Modelmakeroz

With the good seasons we had for a while (Lake Eyre filling twice and all that) the Parrot numbers, Budgies, Corellas, Rosellas, Parikeets, Lorikeets etc will be in really huge numbers. Now the seasons have turned and the big dry has started a lot of these birds will migrate to the Coast for survival, be prepared for some really weird ideas from the city folk regarding where they came from and why they are there.

The huge numbers of Kangaroos that bred up in the big wet are now dying in droves.

The land of drought and flooding rains strikes again.

Wow a Space Shuttle. I thought the Hughes Hercules was pretty damn good. The way it makes a centre piece of really effective. Do you know if there was a plan for a separate Shuttle hangar?

We spent several days with our friends there, Paul is a Mechanical Engineer. He also directed us to the Antique Power Museum at Salem. That was also great. You lads and lasses certainly know how to make Aussies feel welcome.

Hey Mod. . . . .I know Budgerigar all about aviation too, and I've got 8700 hours not learning anything. . . . . . .

Hello Planesmaker,That would be great if you could send me some photos. Please provide the dimensions too. I would also like to know how much throw your trim tab is capable of and how much you actually use.

 

How effective is your trim tab? Would you recommend one of the same size or a larger?

 

My understanding (from what I have read) is that the J2/4 series planes are light in aileron athority but slightly twitchy in pitch. If this is true, I won't want to enlarge the elevator by adding an external trim tab. Building the trim tab into the elevator will also be more aesthetically pleasing. Comments?

 

I assume that a trim cut out of trailing edge of the elevator will have less chance of fluttering. (Does "assume" have the same, humorous, meaning for you guys in the Southern Hemisphere as it does up here?) A trim tab cut out of the trailing edge will be thicker and therefor more ridged than one made to extend from the trailing edge of the elevator.

 

I will also need to ensure a bullet proof connection to the Ray Allen Servo and mounting. I may consider mass balancing the trim tab or adding some friction to the hinge.

 

Thanks for the help.

I have a mate that lives not far from you around McMinville area, I visited him on the way to Oshkosh last year. He took me to Evergreen Aviation, Wow what a museum.

Regards,

Mike.

I have a few mates Stateside. I explained to one of them why "I'm rooting for ya" doesn't wash on this side of the ditch.

Hello! My name is Wayne Eckertson and I live in Eugene Oregon, USA. I have 500 hours of flying time and a Sport Pilot license. I am a member and past president of my local EAA chapter.I am in the early stages of building a Jabiru J230. I also have a HKS 700E powered Rans S-14 which I put together in 2007. I documented that build at http://s14build.blogspot.com.

 

To pay for my airplane addiction, I work as an Electrical Engineer.

 

I appreciate any advice and help I can get for my J230 build.

I too work in the electrical game to pay for the fun times.

To quote Uncle Ernie, "Welcome"

Welcome Hieway66.

My wife and I spent some time last year after Oshkosh tracking down as much of Hiway 66 as we could. tons of fun.

By the way I know bugger all about aviation, I'm a beginner too.

A combination of technologies would work well if set up properly.A high and low hydro dam setup in partnership with solar and wind, you could use the hydro basically as a battery (the bigger the dams you are able to use the better power storage) when the sun was shining or wind was blowing you could use the power generated to pump the water up to the high dam so it was ready to be used to generate whenever needed.

 

Locations could vary, I guess you would need a hill or at least a rise in terrain but otherwise could nearly be set up in most places

 

Maybe the hydro setup in the snowies already use a similar idea?

Regarding the pictures and clip GG posted with the fire in the wind turbine. Because of the distributed public locations of these devices any passer by with a phone can take footage. With established Thermal stations the "Smoke Escapement" events are mostly behind closed doors. An error in manufacture or operation tends to let the smoke out. Being up high inaccessible and in the wind tends to make sensational footage. Oil well fires are even more spectacular. Coal stockpile fires don't look real spectacular most times but stink plenty, ask the folks of Morwell.

Something that I'd like to get across is the annual "Earth Hour" game is destructive. For that hour the Thermal stations world wide are forced to blow steam. The boilers have to run at over capacity as, when the joke ends, the load comes back on HARD. I hope this fiasco does not lead to a Chernobyl style event, rememember that disaster was caused by an experiment in power reduction gone wrong (at the bewitching hour).

I try and keep things in balance and correct, I earn my crust as a Lecky and have put my money where my mouth is regarding Solar. It cost me heaps and for the privilege of supporting the weak grid in my area I get paid bugger all.

