may 10 (3) proofed.pub

DOPE SHEET
THE NEWSLETTER OF
CHAPTER 13
OF THE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION
SERVING SPORT AVIATION IN THE DETROIT AREA
Volume 55 Number 5
President...........
586 469-3246
Vice President...
810 392-2020
Secretary...........
248 853-0232
Treasurer...........
586 463-9342
website; EAACHAPTER13.ORG
Rex Phelps.....
[email protected]
Mike Fisher.........
May 6th Meeting—Corvair Engine College
Ron Lendon will be making a presentation at the
May meeting about what it was like traveling to FL
for a four day event where he build and test ran his
Corvair flight engine per William Wynne's
http://flycorvair.com guidance. Roy Szarfinski will
also be co-presenting with Ron as he is the creator
of the Fifth bearing on Ron's engine. The engine
will be on display.
[email protected]
Cliff Durand........
[email protected]
Don Miller....
[email protected]
May 6 REG. Meeting*
13 Officer Meeting**
15 Ray A/P clean up
May 2010
7:30-10 pm
7:30 pm
Newsletter Editor
We thought we had a few members cornered to
take the job but they slipped away. Then Tom
Vukonich showed a little interest, so we worked on
him and he agreed to give it a try, so long as I give
him some help.
Most of you know Tom as our chapter librarian and
builder of a DeHavilland DH-4B.
22nd rain date
16
9am-1pm
Young Eagles
REG. Meeting*
7:30-10 pm
Davids Landing/RCCD
9am-1pm
Young Eagles
REG. Meeting*
7:30-10 pm
Ray A/P
EAA picnic
7/26—8/1 AirVenture
Oshkosh
*All Regular Meetings (not all are listed) will have
a pre-meeting Bar-B-Q/Setup get-together that
starts at 6:30 pm.
June 3
6
12
July 1
10
Del Schmitz Memorial - June 26
In January, when Del passed, his daughter Linda
decided to delay the formal Memorial Service until
the weather was more favorable for his friends to fly
to Traverse City. She decided to have the service at
Noon on Saturday, June 26. Traverse City airport
(KTVC) has a good general aviation parking area
with tie downs. The plan is to meet there between
around 11:00 am. Linda is arranging transportation
for us and would like to know how many people will
attend from Detroit in order to plan for the service
and luncheon. Since we have about 15 hours of
daylight that day, it would be easy to arrive in the
morning and fly back home before dark. It's about a
two hour flight in a Cherokee.
If you plan on attending, please contact Dick Green
on 313-819-8303.
**Officer Meetings are normally held the following
Thursday at Rex’s hangar, 420C.
REGULAR MEETING — 1ST Thursday of each month.
Our regular meeting place is Ray Airport, in the chapter
hangar (#304) located on the Northeast corner of the
field. Meeting time is 7:30 pm to 10 pm.
MEMBERSHIP AND DUES
Chapter 13 dues are $25 per year for renewing members, this will pay to the end of the year 2010. You can
make your check out to "EAA Chapter 13", and send it to
our treasurer, Don Miller, 28840 Old N. River Rd, Harrison Twp., MI 48045, 586-463-9342.
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Young Eagle Report for the April 2010 Newsletter.
th
Our April 17 Young Eagle session for a local Scout troop was ‘blown away’ by the
high winds. The troop came out to the airport anyway, and we did a ground session
talking about how airplanes fly and how they are built. Then we took a tour of a couple
of hangars to see the airplanes. I showed them my plane and they saw Ren’s seaplane and Tom’s RV, then Ren invited the group to see the RV-12 – and we also looked
at Dave Germann’s bi-plane under construction. I think they had a good time, and I’m
sure most of them will be coming to one of our regular YE events.
Our first YE Event is scheduled for SUNDAY, MAY 16th. If you are on my email list,
you already received the notice (if you didn’t and should have, let me know). We’ll be
starting at 9am as usual. Last year our first event was one of our biggest, so come on
out and join the fun.
