Building Mariah Gale

If I was to fix that, I would cope an 1/8" plate to fit the tubing then edge weld to create an angle to stop the original plate from flexing.

~~JAKE~~
 
A good idea Jake!

A good idea Jake!

Hello Jake,

The first time it broke it pulled the weld out of the frame tube. The plate was thicker then and straight.

We are going to make new upper tubes that go forward to the bolts on the side.

I feel the wider base will relieve some of the local loads and I like the bolts in shear.

I actually expected the top tube to break at the point they join together.

The stiffness of the rusted sockets may have a lot to do with the failure.

When I touch down on the tail wheel the keel bends upward. I did that a lot at El Mirage.

We may use some rubber in the joint to help manage that movement.

Thank you, Vance
 
Hello Jake,



We are going to make new upper tubes that go forward to the bolts on the side.

I feel the wider base will relieve some of the local loads and I like the bolts in shear.


We may use some rubber in the joint to help manage that movement.

Thank you, Vance

That's is even better. good idea.

~~JAKE~~
 
Hi Vance & Ed:

I just discovered this thread today. Exciting. Even though you’ve settled on the name, I wanted to add my 2¢ worth about that, so here it is. . .

You could call it “EDeN's BREEZE”

A breeze is a gentle wind that carries you along. Eden is a place or state of happiness; an unspoiled paradise.

This machine will carry you like a gentle breeze through the tranquility of the lower airspace's, giving you panoramic views of paradise as you see the undulating expanse of the earth, seemingly unencumbered with the tragedies of humanity; a sense of peace and freedom unknown to the ground-bound masses.

I know the double-entente in the name is obvious; “Ed n Breese.”

Well, maybe you can use it for your next project.

Enjoyed the time I spent with you at Bensen Days,

Dave
Hey I just discovered this Cute Name for our Aircraft Eden Breese Love it! I think Vance kept it hidden from me! LOL Me Likes!!! A LOT! Just Sayin' ♥
 
More progress with small steps

More progress with small steps

It has been a while since I have posted on this thread and there continues to be activity so I felt it was time for an update.

I spoke to Jim this morning and he sent the mocked up horizontal back to Vince last Wednesday.

The design keeps evolving as we gain insight into the interface between carbon fiber and metal.

Jim has designed a composite torsion box that should spread out the loads for Vince to fabricate as part of the interface assuming Vince and Mike are in agreement with the scheme.

He also designed a clever way to keep the nut inserts in alignment while they are glassed in.

I expect to go visit Vince before he moves forward and I will post some pictures then.

This part of the aircraft has been a real design challenge because it continues to expose our lack of experience with high strength composites and how they interface with metal.

It is also a challenge to get artists to agree on the advantage of an alternate art.

On a separate note I attended an interesting seminar on improving takeoffs at the Copper State fly in.

Part of what I learned is that the aircraft should be trimmed for either VX or VY before takeoff.

The presenter felt it helps to identify things that aren’t going well sooner. I like the concept, I don’t know if it is applicable to gyroplanes.

I now feel that the pneumatic trim we expect to use will be particularly well suited to this if I put a pressure gage in the panel rather than a proximity sensor.

The presenter said that an aircraft will not be able maintain VX at full power and VY should be maintained as soon as the obstacles are cleared. It made me rethink my understanding of the Predator’s V speeds. When I climbed to 12,700 feet it was at what I felt was VX.

I also purchased a very nice stick grip with a four way trim switch and four momentary switches. I like the possibilities and I have four tenths of an hour of imaginary flight time on it.

Building Mariah Gale continues to be a wonderful adventure and a valuable learning experience.

Thank you, Vance
 
A productive trip to Hollister!

A productive trip to Hollister!

I drove up to Hollister today to meet with Mike and Vince.

Mike has been away at events and Vince has been working on three large, important projects.

Today is the first day I saw what Jim Belland has done for the empennage mounts.

I was glad I decided not to fly because there was a large patch of very dense fog from Santa Margarita almost to King City. No blue sky to be seen and it was so cold that I put the top up on the M Roadster.

I was very pleased with Jim has done as were Vince and Mike.

This is somewhere around our eighth design, it could be as high as sixteen depending on how you count them.

This is the first time all the parties involved agreed that it is a superior machinate.

The aluminum straps are bolted to the nuts to keep everything aligned while Vince glasses the mounts in. Once the glass has set they will be removed.

The plates and nuts are stainless.

There will be a steel part on top of the mounts to act like a big washer.

