SCAT Electronic news 20 April 1998
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SCAT Electronic news 20 April 1998
That Motor [again]
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From John Malkin to Martin Gregorie - stolen by Roger Morrell
Martin,
The most interesting part of Eugene's approach was his
complete openess about the developement of the motor. We (the group
who was in our rented house in Omarama ) had him and Victor round for a
typical Kiwi afternoon and 6 flagons [ of beer, for those unfamilar with
New Zealand customs and terminolgy] later we adjourned to the
prizegiving.
The motor of course is just another one of his motors but
to me it seemed to be a bit quicker than the ones he had in his
standard F1Cs. He told us the three planetary gears and the outer gear
were spark eroded but before getting to that stage he drew the gear
shape and then projected it on to a computer and from there enlarged
the tooth to a size that he could examine the complete angles and
contours smoothing where neccessary until it was I assume the almost
perfect tooth, and then he did the same with the outer gear tooth but
projecting this one so that it was able to touch the planetary tooth
in the same condition that it would be in the finished state. Once
again he did all the smoothing and when he was finally satisfied that
they both meshed virtually perfectly he reduced them in size and then
fed them into the eroder machine. The Propeller was 320mm in
diameter and the blade shape was not unlike the standard type of old
gassie propellors with a max blade width of about 20-22mm and no
visible cuffs or cut-backs. With a bit of luck I am sure that Roger M
will have some pics of the relevant details.
I really think that this was the initial start to see if
it was all viable and to quote him "John ,when I fly it ,it might be
big circus, with me the Clown in the middle". You have no doubt read
the SCAT comments by Bill East and I am sure that it will go better
and better as he comes to terms with prop pitch\dia etc.,
The one item that has not been mentioned as yet is the new
F1J model and motor he has got. Once again another VB motor claimed
to do 29K with a small stubby rear exhaust that can be removed "To
allow for a tuned pipe" !!
It is a model of about Wakefield wing size and has a longer F1A
type fuselage with an extremely long tail moment so consequently the
stab is reasonably small. Maybe even smaller than a Wake's.
The fuselage has a metal fitting attached to it to take the motor and
the timer and wing is placed in a pylon which he said was one of
Alex's F1B pylons. He thought this was a great idea and had a good
laugh about it. (Sacrilege !)
Once again the weather conditions did not allow him to trim
it out but no doubt you will hear all about before too long.
My association with him was unfortunately too short but he
is a great thinker and is able to look laterally at a problem in
order to arrive at an answer.
Regards,
John
Outsider's Comment
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When I was working on the photos that John Malkin sent me [in my office]
a customer came in who is a consulting aerospace engineer. He admired
the craftmanship etc and did a few quick calculations on tip speed etc to
see why Eugene was doing it. He then suggested that maybe some vanes
on the spinner might improve or better direct airflow to the inner part of
the propellor. I had to pass this along because it might be of interest and
to get Skyking more excited !
Lubrication
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A number of people have asked about lubrication of the gears box .. from
John Malkin.
Eugene told us that the gears were lubricated through the
shaft bearings as that was all that was required. I assume that with
the amount of time the motor is running each flight this is
adequate. I did notice that before he actually ran the motor for the
first time he did apply some oil from a small bottle , I imagine just
to make them slippery enough to get them going initially.
Network Technical Problems
---------------------------
If you got some messages with nothing in them, then did not
get three messge with photos of the now famous Verbitski geared F1C
- it is because your e-mail provider [such as Juno]
does not support attachments or messages over a certain size. These
messages were big being between 100 and 150K bytes. They can be
viewed at the SCAT Web site.
I must state that it was not the KGB or even the CIA or NSA that
got at our transmissions late last week with the photos of 'that motor' .. but
rather a simple software configuration problem, now fixed. This problem
caused you to get a number of empty messages and when you tried to reply
to them the reply was bounced. Thanks to those who told me there was a
problem.
In addition one subscriber reported having trouble accessing the SCAT
information earlier in the week and asked me if there was some problem ..
he was concerned that the IT dept [thought police] where he works had
decided that we were undesirable and had blocked access. No **
[subscriber name removed to protect innocent !] the problem there was
that Sprint was doing maintenance on their part of the Internet backbone.
This was scheduled to take a few hours at the most, but some problem
must have come up because that part of the network was down for almost 3
days. This was fixed the middle of last week and all is under control.
SCAT Electronic News Back Issues
------------------------------
If you ever delete your SCAT Electronic News by mistake .. you can
always get the back issues from the SCAT Web site where they are all
on-line.
Taft Trivia
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Reporting from the recent San Valeers Annual at Taft. Great weather and
tricky thermals
According the Lauren Fantham it took her 19 hours to get from her home in
the UK to Maricopa. Not too bad for using public transport and passing
through LAX.
A first again for Bob Tymchek? He hooked a great thermal and the model
did not turn like it was supposed to so he had to go in to the new prison to
get his model back. He commented that the inmates seemed more
interested in their softball game than his F1B
Seen in the AMA Gas camp a .02 version of Cusick's Solar - built by Bob
Deshields. A classic airplane that flys as well as it looks.
Doug Joyce was there working on his canard F1A, not quite up to the level
of Doug's F1Cs. Doug says he will fly F1A when he gets too old for F1C,
then go to F1B later.
I'm not sure of the results because I had to leave early but I know it was an
all 'Ukranian' podium for F1B with Alex Andruikov, Bob Tymchek and
George Batiuk.
Also present was a reporter from well known business newspaper
looking at doing a feature article on F1B.
Applogies to Bill Turner
-----------------------
.. and anyone else who was offended by my letter published in a recent
NFFS Digest. My intent was not even for the editor to publish the letter ..
but rather correct the error in an earlier edition that stated or implied I
used Spectronics Electronic Timers [made by Bill] in the World Champs.
I do not know or care how this incorrect item got in the Digest. But just
wanted it clear for the record I have never used anyone else's electronic
timers.
Roger Morrell
.....................................................................
Roger Morrell