The upside for me is my equipment works better with the designed voltage being delivered to motors (yeah I have a few). Prior to installing my own system we were being supplied 218 Volts in the middle of the day. My mulcher for instance used to stop and reverse on branches much smaller than design capacity, now it just powers on.

So all in all Aircraft owners and pilots must be a bit smarter than the average bear, just keep researching and apply the sceptical "what is your interest" test to the self serving propaganda from both the "Inner city left whinge" and the "make me rich at your expense" crowd.

Thanks Modelm,I stand corrected.

My claim was based on my own experience about 18 years ago, when I did some research into putting one on our farm for our own use ( we use a lot) and selling the rest to the grid. I don't remember the figures other than the cost of a reconditioned generator was around $225000.00 without the tower to put it on or connecting it to anything. The other limiting factor was that it had a very short TBO (again unfortunately I can't remember the exact figure , so I won't guess) I didn't go any further after I was given those ball park numbers.

 

Regards Bill

At small scale wind probably still isn't viable. A lot like small coal plants aren't viable. Part of the current installation activity is refitting existing wind farms with smaller numbers of new larger units. Allegedly the old units are exported to developing countries.

As for downstream and other effects we can be sure they exist in one form or another. Like eveything else it becomes a cost benefit analysis.

Regarding TBO. It is important to look at the maintenance costs. If you have bearing failure due to electrofluting for instance and therefore have to bring down the nacelle early. There goes all your profit. Early units had exactly that problem andthe manufacturer would not listen so customers had to solve the issue themselves. A crowd called Aegis provided the microfibre brushrings to keep the stray current out of the bearings. I have to deal with the same manufacturer on a different product with similar technology and have the same bearing issues. They still don't listen.

So yes there are risks that take experience to understand.

MMOz, that was so good I wanted to give it "Winner" and "Informative". You'll just have to settle for one.

Wasn't the original photo sensational. Reminds me of the "Morning Glory" clouds up in the Gulf. No I don't think I'd want to play Don Quixote and buzz any of these windmills. Ouch.

Any of you want to do the maths on the installation and maintenance costs compared to what they produce.They wouldn't exist without subsidies.

If you want clean, economically viable energy, hydro is it.

We had a good look at the situation while travellling around the US last year. We would be travelling along barely able to keep the camper van on the road due to wind and not one turbine would be turning, then one cue one would unfeather its blades and before I could get a second look (driving remember) it would be at full speed. In small groups on they would come to match the peak demand.

Now if I were a novice regarding the electrical grid this would seem bizarre, but over 40 years in the industry can provide an insight or two.

The most expensive power is peak power. Base load stations are now 1 Gigawatt or bigger per generating unit it does not pay to stop them (like the greenweirds think happens in"earth hour"). The time to actually bring up and synchronise a large set is measured in days and if brought up in hours has serious implications for the longivity of the units.

Traditionally old wornout sations have been used as peak loaders with the peak and trough fine tuning achieved by diesel fired gas turbines which could be on line in 2 minutes. Those units installed around Australia typically employed 2 Rolls Royce Avon jet engines as compressors pushing a single turbine wheel. This technology is still current with an order of magnitude or two bigger compressors. GE hae just built the largest to date in France and are commissioning the type in the US. These new units mostly are natural gas fired and once again come on line quickly. A short time later (around 30 minutes) the flash boilers is fully pressurised and the unit becomes combined cycle bringing overall station efficiency to approaching 60%.

Two minutes sounds good, but it is nowhere near fast enough, so the wind turbines which are fully powered up by the afternoon breeze but feathered really make a difference. It is not only the power capability but also the linearity of the rampup that is so valuable.

Further to that, in a large grid as in the US or Australia's East Coast where power is transmitted across large distances and time zones the watts are easy enough to tansmit allowing for I squared losses, but VARS are quite difficult to tansmit and are extemely necessary, especially during periods of heavy loads. VARS provide the magnetising current to enable the transformers to operate. It was lack of VARS that caused the 2003 grid cascade failure in North East US and Eastern Canada. Suggested reading; official report on 2003 cascade failure, several hundred pages long.

By being distributed along the axis of the grid renewable power sources not only significantly lower the grid impedance but provide a cheap linear source of VARS. The rollout projects have also include long overdue stiffening of weak spots in the grid (at least in the US). This long overdue capex is what is being labelled as subsidy and of course nothing could be further from the truth.