The piece in the picture was pulled off the plug for the horizontal stabilizer and the sides represent the ribs.

The Xs drawn on the mock up base will be balsa wood with carbon fiber over it to build a torsion box to tie the mounts and ribs together.

Vince is going to try to finish the plug, finish the design on the rudder mechanism, make the mold and have a first article for us before the Christmas shut down. He intends to do all this without dropping the ball on his three big projects.

Vince is an amazing fellow and Mike is a good friend.

Mike insists the pod and the cowl will not take very long. Our goal is to be finished and her hours flown off by the Hollister Air Show. I feel it is good to aim high or you won’t hit anything.

It looks to me like the soonest we could leave is spring of 2013, time will tell.

Thank you, Vance
 

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Out of the quandary

Out of the quandary

Ed had some questions about the thing in the picture.

It is a representation of the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer that Vince made from the mold for the plug.

The things on the sides represent the ribs.

This was the solution to the quandary of how to make things happen in two places 200 miles apart with two different disciplines.

Vince will transfer the information from that representation to the actual part and bond the nut plates in place along with the extra structure so that the point loadings are limited and it fits exactly when it is time to bolt the empennage to the keel.

Vince is going to return the representation to Jim so he can finish weld the keel. It is just tack welded now.

I am hoping to visit Jim and Vince weekend after next.

We need to finish up the details on the suspension legs although we can’t make the swing arm parts until we find out how much the empennage weighs.

We are also going to start on the rotor control and the rotor head.

Once we have the empennage in place and the suspension finished the entire assembly will go back to Vince for the body and cowl.

We have lost close to six months due to my design change on the keel and suspension.

I feel every part of her is better because of it.

It is a beautiful day with 3kt winds and I am off to fly.

Thank you, Vance
 
Progress on Her empennage.

Progress on Her empennage.

I received two emails from Mike showing that they are making progress.

This is all work to fill the hole that the old keel used to mount the empennage.

Mike said he knew the design would change.

We have been working together since the late 70s and he knows me well.

Vince is working on it in his spare time.

Thank you, Vance
 

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Vance that is just looking so AWESOME!!!:D
 
Wow talking about effective control surface. Absolutely beautiful. I do think it is an art form to create a functional and esthetically acceptable airfoil. Great job. I like how it turned out. I had learned not to estimate the time my stuff will get done. Something always comes into play just to defeat the prediction. :)
 
Baby steps

Baby steps

I received an email at 4:37 Tuesday afternoon from Vince that it was time to make a decision on the mechanism for operating the rudder.

I was out the door at 5:00 AM and face to face with Vince at 8:15 AM. It took a little longer because my camera was at the hangar.

I again ran into some very cold fog near Paso Robles.

Vince is trying to get the empennage finished by the Christmas break and I am trying to remove as many impediments as I can. Mike is trying to make sure Vince has some spare time although he is responsible for several large very important projects.

The design goal is to keep everything that operates the rudder except the cables inside the empennage.

The Mooney empennage has some unsightly un-aerodynamic little arms and a lot of the mechanism on the outside. We want to do better.

We are trying to contain the rudder movement mechanism inside the horizontal stabilizer.

It is not as simple as might be imagined because the rudder is at an angle so anything that is solidly attached to it is also at an angle and moving through an arc unless we ran the cables out the bottom.

The leading edge will have holes for plastic bushings that the cables go through so we will have vents at the back of the vertical stabilizer to stop a pressure build up. Vince was the one who recognized the challenge and together we feel we have managed it by finding a low pressure area ahead of the rudder to vent any pressure buildup.

The ribs on either side are very close to the lever that operates the rudder that is moving in an arc.

The cable needs to go through slots in the forward spar.

The length of the arms is governed by the leverage on the pedals unless we want to modify them and repaint them.

Vince had carefully worked things out so that it appears to work. We are going to use spherical bearings on the ends of the operating lever so we don’t wear out the pivots for the cables with the misalignment. The arm is not made yet and will be aluminum held in place by two -3 bolts.

We were going to use the Mooney hinges but in our opinion there is not a good way to attach them so we came up with a new scheme that may eliminate some parts. We were going to bolt the tapered arm to a nut plate bonded into the rudder so it was possible to assemble it with the Mooney hinges. With the new scheme the arm itself may be bonded to the rudder.