Last week I got a call from chapter member Glen Dempsey with a great opportunity to
promote Young Eagles. Glen works for Washington Township, and they are having a
festival on the weekend of June 12th – on Van Dyke just north of 26 Mile Road. He
wanted to know if the chapter would be interested in setting up a booth to promote
Young Eagles (I said something like ‘duhh – YES!’). He knew we are flying YE’s that
Saturday and is even looking into getting transportation from the festival to the airport
for kids & parents. WOW! I’ll be looking for volunteers to be at the festival, starting Friday the 11th and on Saturday the 12th, to answer questions, hand out YE brochures, and
maybe even help out with the transportation. No details yet, but mark your calendar
and plan to lend a hand.
Dennis Glaeser – Young Eagle Coordinator
1961 CESSNA 150A • $24,000 • AWARD-WINNER FOR SALE
• Total restoration 2005, Garmin 300xl, Narco at50, Contemporary Outstanding Cessna 150 Award Oshkosh 2006,60 amp alt., Oil filter, Slick mags,
B&C starter, Avstar carb., Shoulder harness, Airtex interior&carpet. • Contact
Robert Martin Jr. located Oakland, MI USA • Telephone: 810-560-1443 • Fax:
586-752-0333 • Posted March 26, 2010
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From the Flight Surgeon
By Gregory Pinnell, MD
Although you wouldn’t think
so from the weather, the
springtime allergy season is
around the corner and most
of us suffer at least occasional problems. If you use
antihistamines remember that
CFR (FAR) 91.17 does not
allow "any drug that affects
the persons faculties in any
way contrary to safety."
A smart choice would be to
use non-sedating medications such as Allegra,
Clarinex or Claritin. Nasal
spray steroids are effective
also and allowed by the FAA.
Nasal decongestants like
Afrin are effective but should
be only used in certain situations.
integrity and compassion. He has evolved the Corvair flight engine over years of flight testing and improvement. I decided at this meeting to use a Corvair engine in my experimental airplane.
Why Fly A Corvair Engine
It all started while building my Zodiac XL that the
decision about engine choices came up. The
choices were Jabiru 3300, Continental O-200, Corvair, Lycoming, Rotax and others. Of all the
choices the Corvair looked to be the least expensive. I first thought having a reliable airplane engine (Continental or Lycoming) was the only way to
go, but the cost of rebuilding one was equivalent or
more than the ready to fly Corvair engine. The rebuild costs of the corvair are $1500 or less. For the
price of one rebuilt Continental or Lycoming I could
build two Corvair engines so I had to investigate.
Having 6 rather than 4 cylinders, plus the thought of
painting Chevrolet bow ties on my cowling was also
a motivation, (I worked for Chevrolet Engineering
and have some sentimental ties there).
After returning home I told everyone that I was looking for a Corvair engine for my airplane. Within 6
months I had two free engines and what looked like,
after disassembly, 1 & 1/3 engines. The heads of
the first core were very porous around the valve
seats, but the second core had good castings.
Core 1 had a turbo but had been at a technical
school for years. It wasn’t a real turbo engine, just
for show.
The internet provided some insight and I did discover the Corvair had been flying since Bernie
Pietenpol put one in his airplane 50 years ago. The
airplane I am building, Zodiac XL, has been a
model for Corvair development over the past 7
years and has even shared booth space with the
Zenith Aircraft Corporation at Sun ’n Fun and Oshkosh.
In Florida there is this guy named William Wynne
(WW) who claims to be “The Corvair Authority”
(TCA). I made a trip down to Sun ’n Fun in 2006 for
the purpose of meeting this WW character. I had
read some of his stuff, bought the book “Corvair
Conversion Manual” and studied it. Being a Metal
Model Maker I was quite impressed that he gave
complete layouts for fabricating all the pieces parts
for what he calls a Flight Engine. Anyway, we met
at Sun ’n Fun and I made arrangements to meet
with him at his place after the show.