By way of explanation, output from a genset, station or system is a mixture of Watts (Kilowatts, Megawatts, Gigawatts depending on scale) and Volt Amps Reactive (kilovars, Megavars, Gigavars) added together they make up the VA, KVA, MVA, GVA rating of the set, station or system.

Managing the balance of VA, VARS, Watts, Frequency and Voltage has been a dark art. It was lack of understanding of the issues that allowed Enron to perform their scam.

In the last year or so there has been a major anti-renewable pushback, not because it is unviable but because it is very viable.

The Australian Newspaper has been a forum for these vested interests, I have also seen trolling in Silicon Chip magazine. Now here it is in an unrelated magazine, probably only repeating the propaganda.

The purpose of the pushback and source seem to be State owned supply authorities who want customer provided energy to be theirs for free or preferably with charges applied. Remember State Govts are fattenng up the assets for sale. I will leave readers to do their own research on this, the paper trail is there.

Hydro.

Hydro has many of the same attributes as other renewables, speed to synchronise being a major beneficial factor. Pumped storage is our most viable storage to date but limited in scope. Unfortunately Australia has poor hydro prospects and the greenweird lobby have prevented the few viable sites that exist being developed, think Franklin River.

Once again think international. The Hoover Dam is a major hydro dam and it is so overcommitted that during the day 2 sets are running and even as a peaker it is struggling. To get aound this problem the existing transmission lines to California now take power from Solar 1 and Solar 2. That was an interesting site. Once again prior to peak over 10% of the troughs were feathered out of service. It all changes come peak time though.

One more snippit. The generation of rooftop inverters now rolling out in Europe are to include active power management to control the VARS on the grid. Supply authorities will love it, current units support the voltage very well and more expensive ones already control power factor (VARS). When mandated and there is talk of enforcing retrofitting software, they will take money for jam.

Why trailer around Oz......just buy a jab, and fly around, then fly around again, then just for the hell of it.......fly around again.Me n her ( wife ) get about a lot, jabs everywhere, other brands not that often. Get it well serviced, do a couple of mods......then off you go.

It is about logistics options. Get somewhere, camp then radiate out looking around. I have done plenty "see what I can on the way" trips. I'm thinking of the time not too far away when deadlines will be less important.

I have been following and will continue to follow yourself and a couple of others I saw who trusted your own judgement and bought Jabs. They are nice looking little planes and it seems some other manufacturers also think so, with the amount of clones out there. My research into Jab began last August while I was at Oshkosh when a chap I met from the Watertown WI chapter told me about his 6 cyl Jab engine in his homebuilt and how good it was. The stuff Rod Stiff has posted on "Jabachat" floored me, here I was with nothing but positive feedback and trying to find out more, then Thud.

One thing that is important to me is freedom from leaded fuel. So I'm interested in real information from owners how they go on modern fuel including any issues to watch.

Regards,

Mike.

I believe it's not that difficult a conversion when you have a RAA 3-axis. Plenty of second hand 912 equiped trikes going for very cheap prices (compared to purchase price). Remember most are factory built.If you're in WA, I know a bloke with one for sale. Lots flying out of Bunbury.......

I would think a trike would be the better option trailered too.......

I get to WA a fair bit. I will keep what you have said in mind. It could be worth a look once I am licenced and experienced. I like the way JG drove and flew around the US with his Kolb in a modern day covered wagon. Also liked his descriptions of flying around Oz in his Savannah. We have been across the country a few times by road and of course I get to play freight in a 737 or bigger quite often. So much of the country would look great at 500 to 1000 feet.

Regards,

Mike.

Just remember that it will need to be a factory built aircraft for you to complete your Pilot Certificate in it

A trike is probably one of the more practical solutions to the problems of a dragging a plane round the country

 

Cheers

 

John

I don't know anything about trikes. I don't even know anyone with one. There are a mob in WA that do training for about GA pricing and the trikes themselves seem awfully dear for what they are. Am I missing something?

I did one long trip and set it up carefully. I won't do it again. It scares the hell out of me. The blast of air from trucks going the opposite way, Bumps and the possibility of chafing.Fully enclose and sit on foam, and make sure all your cables etc don't rub on anything. I guess it's possible to make sure there is no possibility of damage, but it isn't easy. Nev

Thanks for the advice. Where I came up with the idea was after seeing a couple at Oshkosh down in the area near the untralight barn with a Kitfox and a trailer and Chev van and an awesome collection of photos. I wasn't planning on the Gibb River Road, but you have really made me think. Why shouldn't I fly over the road less travelled, can't do that with a road rashed plane can I. Probably impossible to safely fix in a remote area too.

