Little Wing VW engine power and redrive
Little Wing VW engine power and redrive
Ya know Tony, I feel to blame for why you think the VW is underpowered for LW. I think it comes down to two things.
The first is Weight, which has to do with building as per plans without all the goodies and additions that everyone seems to love to tweak and "improve upon".
Once the Fun stuff is added and thought I had the basics covered I started running paper numbers to determine prop size and cruise numbers to further tweak. Discussions with Ron we talked about a larger pitch and larger prop (62'').
Ron could not have known the weight penalty for the build mostly involving heavy duty covering and if I had built it to fit in his original weight range the prop decision would have been ok.
I feel that deviations from plans can have unintentional consequences. I have been able to overcome the larger prop problem and even increase the prop size to 72" by using a redrive and allow the engine to finally hit the desired RPM power range. However except for the additional weight - I feel the 62" prop recomendation would have worked.
If you remember any of this I hope that you realize that the same white/red striped aircraft that you all drool over (me too) that you have all seen flying used to have a direct drive VW on it. I saw it fly in Hot Texas and windy conditions and it flew beautifully and reliably.
Every time that I see someone say the VW on the LW is underpowered I feel like it is mine they remember, forgetting the great success Ron had with his VW. I thought bringing it to Mentone to do a few test hops/flights would be a smart step forward. I think a lot of people expected everything to be worked out while I was actually only testing my progress and feeling my way forward. It is not that way now with my machine, it took me a while to figure it out but that is what experimental is all about.
I hope you all understand that the plans built VW Single place LW without the "improvements" will fly as Ron has proven time and time again. When you see his White beauty remember that it used to sport a VW and the reason he changed was not because it was underpowered.
If this machine is heavy the simple addition of a readily available VW belt reduction will allow a larger more efficient prop to solve such a problem. Now I remember - it Was barnstormers and at a low price of 6000 without the engine it is about how much I guessed in my previous post to be a low price for such a LW. Any of you who feel you can't scratch build should not wait for these to turn up for sale often. People don't work this hard on them just to want to get rid of them. If you put a VW on it and lacked the power you could bolt a redrive on the same engine with only slight cowling modification and the price of a new prop and I believe you would be good to go.
I hope this puts the Little Wing VW power question to rest in that Ron's VW flew beautifully and there is a nice story about him letting someone else fly it posted at his website. The lesson I learned is one that many first time builders learn the hard way dealing with taking an existing model and trying to improve things. Oh well - I am not the only one tweaking -there are like how many choices in the plans themselves? The difference is in experience levels. It took a while to figure out how to offset the weight and big prop problem. The same could be done for this machine inexpensively.
