Dragon Wing Hub Bars?

[13brv3]

Greetings,

I was just wondering... Are the hub bars on DW blades interchangeable? In other words, if you had 23ft blades (11 ft each, with 1 ft hub bar), and needed more disc area, could you just order a 2,3,or 4 ft hub bar and bolt it on?

I'm guessing that it's going to come down to how precisely they're made in the first place. With megabuck CNC equipment, you'd think they would just bolt together, but that might be a bit much to expect from a relatively small operation like RFD.

The reason I ask, is that I've seen some blades, and even entire gyros for sale that didn't have exactly the right diameter rotors for what I'd need. I was wondering if the option exists to easily change the rotor size, within reason of course.

The other thought is that I'm planning to build a Dominator with a heavy engine as a test. If it doesn't work out, the fall back plan would be to go to a Rotax. I was wondering if I had the option to use something like an 11 ft blade set, with a long hub bar on the heavy engine, then change to a short hub bar if I went back to the Rotax.

Maybe I'm thinking about this just a bit too much :D

Thanks,
Rusty

[MikeBoyette]

Rusty,
No, they are not interchangeable, The blades and hub are balanced and tracked as a unit. Dad does this to insure that they fly as smooth as possible. He test flys every set and they are smooth on his Ultra White before they are broken down and shipped.

He usually will not make a new hub bar to make the disk smaller or larger. Get with him and give him your potential weights and he can guide you on what size to buy. If you end up needing a smaller set you can allways sell them here, used DW's go pretty fast.

[13brv3]

Thanks Mike,

That's pretty much the answer I expected, though with some better reasons than I had thought of.

The smartest thing I can do is just build the whole gyro (minus rotor blades) with the single rotor engine, then use the gyro as a test stand until I prove how well the single will work. At that point, would weigh the thing, and let Ernie sell me the right blades. If I can't come up with a decent redrive, or have some other problems, then I'll just slap a Rotax on it, and still get the right blades.

As for balancing, is this static, or dynamic balance??? It would seem like a dynamic balance would be the way to go, but I've never heard anyone mention doing that on the forum.

Cheers,
Rusty (Kolb for sale in just a few weeks, and Dominator parts ordered when it sells)