a long time
and to my knowledge, none of them has come apart because of that..
After I learned to do only a passable job ( i'm better at it now) I
found that I could take a piece I'd made, put it in a vice and beat
the hell out of it and the weld and the area around it would be the
last thing to fail. Ask in RAH, though. Plenty of guys building/have
built the kinds of airplanes you might be interested in.


Yes, a lot of good welds look terrible, and yes it is very dependant
on the design and load of the joint. But either statement taken in
general context is very incorrect.


You mean out of context.


Bertie

john smith wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
I had the same concern when I started learning to do aircraft
welding. I talked to the guy who dsigned my airplane, Dudley Kelly.
He told me to get some lessons and then weld it up and not worry. In
his words "If you get 25% of each joint right it will still exceed
design specs"

Bertie, do you have a Kelly D?


No, a Hatz.


Bertie

wrote in message
...
Do you want to fly or do you want to build?

Both, actually. But I'm so new to flying I'm still figuring out what
kind of flying I'm most interested in doing.

I like to build things.

I'm intimidated by tube and fabric, which, though it is of the
earliest aircraft technology, sounds really time consuming in the
extreme. Still I can imagine that it's very rewarding.

Welding up the truss is the easy part. Making all the little fittings,
hinges. control parts, EVERYTHING in front of the firewall, making the
canopy parts, blah blah blah is what takes the time.

I wasn't kidding when I said that when you think you are 90% done, 50% of
the work is left to do...

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.

"Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe" The Sea Hawk at wow way d0t com wrote in
news:q5WdnXvPVuhO3_XanZ2dnUVZ_veinZ2d@wideopenwest .com:

wrote in message
..
.
Do you want to fly or do you want to build?

Both, actually. But I'm so new to flying I'm still figuring out what
kind of flying I'm most interested in doing.

I like to build things.

I'm intimidated by tube and fabric, which, though it is of the
earliest aircraft technology, sounds really time consuming in the
extreme. Still I can imagine that it's very rewarding.

Welding up the truss is the easy part. Making all the little
fittings, hinges. control parts, EVERYTHING in front of the firewall,
making the canopy parts, blah blah blah is what takes the time.

Easier now with water and laser cutting. all yuo have to do is clean them
up and bend them then. But making them by hand? Yipes!

I wasn't kidding when I said that when you think you are 90% done, 50%
of the work is left to do...


If anything, you were being conservative!


Bertie

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Well, the thing is overbuilt to the nth degree. It is what Dudley told
me and he was a design engineer for Convair!
You can take it up with him when you die.

I can see it now............................................... ...
:-)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

I'd give it about a week before some clown on Usenet chimes in on a
thread somewhere with

" Dudley Henriques is a liar and a phony. I read on one of the forums
that he was an engineer for Convair. I KNOW people at Convair, and they
say Henriques never worked there!!!"

I'll bet you a drink on it :-))

--
Dudley Henriques

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...
...
Our son Buddy works in the Physics Department of a major university on the
East Coast of the US. He's teaching a class now in welding. I've always
found welding extremely interesting but I've never actually tried it. I've
watched Buddy run a bead on aircraft tubing and marveled at how solid and
strong the joints looked when finished.
To me it looks like doing it right is an art form that requires just the
right touch and the perfect blend of tools and expendables.

Practice, Practice, Practice - I've put more than a few miles driving cars
patched with coat hanger wire... (No - I never used that on an aircraft
structure)

But there are some people that never learn - one guy that I worked with was
always accused of going to the Blue Jay School of Welding - all his work
looked like a splattering of bird sh*t.

Isn't it about time for someone to complain that we are off topic and should
be talking about this over on rec.aviation.homebuilt? ;-)

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.

On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:52:24 -0600, "Viperdoc" wrote in
:

Bertie:

Do you build any of those large scale R/C planes? I had a friend build one
of my Decathlon, starburst pattern and all, hanging from my ceiling. He then
started on a 12 foot model of my Extra, but unfortunately died. The Extra is
framed, but needs to be covered and painted.

Any recomendations?

I'm in the RC hobby:

http://moleski.net/rc/index.htm

Where do you live? There are some folks in my
club who do nice work and may be able to help you.

Marty
--
Big-8 newsgroups: humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, talk.*
See http://www.big-8.org for info on how to add or remove newsgroups.

"Viperdoc" wrote in
:

Bertie:

Do you build any of those large scale R/C planes? I had a friend build
one of my Decathlon, starburst pattern and all, hanging from my
ceiling. He then started on a 12 foot model of my Extra, but
unfortunately died. The Extra is framed, but needs to be covered and
painted.

Any recomendations?




Nah, I've only built sort of .40 sized things. Most of the sport flyers
seem to be a lot better than scale, though. The Great planes Ultrasport,
for instance.

On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:59:49 -0500, "Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe" The Sea
Hawk at wow way d0t com wrote:

wrote in message
...
Do you want to fly or do you want to build?

Both, actually. But I'm so new to flying I'm still figuring out what
kind of flying I'm most interested in doing.

I like to build things.

I'm intimidated by tube and fabric, which, though it is of the
earliest aircraft technology, sounds really time consuming in the
extreme. Still I can imagine that it's very rewarding.

Welding up the truss is the easy part. Making all the little fittings,
hinges. control parts, EVERYTHING in front of the firewall, making the
canopy parts, blah blah blah is what takes the time.

I wasn't kidding when I said that when you think you are 90% done, 50% of
the work is left to do...

That's what I like ... an optimist. I always heard it was 90% done
and 90% to go and I'm still in the first 90% with only 1300 hours
invested in a 4000 hour project (If I'm lucky) and I'm working on a
kit. :-)) Albeit a Glasair III. After 1300 hours it's almost
beginning to look like it's going to be an airplane.

And it doesn't matter be it rag and tube, wood, or a fiberglass kit,
the little stuff is what takes the time in all of them.

BTW the G-III is a nice aerobatic airplane if you have lots of room in
which to maneuver, but it's definitely not a "starter". It's difficult
to keep under the speed limit at less than 10,000 feet for many
maneuvers. Chip Beck used to do a double loop (one on top of the
other) with an entry speed of 350 MPH.
I used 300 to 325 and 4.5Gs for a single loop, but I don't have much
time in one. Kinda like flying a war bird without the mass or expense
and it's still a great cross country plane. OTOH the wing loading is
only a few points below 30# per sq ft. Glide with power off gives a
rate of descent that is breath taking. :-)) Definitely not for flying
out of the pasture.

OTOH if you purchase a nice one you could probably get at least 2 to 3
Super Decathlons for the same price and it'll cost about 3 to 4 times
as much to operate.


Roger (K8RI)

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe wrote:
"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...
...
Our son Buddy works in the Physics Department of a major university on the
East Coast of the US. He's teaching a class now in welding. I've always
found welding extremely interesting but I've never actually tried it. I've
watched Buddy run a bead on aircraft tubing and marveled at how solid and
strong the joints looked when finished.
To me it looks like doing it right is an art form that requires just the
right touch and the perfect blend of tools and expendables.

Practice, Practice, Practice - I've put more than a few miles driving cars
patched with coat hanger wire... (No - I never used that on an aircraft
structure)

But there are some people that never learn - one guy that I worked with was
always accused of going to the Blue Jay School of Welding - all his work
looked like a splattering of bird sh*t.

Isn't it about time for someone to complain that we are off topic and should
be talking about this over on rec.aviation.homebuilt? ;-)

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.


I know. Where's Mxsmanic when you need him. I'm sure he has probably
written the book on welding :-))

--
Dudley Henriques