We have developed a new hinge system that uses much larger hollow hinge pins and plastic bearings. The lower hinge slips into place and the lower operating arm is pined in place through an access panel in the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer. We may make the access panel clear to aid in inspecting the rudder cables during preflight. To assemble the upper hinge the pin is slid down through a hole in the top of the rudder balance arm and secured in place. The hole will be covered by an anti collision light.

Once we had some concept of what we wanted I called up Jim Belland and he was sick with a cold. He agreed to make as many parts as he had time for as long as he finished up by 4:00 so he could get back to bed. Greenwood is 3 hours from Hollister.

He made the parts for the lower arm, lower hinge except the bushings, upper hinge and upper hinge pin.

I will see Vince tomorrow morning and show him what Jim put together.

I find it amazing how many details there are to manage with something as simple as a rudder.

Assuming that Vince and Mike approve the new parts we will continue to move forward.

This marginally changes the front of the rudder but everything else is moving along well.

What you see in the picture is the plug to make the mold to make the 3 parts of the empennage and the two parts of the rudder.

Vince is still working on the ribs and spars. We are sort of copying the placement in the Mooney empennage.

Thank you, Vance
 

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Vance- Beautiful planning is what shines through on this project. This is the perfect example of being tenacious, persistent, patient, and many more words only you could come up with. This reminds me of how I wollered through some difficult "for me" stairway projects. In the beginning I knew I didn't know how I was going to get the stairway built, but knew somehow I would tenaciously stick to it until it would get done. You do this on a grander scale and it just reinforces in me that we all have "a way" to get a difficult task accomplished if we just stay tenacious, persistent, and patient. Thank you for these valuable life lessons that indirectly come out of your building and flying posts. Vance- You are one-of- a-kind. Stan
 
The antitheses of planning.

The antitheses of planning.

Thank you Stan, I wish it were so.

I feel that building Mariah Gale is the antithesis of planning.

We get parts together and imagine they are further together. As we examine that picture we ask the parts how they would like to work together.

I try to minimize design changes and we work hard to not paint ourselves into a corner.

The original keel was a corner and we are designing and fabricating one piece at a time to try to stay off the wet paint.

Just this morning I redesigned the hinge scheme to take advantage of the capabilities that the newly fabricated parts have.

The arm that we just made is no longer bolted to the bottom of the rudder. Instead it is bonded in place and the whole assembly slips down into place over the new bonded in hinge with the custom Delran bushings. We no longer need an access hole in the top of the rudder.

The connection for the rudder horns will hold it in place.

I am trying to research now how thick to make the rudder horns and out of what material. I like thicker aluminum but .190 steel seems to be the norm.

Vince and Mike liked what Jim built yesterday.

I called Jim and he liked the new hinge scheme.

I feel like we are making relentless incremental progress.

On a less successful front I just left the machinist that was going to make provisions for my spherical teeter bearings and he gave me my parts back because they suddenly became busy with more profitable work. And next week is a short week because of that holiday. I will put her back together tomorrow.

That was 13 hours of wandering around California in my M Roadster.

I love my wife, my car, The Predator, Mariah Gale, my friends and my life.

Life treats me well.

Thank you, Vance
 

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Hey Vance

Looking good..... Do you have a pic of the spherical teeter bearing that you are going to use? Just curious on what it looks like.........

Also..... what is that vehicle behind the tail in picture one of you last post???
 
Pleased with everything so far.

Pleased with everything so far.

Hello Mark,

Thank you, I am pleased with everything so far.

It is fortunate that it is taking so long or the design change would have been more wasteful.

The large cover on the bottom covers up the old mount that Vince was so careful to make exactly right.

Only the top cover or rear if it were on the aircraft will be there in the final part so we can install and inspect the rudder cables.

Everyone involved feels that the new mount is better and worth the effort particularly with the other benefits involved with the new keel.

That design of the rudder horn continues to move forward as I learn. I spent a lot of yesterday studying rudder horns and some of them do not seem like best practice. A particular Cessna one has some ugly bends in it. It looks like they put it together and it didn’t line up so they bent it and then forgot to change the drawing.

There must not be as much force on the rudder horn as I imagine. Phil says he has never seen one fail.

I am making drawings as I wait at home for the plumber because my copper pipes in the ceiling are leaking again. This happens every few years.

You have a sharp eye Mark.

The car is a Corbin Sparrow electric car.

You can see lots of images by doing an image search for “Sparrow electric car”

Mike ceased production some years back and he is rebuilding number 100 for himself.

He is working on a new design for a single person electric car so there are two in the shop now.

The spherical bearings I am planning on using look something like this.