Paramotor / powered parachute, chuck it in the ute mate.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W3rGXEmAOQ

 

(awesome pre-flight no? Don't think he even glanced at the fuel).

MM After 6 months I still had the same problem. Indecision about what to buy. The problem that I had was that I loved everything that I flew in and wanted them all. Obviously that was not possible and rather than spend a lot of money on something that I may outgrow in 12 months I went for a cheaper option. I also originally wanted a factory built so I could put it online. Many people tried to talk me out of that one but the most convincing argument was the day the Minister for War and Finance said to me I thought this was supposed to be all about you. Obviously once I decided that 19 rego's were in the mix, that made the choices even harder. So I finally decided on something cheap that I would not lose to much on if in 12 months I wanted something else.I bought an X-Air Hanuman. So why settle for the Hanuman?

 

Well even though I had lost a fair bit of weight, carrying capacity is a huge consideration for me. The Hanuman has that. Even with full tanks is still has 215kgs to spare.

 

They are very well priced.

 

They are very solid. When you walk around it and look at things they scream professionalism in the design. Of course that needs to be carried through to the builder but it is a very good starting point.

 

It has a very large cabin equally as roomy as the Foxbat.

 

And it handles very well. It is very similar to the Foxbat to fly, but you do need to be more aware when landing her. She does glide well but once you get down to the flare point you do need to be close to the ground. Once you flare it really does tend to slow down very quickly.

 

She has 3 stage flaps but really is happy to take off without flaps and land with one stage. I have about 20 hours in her now and have not yet been game to put the 3rd stage of flaps out. I think if you did she would be almost happy to stop in midair. Unlike the Foxbat, when you give some flaps, the nose does not tend to drop to maintain speed she just seems to sink faster with a very similar attitude. I am not sure about that yet, I am still coming to grips with it.

 

It also has the folding wings, as do all the Hanumans which is nice to have I guess if you need it for storage or trailering but I haven't folded them yet and if I can keep it in a hangar where I don't need to I will be happy.

 

OK so for the negatives.

 

Performance. She cruises at 80 knots no probs so that is not a negative.

 

Mine has the Jabiru 2200 motor. 80hp (supposedly) I think if mine has 80 horses they a very small ones, maybe not even as big as Shetland Ponies. Admittedly mine is an old motor. Serial number in the 200's. It has an unknown history. And to be honest I think half the horses are simply missing in action. I have flown a J160D with a new motor and it is streets ahead of mine.

 

The other problem with it is that it needs to be flown with 1 eye glued to the CHT gauge. Seriously they can start to climb at any time for no apparent reason. As a result of this she simply does not climb very well at all. I have spoken to several other owners and they do not have the same problems, so I may have an issue with my motor or with the installation or both.

 

I bought it at the right price being well aware of the faults and the intention of changing the motor anyway so this is not a real problem for me.

 

The other thing is the wheels/tyres look very fragile to me after the Foxbat especially. The undercarriage looks strong but the wheels and tyres do not look fit for purpose to me anyway.

 

My solution is simple. Replace the motor but that is a topic for another thread if anyone is interested.

 

In summary the Hanuman is a well designed well built aircraft that should suit many first aircraft buyers with plenty of room and carrying capacity. I bought mine with the intention of flying it for 12 months and moving it on. I am already rethinking the moving it on bit. It handles well and I believe it will land in a very short space once I get to know her better. And once she has the new motor I hope she will be able to get out of very short spaces as well.

I was thinking of sending you a PM to see how you were going with the Hanuman. Useful weight sounds just that, useful. Sounds like the third stage flap is for STOL, certainly something for the future.

I haven't flown behind a Jab engine yet, I am so inexperienced I've only been behind 2 Lycosaurs and a Rotax. Didn't like the Lycosaurs at all, gutless and noisy.

I'm thinking a nice indicisive look around right now could be a good thing. I want to concentrate on getting trained, then licenced. Another thing I want to do is get to meet fliers in my (and other) area. I've met a few and they have been great, however finding things out has all been word of mouth including finding an RAA instructor. Web searching would have been ok if I had wanted to pilot a ship.

