Mark, Your aft CG story reminds me of the end of the Gee Bee company. When the 1933 R-1 was wrecked in a landing incident, and the Granville's assets were sold off, a race pilot named Cecil Allen purchased the remains of the R-1 and rebuilt it for the Bendix race. He added an aft fuel tank to extend the range between fuel stops, despite the strong recommendation of the designer, Pete Miller, against moving the CG that far aft. At the beginning of the 1935 Bendix he filled all the tanks, and crashed soon after takeoff. You were very lucky!
> On 06/04/2023 9:44 AM EDT Mark Langford <m...@n56ml.com> wrote: > > > > Somebody wrote: > > "I had to move my engine forward 3 inches after KR2Ss was completed. (make a > complete new engine mount) That was not difficult but a lot of work to extend > the cowls and make them look nice. " > ------------------- > Jim Faughn made some 2" thick aluminum spacers bolted through the mount and > firewall to space the existing engine mount 2" further forward. That goes > pretty quickly, and with a little milling, weight can be reduced > substantially (like a large diameter hole in the middle), and the job is > accomplished and relatively easily. He probably didn't have a mill handy, > and figured the extra weight of the blocks would help with his CG issue > anyway. See photo enclosed. > > Maybe I'm just lazy, but I considered redoing the engine mount when I first > got this plane and was rebuilding the engine, but I've been quite happy to > overlook the extra weight out front. I'll have to confess that decision was > partly based on the fact that the header fuel tank is "integral" to the plane > (rather than easily removable), and I didn't feel the need to open that can > of worms, required to get to the back side of the existing 16 bolts for nut > access. When I bought that plane I thought "I'm not going to spend ANY time > redoing anything on this plane.....just keep it in the air until N56ML is > rebuilt". Then I spun a bearing just a few hours after purchase.....and > while the engine was out I redid a lot of things on the plane, but the engine > mount spacers wasn't one of them. I didn't think I'd still be flying it, 10 > years later. For more on that rebuild, see > http://www.n56ml.com/n891jf/ . > > Extending a cowling is a pretty easy job too, at least it was when I did it, > so don't fly around with an aft CG....bad things happen! See > http://www.n56ml.com/wb/index.html for my scary story on that. A CG 2" aft > of the CG limit came very close to killing me on takeoff.... > > > > Mark Langford > m...@n56ml.com mailto:m...@n56ml.com > http://www.n56ml.com > Huntsville, AL > > -- > KRnet mailing list > KRnet@list.krnet.org > https://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet >
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