Warbird Information Exchange

Neal. Do I remember correctly that that motor was built by Aero Magic with input from Mr Sharp?

It's actually a nice story. In the early 80s a man named Don Sanford, who owned a magneto shop called "Aero Magic" was supplying mags for, and crewing for the great Ray Cote for the #16 Shoestring. Don developed some engine ideas and wanted to build a race motor. He offered it to Ray, but Ray liked building his own, and was unbeatable in that time period, and said no. So Don looked around for somebody with potential, and settled on a young silver class racer named Jon Sharp. Within a couple of years Jon was at the top of the Gold class and went on to take two Championships in the Cassutt and eventually develop Nemesis and win a whole bunch more Gold Races.

It is interesting that that same modified C-85 case and some of the rest of that original motor was still on the airplane at the end of its career and is now in the Smithsonian, or wherever the Racer is now. Don and his long time partner Jack Wells did good...

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Neal Nurmi

---Wingman Photo---

That is a cool story! Thanks for sharing that.

thanks for the info and good stories...

keep it coming..!

Well Gary.... Anything new for us?

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Don't forget to live....

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Sadly, there hasn't been much to update. My job has been taking up my time by placing me out of town a bunch over the last few weeks. I am currently writing this in my hotel room up in Minnesota right now, wishing I was working on my airplane. I will be back in Midland on Monday, but have to leave again on Wednesday. However, I WILL take more time to tinker with Another Solution, as I won't be scheduling quite so many out of town trips (in theory).

There are quite a few neat little projects I'm looking forward to working on with the racer and a few I'm not (like all of the carbon fiber work...yuk). But I'll be sure to update y'all when I get something going.

Gary

Thanks... Was going through withdraws. Good luck with everything.

Eric

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Don't forget to live....

Was finally able to do some tinkering to Another Solution this weekend. My high-speed, low-drag camera's display screen is messed up, so taking pictures where the details of what I've been doing is kind of difficult. So, I didn't take progress pictures...only photos of the completed fabrication.

Several things have taken place. First, the progress of the airplane looks further behind, as I've removed the wings and landing gear.




A.J. Smith, maker of the SnoShoo racer, is going to make me some nice carbon fiber wheel pants and such, so I'm just shipping my gear directly up to him to facilitate a speedy fabrication of the parts. So, in the mean time, while the main gear was getting worked on, I decided I needed to get my tail gear assembly fabricated and installed. Although I initially didn't have a clue as to what configuration I was going to go with this, I eventually worked it out and it ended up being a fun project. The end result has made me pretty happy.

You see, many of the faster Formula One racers simply have a fixed, non-steerable, tailwheel (usually nothing more than a roller blade wheel) bolted directly to the fuselage. This is great for keeping the drag down, but makes it tough to taxi around. I know that some of the guys simply skid the tailwheel sideways when leaving the runway after a race and rely heavily on their tow vehicle to get them back and forth to the pits. Well, I don't plan on flying this airplane only one time a year...I plan on flying it quite a bit. So, I need something that'll be low drag (and light) for racing, yet capable of allowing me to taxi around without skidding the tailwheel around (which is also a lot of unwanted stress on the lower longerons of the fuselage).

One thing (out of many) that is cool about this tail section that was originally on the Wagner Solution, is that it was made to "hide" a tailwheel. At the time, that airplane just had a tailwheel fixed in one place as mentioned before (and at one time a metal tail skid ). This can barely be seen in some of the early pictures of the airplane that Neal Nurmi has posted on this thread. So in this photo, you can see the cutout for the tailwheel, in the bottom of the vertical fin for the airplane.....




In order to fabricate the complete tailwheel assembly for Another Solution, I utilized an existing tailwheel spring that came with this project, and an old tailwheel assembly that I'd obtained from a Cassutt Racer I'd tinkered with many years ago. The wheel and the hardware pictured in this update are temporary only. The wheel will be replaced with a roller blade wheel (they can take a huge amount of abuse and tend to work quite well in this situation).

