An Ultralight Does Wingovers? Four Belites in a row?

Welcome, Kitplanes readers!  I hope you've enjoyed reading the excellent article on Belite in April's cover article.

Tonight's a multimedia night on this blog...  pics and video.  The best pic is the very last one.

We had a day of great flying weather -- a little crosswind -- I compensated by ignoring the crosswind, then by landing diagonally across the runway.  You can see that in the video clip I've posted in this post.

First, a great photo taken by Gene Stratton:

The Belite Trike airplane in the pic is ready for customer delivery, with the customer arriving tomorrow to take it home.

Ultralight Aircraft For Sale!  Next up, a Belite 254 with 28HP CRE engine, with really wonderful fat tundra tires.  Ultralight legal at 250 pounds, as pictured, including the tires.  Includes a nice instrument panel and you can buy it now.!

And here's a plane which is going to our south coast dealer, Joe Chlup.  It's got really light wheels on it, as it is destined to be a sea plane very soon!

So let's line up four Belites in a row...

The closest plane is currently featured (April 2011) on the cover of Kitplanes magazine.

So let's hop in that plane, attach a camera to the top of the wing, and take a video, OK?

I did exactly that.  Here's a video on Youtube showing startup to landing of the Belite Superlite.

It shows the fun I have in the airplane:  wingovers (sort of), tight turns, quick takeoffs, and spot landings.

I saved the best picture for last.  Here's the little yellow trike, entering the flare:

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Kitplanes publishes lengthy review and cover article on Belite

Finally, the Kitplanes article on Belite has been published!!!

They gave us the cover of the magazine!!!

Mark Cook wrote an editorial on us and on the rebirth of ultralights!!!

Ed Wischmeyer wrote an awesome article...  8 beautiful pages on our airplanes!!!

AOPA chief photographer Mike Fizer did all of the pictures, including ground and air to air!!!

Yeah, I'm kind of excited.

And I just sold a kit....   subscribers are receiving the new April issue right now.

You can buy the article by going here:

http://www.kitplanes.com/issues/28_4/flight_reports/Flight_Review_Belite_9497-1.phtml

Bill of Materials for an Ultralight Aircraft carbon fiber wing kit

If you are looking to build a FAR Part 103 legal ultalight aircraft, such are Belite 254, you will want to know what comes in the kit.  This particular post covers the wing kit, which is the starting point for most projects.  A photo is at the bottom of this post.

Here's an itemized list of what you get:

a) 4 Carbon Fiber wing spars.  The load carrying part of the wing.

b) 10 Aluminum Ribs.  5 used on each wing.  They slip over the spars and are glued in place.  The glue acts as a corrosion barrier in the area of the glue joint. 

c) 4 Birch CNC cut wooden ribs (used as end cap ribs on wing).  These work better than aluminum for end caps, due to the ease of fabric attachment.  They should be epoxied or stained, so they will last a long time.

d) 0.75" x 0.035" 6061-T6 aluminum tubing, used as sail/anti-sail braces.  You cut them to length and crimp the ends of them in a vise (using blocks of wood).

e) 2 push-pull cables, low friction.  They go to the flaperons and thread out the wing, for routing to the aircraft controls.  (Flaperons are not included.)

f) 4 machined CNC 6061-T6 aluminum strut attachment fittings, for attachment to carbon fiber tubing.  They are connected to the carbon fiber spars using carbon fiber sleeves.  A corrosion barrier of flexible epoxy is used to bond the aluminum to the carbon fiber.  We do this for you!  (NOTE:  aluminum spars DO NOT use these strut attachment fittings, they use a different strut attachment methodology, not pictured)

g) 10 10" x 0.5" .025 6061-T6 aluminum straps, used for attaching ribs to front spar.  Two rivets attach to the bottom of the rib, the strap rolls around the front of the spar, then two rivets on the top of the rib.

h) 6 channel 6061-T6 right angle aluminum, for flaperon atachment.  These bolt to the ribs, and also accept the flaperons, when you install them later.

i) 36 false ribs, constructed of CNC cut plywood.  These slip through the 'false rib spar', which is 0.5" aluminum tubing.  They are then glued in place.

j) 4 root spar doublers (2.75" x 0.125 wall x 1.50" length).  These slip over the root of each tube, and are epoxied and riveted in place.