I will use a -4 bolt and they will be captured in the teeter block itself rather than in the side plates on the rotor head. The present bearings will be replaced with little hats. It is easy to try and my machinist friend will call me back when he has more time.

I feel they provide more precision and can handle the reciprocating motion better than the needle bearings. They can also manage side loads and I feel it will be more provide precision than the plastic thrust washers.

The assembly will still have back up thrust washers in case the bearing fails.

The needle bearings were already showing some shiny spots after only a few hours of operation using the AeroShell 14 grease. I suspect from examination that there are some alignment challenges during aggressive operation.

Thank you, Vance
 

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Ed feels the tail wheel is art!

Ed feels the tail wheel is art!

Ed likes the tail wheel so much she feels we should leave it in the open.

Jim is experimenting with running a part of a strut for a fairing to reduce the drag.

I am undecided and also undecided about suspension on the tail wheel.

At this point it appears it will be rigid.

It may interact badly with the longish travel suspension.

The tail wheel is rigid on The Predator but it is much softer than Mariah Gale’s tale wheel.

The tail wheel will be further forward than it is on The Predator.

It will be about even with the propeller and near the low point of the keel.

That is why we got away from the roller skate wheel.

Thank you, Vance
 

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I feel that building Mariah Gale is the antithesis of planning.

That Vance, is called design(ing) on the wing.:)

Nice tailwheel.

We went from a rigid tailwheel to a sprung one and I felt the difference right away, having some suspension all round I feel sure is kinder to the airframe and occasionally I will touch down tail first.
 
Design on the Fly!

Design on the Fly!

That Vance, is called design(ing) on the wing.:)

Nice tailwheel.

We went from a rigid tailwheel to a sprung one and I felt the difference right away, having some suspension all round I feel sure is kinder to the airframe and occasionally I will touch down tail first.

I feel you right Leigh; the new tail wheel doesn’t have much give to it.

Since you made this suggestion I have tried using the ail wheel on The Predator more on takeoff and I can feel the give. It is a roller skate wheel and is kind of soft.

I feel suspension may be a good thing and it certainly reduces loads. The streamlining idea won’t work; maybe we can get Vince to make a tiny wheel pant.

Mike sent me this picture of the progress on the access panel for the rudder horns.

I have finished the rudder horn design and hope to head up to Greenwood later this week and stop in Hollister along the way.

I have a commitment for the Oceano Toy run on Saturday and Santa Paula open hangar day on Sunday so it may not happen until next week.

Thank you, Vance
 

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More empennage progress!

More empennage progress!

I spent some time with Vince this morning.

He has been working on other projects and just got back on the empennage yesterday.

He is working on the inspection cover for the rudder horns. We may make it out of clear plastic so we can inspect it as part of preflight.

He is also smoothing out the old slot to mount the original keel.

I gave him the doodle of the rudder horn that Jim is going to make.

It is a piece of eighth inch 4130 plate with a little custom bushing to fasten it to the rudder mechanism.

Jim is going to try to have it done by the end of the week so Vince will have something to hold and the machinist can make the final hinge bushings.

The exact location of the cables is still up in the air. We will figure it out when we have the empennage and keel mounted to the frame. We will probably use boat pulleys because they are a little stronger and lighter than the ones from aircraft spruce.

I drew it full size so he can check the clearance on things, make a cut out of it if things are close.

We also talked about making the rudder lighter because it doesn’t really need any structural strength.

We are probably overbuilding the rest of the empennage but we want to err on the side of two strong and too heavy.

I missed Mike. He sent me the last two pictures from the end of the day. It looks like Vince has gone through at least two layers of Bondo, probably three.

We are not far from making the mold.

When the mold is done we are going to have a last meeting the guy who provides the Carbon Fiber and Kevlar to get a better handle on the process. Vince has worked with carbon fiber a lot but never for something like this. We will all be there for the layup.

Mike wants to make two empennages, one for his show room and one for Mariah Gale. We are trying to keep scrap to a minimum because the materials are very expensive.

I am becoming extraordinarily excited after a year of foreplay.

I am ready for the layup!


The pictures don’t do it justice and they do not have enough detail to truly see the progress.

I had a really good picture of the rudder horn area but the computer ate it.

I will post more on the keel and our latest design for the tail wheels soon.

Thank you, Vance
 

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I am becoming extraordinarily excited after a year of foreplay.

And we Vance... are all looking forward to an explosive culmination.:rapture:
 
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