I nearly made this a steerable tailwheel, by linking it directly to the rudder. However, I got to thinking that it would defeat the purpose of "hiding" the tailwheel if I put a linkage rod out in the breeze. So, I decided to go with a "lock & unlock" style of tailwheel. These aren't quite as desirable (in my opinion), but do work fairly well. I used to fly a Pitts Special that had the famous Haigh Tailwheel installed and had mixed feelings about it. While it was excellent in helping keep the airplane going straight down the runway, it was cumbersome to taxi with, as in that particular installation, I had to keep reaching over to a cable to unlock the tailwheel each time I wanted to turn. What I wanted here was something like the P-51 Mustangs (and many AT-6's) have. When it is needed to unlock the tailwheel on a Mustang, you simply push the elevator forward. This releases a pin on the tailwheel and allows it to caster freely. Now, that is a somewhat elaborate system, which also allows for a certain amount of direct steering when locked (15 degrees either way, I believe), so I didn't want to get into all of that. However, what I did come up with was a quite simple way to unlock my tailwheel by simply pushing the elevator forward. While this system does add a tiny amount of weight to the little racer (less than half a pound), I feel it's worth it in the long run to have the ability to taxi around freely, while at the same time, keeping that assembly somewhat "clean."

If you look closely (sorry for the poor photos), you'll see the locking mechanism at the bottom of the tailwheel assembly. This picture shows it in the locked position.......




Now, in this photo, the elevator has been pushed all the way down. That puts tension on the cable going from the elevator bellcrank, to the locking pin. Mechanical advantage is achieved through a pulley I've mounted midway down the cable. So as you can see, the cable pulls the pin forward, which moves it out of the slot in the tailwheel pivot point, allowing the tailwheel to swing freely. A spring installed on the forward end of the lock pin allows for automatic locking of the tailwheel any time it is relocated to the "neutral" position and the elevator in anything other than the full down position............




Here are a couple of views of the cable assembly...






So there you have it. I've obviously got some final details to finish up (proper hardware, painting, new tailwheel, etc.), but the fabrication portion of this is complete. I've got an idea tossing around in my tiny little brain of how to fair all of this in and "clean" it up even more. Stay tuned for that.

Oh, and yes, three point landings and bush flying in Alaska are a couple of things I'll make a habit of avoiding with this setup. Not much shock absorbtion back there.

Gary

Okay, so here's another update for y'all...

The original Wagner Solution had a small portion of aluminum skin on the fuselage, back at the tail, to facilitate getting to the aft elevator bellcrank. However, with my new tailwheel lock assembly, I felt that I needed the aluminum skin to go one more bulkhead forward on the fuselage so that I could have access to all of that monkey-motion. The aluminum skin will now be even with the front of the horizontal stab, rather than slightly aft of halfway back. Besides, I personally think it'll look better to have the entire tail section of the airplane polished.

I still have camera issues, so I didn't take as many pictures as I'd have liked of the process. For example, I didn't take a single picture of the first aluminum bulkheads that I made to attach the skin to. They were quite simple to make and I just figured I'd show the details on the most forward bulkhead that was fabricated. Essentially, I just got some 1/2" aluminum angle and used the shrinker to fabricate the shape needed to match the existing wooden bulkheads. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel here, so the aluminum sections will simply be "piggybacked" on the wooden bulkheads. If that doesn't make sense now, read on...maybe it will in a minute.

The first thing I did was remove the tail section so that I could get the bulkhead off the fuselage. Then, I just laid the bulkhead on my work station (man, I love that gurney) and sort of "connected the dots" to show me the shape that the fuselage will be at that particular station.....




I made an index mark on the outline of the bulkhead and the aluminum angle so that I could go to the same spot each time as I worked the piece around to check the shape. Then it was just a matter of using the sheet metal shrinker to start workin' the metal......




And as the metal is worked around to the shape I wanted, I added index marks.......




Here's the shrinker in action......




Halfway there...




Awesome! Got it right the first try, just as planned...




...Or so I thought. Its sometimes said that I can be a "taco shy of a combination plate," and this is why. As nicely as I was able to go around the template that I drew, I fabricated the angle on the wrong side of it! So, that means that it's too big for the bulkhead.....