k) Plastic pitot tubing line, runs from pitot tube to your airspeed indicator.

l) Bent aluminum pitot tube  (straight pitot tube also available).

m) left and right machined CNC 6061-T6 flaperon dropper brackets.  They bolt to a rib.

n) 5 various aluminum trim pieces (0.016" 6061T6).  These go around flaperon cable exit points, etc.

o) 4 CNC cut 6061-T6 jury strut attachment fittings.

p) 6 0.75" square x 0.035 6061T6 hard point attachment tubes (for sail/anti-sail attachment).  These rivet to the aluminum ribs, and bolt to the sail / anti-sail tubes.

q) 6 trim pieces for flaperon right angle trim (0.016" 6061T6).  These go around the right angle pieces.

r) 24+ feet of prebent trailing edge aluminum.  These rivet to each rib.

s) 24 feet of 0.50" x 0.035" 6061T6 aluminum tubing, for false rib spars.  These slip through all the ribs and false ribs.

t) Blue print for wing.  Accurate measurements for the entire wing.

u) 5 bags of hardware, with all rivets, AN nuts, bolts & washers.

This is EVERYTHING you need to build two wings, with the exception of glue, fabric and tools.

WING KIT with aluminum spars --- $1430.
WING KIT with Carbon Fiber spars --- $3630.

Crating on a wing kit is $150.

Truck delivery to your location is by quotation.  Let us know where you are and we'll get a quote to you right away!

Here's another photo of that wing kit:

!

Carbon Fiber Ultralight Airplane Wing Kit

I've often wished we had a good photo illustration of what is contained in our wing kits.  Today, we finally took the picture.

Shown below is a wing kit complete with carbon fiber spars.  The kit with aluminum spars is identical in almost all respects. 

The wing kit has everything except glue, fabric and paint.  In a future post, I'll run through the list of contents in this kit.

With aluminum spars, this kit costs $1430.

With carbon fiber spars (as pictured), this kit costs $3630.

A complete description, with many, many pictures, of how to build a wing from this kit is included in this link.

And here is the photo of the wing kit:

Hirth F23 twin has a redundant cylinder

After reading this, some of you will shoot me down.  It's OK -- I'm vowing to share what I know, no matter how embarrassing.

On this two cylinder engine, one cylinder is optional.

It seems like months ago -- but in fact, it was only two weeks ago:  we had two days of glorious weather.

Our airport was alive with activity.  72 degree high temperatures (in January) brought out one helicopter, some gliders, along with their towplane, our ultralight, and a buzzing crowd of powered paragliders.

My crew was working hard on getting another plane ready for delivery; we'd just swapped a brand new F23 Hirth twin boxer into one of our Belites.  (This particular plane is headed down to Texas and Florida to be a dealer demonstrator on floats... stuff for another post...)  The F23 had already been running for a couple of hours, as we slowly cranked up the power and prepared the engine for first flight.

(Another person was performing the extended runup).

I did a careful preflight, ensuring that everything was OK.  The airframe had already flown, (briefly), but it would be a first flight for this particular brand new engine.

The electric start on the engine kicked it to life very easily.  A check on the 4 point safety harness, and I taxiied out to the active.

A quick runup, and I was accelerating down the runway -- albeit slowly.  I shut it down and taxied back to the hangar.  Realizing that power was low, I quickly (and incorrectly) concluded that the propeller had the wrong pitch.  I had Gene fetch another with a better bite from our inventory of props, and a few minutes later it was torqued down and ready to go.

I taxied out again.  I applied full throttle, and the engine powered up smoothly.   Something was still wrong; RPM was quite low (at 800 RPM below full power); but the bird still wanted to fly, and I did to.  So I let it take off.

I made a couple of circuits of the field, enjoying the perfect weather, and also enjoying harassing the powered paragliders that were hanging around the east end of the pattern.  I sure wasn't happy with the power, though - it just didn't have nearly the snap I'd come to expect from our F33 installations in our Superlite models.

I landed the bird and taxied in.  As the bird rolled to a stop, I told Gene I still thought we had a real problem with the engine.

He pulled the top off each carburetor in turn, inspecting the linkage.