I haven't had a life long ambition to fly, I've always been jnterested in aviation but never actually imagined myself flying. Oshkosh was a turning point, we got in early and spent 9 days going around with my mate Ron from Wisconsin. I had never heard of LSA, RAA or Jabiru before let alone Rans, Vans, Sonex or Zenith. On about day 7 my missus said, "So when are you gonna build a plane?" Yeah righto you're just taking the piss outa me. If it was feasible I'd help Ron build his plane.

A couple of weeks after we got home Ron died, without getting to build his Flying Chipmonk or get his licence. That really put a burr under my saddle. From there began my initially bumpy journey towards flying.

Jimmy and Geoff,

You two are 6 months or so ahead of me. Funnily enough we have asked the same questions. I'm now training in a Savannah S and finally starting to enjoy it. Light, high wing, STOL seems to be my preference too. The more I dig around the more nice planes I see. I think folding wings and trailer could also be good, not just for hangarage, but also for a low stress around the country slowly sight seeing tour once I retire. There are a few contenders there, but I think the Gazelles on offer are too far gone to be worth the trouble. Any I've enquired about have had engines way beyond TBO and when I checked with Bert Flood there is no "on condition" option whatever the vendors or their LAME have to say.

Unfortunately they or at least some of the fixed wing devices can get to quite some height. I recently came across a bloke that has a 2 metre span RC motor glider. He has attached blue and white ultra bright LEDs to it in a cross formation. He tries to pass it off as a UFU, to the point of putting some hoax video on youtube. Places where he flies are at least bordering on controlled airspace around an Airforce base and in the downwind leg area of a civil airport that I know of. I offered to show him where the local model flying field was. His answer was, "No I'm not registered, the model mob don't approve of what I do." Same bloke flew a model indoors at work around people and still whinges about coming under disciplinary action.

In short the gear capable of being misused is easily available and those that will use the gear any way they see fit are plentiful enough. The bloke I refer to is not a child.

How the heck are they going to regulate them? Particularly around Christmas there are stalls in most shopping centres selling quads about a foot square for less than $100, some even down to $50. Parents buy them for their kids who go out and fly them with no regard for regulations, and no perception of altitude. It's like the idiots with laser pointers.

I've found that the leak down test is safer performed by two people , one to take charge of the prop ,Another trick is to have a pen behind you ear and record press. on pieces of masking tape on each head .

Cheers and BE CAREFUL .!!

 

A prop that let's go in a leak down test could do serious injury , or death !!!

There are hundreds of tips for home builders on the site.

It can be but I leave it up all the time, saves time. The wings are easily removable. Check out the xair aus website for pictures of xair trailers.

I've posted an enquiry and will go back and look at trailers.

I earlier made some enquiries about Gazelles for sale and thought "an awful lot of money for worn out GA trainers no longer being LAME inspected".

How did you arrange your training? The 25 hours bizzo if I kit build would just about snooker me as I'd need to pay someone to fly them off then I could take a trainer on board, from how I read the regs anyway.

Regards,

Mike.

Hi Mike, this is quite an old thread and sadly the project didn't end up quite as planned but there's still a lot of good information in it from many different contributors, so if you're just starting out in the light sportplane environment it's probably worth reading through it all.I did end up completing the design of the little folding biplane and then calculating the weight and balance. The balance worked out well and weight wasn't too bad considering that this was designed to be made from readily available commercial grade materials. Nonetheless I would have had to do a bit of work to try and save a bit more weight, because as it was the MZ202 engine wasn't going to provide good enough performance for safety and if we had to go to a larger engine a lot of the cost saving would be lost.

 

The death knell, though, was the cost of parts production. Early in the piece I discussed the production with a local company who have a waterjet machine that's always been under-utilised and they said they would see what they could do when the time came. In the end their quote, very reasonable though it was by Australian standards, made it unviable as a 'toy' plane, I didn't think the market would be anything like big enough to justify the time and expense because to achieve even half-way reasonable pricing for the parts would require a production run of several dozen sets at the least.

 

I made enquiries for parts to be cut overseas and the price was significantly better, about a quarter, but then the problem was materials, quite a few of the sizes weren't available and the spec was unreliable, this would mean sending material from here and back again so the double freight costs nearly doubled the price again. Even so this was still half the price of getting it done here but the catch was that minimum orders would be at least 100 parts (of each part) but the price didn't really get much better until the order was for 500-1000 of each part. As far as possible I had a commonality of parts but some were unique and others only four so it meant that even if the unique parts were cut here we would still need to plan around 150-250 kits which would require a budget way bigger than I could muster and a risk, for a toy, that I wouldn't entertain either.

