Month: July 2014
Gear Hinge on a Diet
My friend Fred helped me cut the hinges down to size. He used a cutter on the mill since neither of us had a better way to cut it.
Cutting off the excess saved 6oz per hinge for a total of 3/4lb saved. That might not seem like much until you consider the whole airplane must be under 278lbs.
To better understand why saving 12oz is important, my altimeter alone weighs 10oz. Every ounce saved is an ounce I can use for improvements.
Gear Hinges
Back from vacation, time to make more progress on the Mini-Max. Need to get the fuselage on its own wheels so I can move it around easier.
A couple of piano hinges are used to attach the main gear legs to the fuselage. The plans show the RS-805 hinge being 1.5″ wide, included in my kit are 3″ wide hinge. Contacted David at TEAM and he said the 1.5″ is no longer available and to get the correct pin size they had to use the larger hinge. He also said it is OK to cut 3/4″ off each side to make it 1.5″ wide. Marked and center punched all the holes.
The hinge pin is 1/2″ longer and needs bent, after drilling and bending the hinge pin they look like this.
If you look closely you can see I have also marked a straight line on each side. This is the 3/4″ that can be removed from each side. Cutting that of should save 8-12oz. I don’t have anything that can cut it without wasting hours of my time so I will deal with that some other day.
Ultralight Builder 