And that only means one thing.........




Soooooo, I'll just consider that piece a nice bit of practice.
The second piece went well. I even got it right this time and put the angle on the inside of my template.........








Now sometimes, I would slightly over shrink the metal and need to put it back, so to speak. I would do this by carefully using the stretcher and "undoing" the area that was shrunk too much. This is where you gotta slow yourself down and work with great care, otherwise you'll end up cracking the metal and find yourself heading back over to the scrap bin..........




Eventually, I got the bends all right and just needed to cut off the excess...






And "lo and behold," the wooden bulkhead actually fit inside the aluminum section perfectly!




I then just drilled a few holes in the two pieces in order to facilitate some clecos (for now), to hold them together....




And finally, here's everything temporarily fastened to the fuselage.....




So that's it for now. I'm about to get back out there and start fabricating the skins now. I'll post that update when it's done, if y'all are still interested.

Gary

Great updates Gary. Can't wait to see it all skinned up and ready to fly!

Well, I just couldn't stand it...I had to post another update here to show y'all the first piece of aluminum skin I made. Now, I'm nowhere near finished with it (and the pictures don't do it justice...stupid camera ), but this is gonna be as slick as snot on a hot tin roof!

The first step in the process was to reinstall the tail surfaces, followed by making a posterboard template of the skin being made. I've mentioned it in some of my other threads (mainly the B-24 thread), but using posterboard saves a ton of time and material...not to mention is easier to work with during the initial fitting stages. You can see from the photos how the posterboard simplifies the process. Imagine how much hassle it would be trying to wrestle a piece of aluminum into shape without knowing just what shape you needed at the time........














Now that the template is finished, it is just a matter of cutting the aluminum out. I am using .020" thick aluminum...also known as "oh-too-thin." .............






I then used the sheet metal roller to persuade the metal around the sharper corner. The rest I did by hand.....




And here it is taped to the fuselage. Obviously, there is still a bit of work to do with some additional trimming, fitting, etc. However, you can get a good idea of how it's gonna look. Man, this is a fun project! .........








So that's where I am today. I think since I have to start doing more work related stuff again (I wonder if they've even noticed I've not done anything the last couple of days), I think I'm going to start my long days again...kind of like the hours I worked on the B-24 project. That way I can get some much needed work done on the racer (fun stuff) in the mornings, while doing my job (yucky stuff) during the day. So stay tuned, there should be more updates coming in soon.

Gary

Looking good Gary! Keep it up!

You know, after you were shrinking that first piece for the bulkhead and and as I was reading I thought, hey, it's going to work out much better than those ones you did over and over on Ol 927. And then... doh!

How will you handle the transition between the fabric and the aluminum? Looks like where the fabric pulls in between the stringers you will end up with a forward facing step in the aluminum- or will you glue the fabric to the aluminum?

Maybe you should go forward another 7 bays or so?

Gary,

Will you PLEASE get that B-29 classroom easel and posters out of the sheetmetal room and into a safe place? I would bet there isn't another one left in existence. I know it's kind of tattered, but what a piece of history to the mechanically inclined.

Django, I hear ya. It just goes to show that after making all of that scrap over the years, I still screw up with the simple things sometimes.

BDK, the fabric will wrap around the last bulkhead that the aluminum attaches to. It may just be an optical illusion in the pictures I posted, but (in theory) the aluminum should be quite even with the fabric. For the races, and perhaps all the time, I'll have a piece of aluminum tape to seal the gap to keep air out. Not an uncommon practice.

Scott, I agree about the B-29 posters and I'll see about getting them somewhere else. Frankly, I'm surprised they haven't been stolen yet. That being said, I'll have to find a good place to keep 'em safe. Back when we were doing the heavy work on the B-29 (the most recent session), I used to keep that easel in our work area so that folks could view it, yet not disturb it. Maybe we'll do the same when we get started back on the project.

Thanks for the replies, y'all. Glad to know you're still interested in what's going on here. Now.......back to work!

Gary