 

That meant having a design which wasn't just a toy but instead had a utility purpose and the obvious one is as a workhorse on the stations. Having worked out there for several years flying both planes and helicopters I have a fair idea of what might be well received and it would be a helicopter that costs and operates at half the cost of a Cub. Unfortunately that beast doesn't exist yet so the next best thing would be a plane with half the costs of the Cub but which could operate into and out of much smaller and rougher places than a Cub can, and which has safe and predictable very slow speed handling for the occasions when it might be used for mustering. It wouldn't replace the use of helicopters by any means but could reduce the need for calling them in for many tasks with a resultant overall decrease in aviation related costs and an increase in productivity through having an aircraft available anytime instead of only when they're hired in for a muster. Top and cruise speed of this STOL aircraft would be far less important than it's low speed capabilities, however it couldn't just have huge wings like some of the early ultralights and/or hangglider towplanes because they wouldn't handle the turbulence in the heat of the day as well as something with some degree of variable geometry and lift enhancing devices.

 

There was some interesting discussion about this in the Do vortex generators really work thread.

 

With that in mind, and without bringing it to the forum I went ahead and used the construction method devised for the biplane to model up a STOL monoplane with slats, large fowler flaps, tundra wheels and long travel heavily damped landing gear quite similar to the Highlander SuperSTOL but with a novel wing-folding mechanism that allows the HS and wings to fold flat against the fuselage side in a couple of minutes and with all the controls connecting and disconnecting automatically to avoid any risk of forgetting to connect something. That came together quite quickly but before I was halfway done with just roughing it out it was quite apparent that the weight analysis was against it. Weight would be critical for something that is designed around STOL ops.

 

So I gave up the idea of a 'cheap 2 seater' because it became clear to me that the only way to achieve that is to build your own from plans if you can get them. That way it's not really cheap if you factor in your time but if you're doing it for a hobby then you only need to consider the materials cost. In which case probably the cheapest 2 seater would be built by having a good look at the free plans from Team Minimax and devising a two seater along the same construction materials/method, and power it with a Great Plains, or similar, VW engine.

 

As for mine, as I said I gave up on trying to use cheap materials and more user-friendly methods as it didn't suit the type I wanted to concentrate on next. At the end of the day if you need a lightweight but very strong airframe with built-in crashworthiness (a must for bushplanes) at moderate cost, then it's virtually impossible to beat a fabric covered, welded chromoly structure, and it 's not that much more expensive than any other method, you just have to have the tools and ability to TIG weld it. I completed the design with the 'flat against the side' folding mechanism and ordered the materials which arrived from Melbourne just before Christmas and are now waiting in a bundle on the workshop floor while I finish building a new mobile workbench/jig which should be just about done today if I go and get on with it now ...

 

I'll post a build thread once I get started and there's something to show.

 

No, because the intention was to spread the parts production out among a number of different manufacturers so none of them would have details of all of the parts. Additionally, on the drawings there would be no mention of what the parts were for, the drawings just show a shaped part cut from, say, 25x3 equal angle, with a number of holes in it. It has a part number, that's all. It might be a part of a camping table for all they know.

 

Yes, and even if you don't ever release plans of your aircraft, perhaps only ever selling factory built ones, there are still those who will buy one, disassemble and reverse engineer it. It's theft but nothing much can or does actually get done about it. For the charlatan it is by far the best way to go about aircraft production, they avoid all the time and cost invested in the design process and the vagaries of the marketplace too, because they just wait and watch until they see a successful product and then copy that one rather than one of the hundred or so others that aren't successful.

Chrome moly traditional frame would interest me. Welding isn't new to me, but fabric covering would be a new experience.

I like the idea of STOL and it was seeing the 7 day wonder (a CH750) going together at Oshkosh this year that set the hook.

I have been taking lessons at the local GA school and have recently tried to get lessons with a local RAA instructor but no joy so far (he has a Savannah).

I've looked at the X-air aircraft that robinsm suggested and made an enquiry to the dealer.

I've spent a lot of time researching and I still know nothing (even less than Sgt Schultz).

Regards,

Mike

There is still cheap 2 seater flying available, I bought a kit, put it together and leaned to fly in it all for less than $26000. Beats the crap out of the price of a plastic, admittedly, 55kts but you cant have everything...

Is your Xair foldable trailerable?