At Sun ’n Fun I also met a few other people who
had been flying Corvair engines. These folks were
pioneers and had sustained engine outs, broken
cranks, carb ice etc.. One told me about landing on
a fire trail and loosing lift once below the tree line,
he claims to be 3 inches shorter now. None of
these things detracted me from this choice but I
really had not made my decision yet either.
Core 2 came from a guy at work.
The Corvair Flight engine crankshaft gets a 1 in. 14
threaded Safety Shaft to help retain the prop hub in
addition to being nitrided to help prevent crankshaft
breakage. There have been a few high performance airplanes (KR2’s) that have sustained broken
cranks from bending loads. We are fortunate to
have a place like Moldex Crankshaft right here in
Redford, MI, they did the Magnaflux, grinding,
threading for Safety Shaft, nitriding, and polishing.
After Sun ’n Fun I spent the day with WW at his
hangar in Edgewater and looked around at what he
had there. He was developing a 5th main bearing, it
was very preliminary, but he knew it needed one
with the higher performance airplanes using the engine. WW is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and has taken the path of helping
home builders rather than mainstream commercial
operations. To his benefit, I find him to be a man of
http://www.moldexcrankshaft.com
Here is my crank after they did their thing WW has
been selecting competent businesses to assist in
what he terms the “Corvair Movement”, Moldex is
-3-
ners welded in place.
Mark even
did cosmetic welding and
grinding to
make them
look better.
The combustion
chambers
needed no
work i.e.
cc-ing wasn’t necessary.
one, 5/32 radius or bigger in all journals
The engines that have been breaking cranks are
what we call Big Boys. The normal Corvair engine
displaces about 2700cc’s the Big Boys are 3100cc’s
and have much special machining done to them
because they use VW cylinders. Anyway, my plan
is to keep this engine conservative and go for longevity and reliability.
About this time a blurb popped up on the CorvAircraft or Matronics email list by a guy claiming to
have a 5th bearing design for this engine. Development has been going on for some time now from
several sources but this one caught my attention.
http://roysgarage.com
Shows how he
solidly extended
both the crankshaft and engine case.
and Falcon Automotive in Fitchburg, WI had become the guy to send the heads to for Flight Engines. At this time WW was having a Corvair College #7 I think, and I called Mark Petniunas
(Falcon Automotive) up and arranged to have the
heads shipped to him. I asked him how clean he
needed them, he said, “just scrape the big chunks
off, tape em, box em and send em in.”
I made arrangements to
meet Roy and
see his place.
His design
came about
from the need to
fly his Zenith
701 STOL
hanging from its
prop and carrying his daughter. It has
evolved over 3
years and much
iteration. He has a line bore setup and after welding and grinding the crankshaft, the engine case
with the new pinned in place bearing setup is line
bored to keep everything inline. The bearing he
uses is from a Ford V-8 and can be purchased in
Several months later, (I was not in any hurry), the
heads returned in pristine condition with intake run-4-
standard oversize increments. He is working to the 4th decimal place and that’s close enough for me. I like
his design because it is simple and conventional in the way it is articulated, “Good Design, is Good Design”.
$8450 invested to date and some of this was
to fund development of Roy’s 5th bearing, (I
became his first customer), and buying things I
could have made, but, don’t all those Gold
Anodized parts look nice? Here is the result
without distributor mounted. The oil filter rests
on a sandwich adapter which has the oil pressure regulation built in along with in and out for
an oil cooler. The line running down feeds
fresh oil to the new front 5th bearing. The
starter is automotive and modified for this use.
Still need an alternator, exhaust system, intake, baffles etc. but it is getting closer all the
time.
I will bring the engine to the May 2010 meeting for all to see.
Ron Lendon
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586 778-2027
[email protected]
Address Service Requested
THE DOPE SHEET
Robert Mahieu, Editor
23261 Harmon
ST Clair Shores, MI 48080
First Class Mail
Ren Sagaert does 1st flight in the RV-12 on 4-23-10
Congratulations, Ren
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stamp
here