How heavy is your tail?

Barney Bahle

Junior Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2011
Messages
513
Location
Crossville, TN 38571
Aircraft
Rotorway 162F, Mosquito XEL
So my Bensen came with a rag and tube T tail. Pulled it off today to clean it up and paint it and figured I'd go ahead and weigh it. It came in just over 9 lbs. and now I'm curious how it stacks up against a stock Bensen tail and/or any other options.

I'm sure I could spend hours digging around in the archives to find out but sometimes it's just more fun to ask.
 
The Bensen plywood tail, with 1-1/2 lb. lead counterweight, runs at least 15 lb.

The Bensen plate-metal ("stopsign") tail wins the lead-sled award at over 20 lb.

A Gyrobee foam-and glass tail weighs 14 lb. or so. It's built with simple, Rutan-style "paintbrush" composite techniques. A more refined, molded composite tail could do better.

A more sophisticated, built-up sheet metal tail (thin skins, formed ribs and spar) can be brought in around 10 lb.

Your number is competitive with the best.
 
The lightest fin rudder that I have built was built with aluminum tube and superflite 1.8 oz covering, it was three pounds.
Norm
 
Thanks Doug, that's the kind of type to weight comparison I was looking for.

Any pictures of that 3 lb tail Norm?
 
An Air Command Tandem came to me from a certain retired AC dealer in south FLA who built a tall flying tail for it out of wood. When I (totally) dismantled and rebuilt the gyro several years ago, I came to the part of removing it. I was expecting it to weigh more than an RFD tall tail, and as I bent over and grunted to lift the (enormous) weight of it I was shocked as the tail nearly catapulted out of my hands into the air due to my over-exertions! The whole thing weighed something like 4-5 pounds, and it is "huge" by most gyrocopter standards!

If you want light, perhaps a luan plywood skin such as this one is what you want. It is much lighter than aluminum, fiberglass, cloth, carbon fiber, etc. and it is STRONG.
 
72"-74" tall tails with 20mm 6061T6 tube full length of tail for pivot - 5.5kgs.
 

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