Well, it turns out one of the ball swages on the twin carburetor cables had failed (they'd passed a pull test in the vise!) and one of the two carbs wasn't advancing past idle.

So I'd been flying with one cylinder.  With a F23 Hirth, the second cylinder is not necessary for a good flight.

Wiring an ultralight instrument panel into an Ultralight Aircraft

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Let's wire up an instrument panel, using Belite' featherweight avionics.  Our completed panel will weigh about 12 ounces (0.35KG), and it will look like this:

That's a lot of functionality.

Anyway, let's build it.  We're starting with our precision machined aluminum panel,

Belite formally introduces UK SSDR ultralight aircraft

We've just announced a UK aircraft:  A "SSDR".

Hi res photos can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beliteaircraft/ where you can see a new set  of photos labeled SSDR
 
The website has a lot of information, www.beliteaircraft.com


And here's some additional comments from James:

The plane that we produce weighs less than 101KG, and the wing area is 10.1 square meters.  It comes with the following features:


* Carbon Fiber wing spars
* Aluminium internal ribs
* ChromAlloy steel fuselage -- the operator is surrounded by super strong 4130 aircraft steel, helping protect significantly in the event of an accident
* Very basic instrumentation:  Airspeed Indicator;  Engine EGT/CHT; Engine kill switch
* 28HP engine with wood prop (pull start)
* 5" Wheels with lightweight tyres
* Full windshield
* Enhanced wing span -- 26' 2"

We have a price (available for a limited amount period of time) of £15000, FOB Wichita, KS.

The plane, as delivered, has a 5 gallon gas tank.  In addition to being a legal SSDR, this makes it legal as a US FAR Part 103 Ultralight Aircraft as well, which aids our flight test procedures.  The tank capacity may be increased to a larger size, after delivery to England, at the option of the buyer, as long as weight limitations are observed.

The plane is light as a feather and very maneuverable.  It is a joy to fly.

You could have received first word of this announcement, by doing these two things:

Sign up for Belite Aircraft's announcements here.

Sign up for James Wiebe's twitters here.

Notes about James Wiebe and Belite Aircraft

Please subscribe to Belite Aircraft here.  You'll get our news releases and announcements.

Please subscribe to James' Tweets here.  You'll get first notice when something's happening.

I am a serial entrepreneur. I started a computer company, specializing in
storage devices. The company developed a very successful niche in computer
forensics, and I became heavily involved in selling and supporting our products
to the federal government. My largest customer was the FBI, although I had

Cantilever (no struts) Carbon Fiber Wing shows greater than -4G test load

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Please follow James' tweets here.  You'll receive advance peeks as to what James and Belite are doing.

Belite R&D Ultralight Aircraft sneek peak:

Here's what you can do with a one-off carbon fiber / titanium wing design (combined with some great chromaloy steel work on the fuselage).

What I am showing you is a Belite research project:  a fully cantilevered, strutless wing design, built using a 24 pound carry through carbon fiber spar (a fully custom, 4 inch diameter monster carbon fiber tube, with about

UK and Ultralights

Interested in a British legal SSDR ultralight aircraft?  You can sign up here for our upcoming formal product announcements.

But before the formal product announcement comes out, I wanted to talk to you, my loyal blog readers, about a substantial upcoming addition to Belite's aircraft lineup.  It incorporates a significant design change, resulting in lower takeoff and landing speeds, along with increased climb performance.

It looks like this:

What's different about this Belite?  It has lower weight, and a bigger wing.

Installing a gas tank in an ultralight aircraft (such as the FAR Part 103 Belite!)

Another easy task is mounting our 5 gallon, spun aluminum gas tank in our ultralight aircraft, the FAR Part 103 Belite aircraft.  These tanks weigh less than 5 pounds, are extremely rugged, and are painless to mount and use.  They are clearly preferable to heavy plastic tanks used on certain earlier ultralight aircraft.

(If you are new to this blog, you'll find several other detailed construction posts on other topics [such as building carbon fiber wings].  Just poke around the search box until you find them.)

The major component of this tank installation is the aluminum tank.  We use an off the shelf 'dune buggy' style tank.  They are available from many different vendors online.

Before starting installation, consider the usage of a fuel sender -- this requires tank modification before

Attaching Flaperons to an Ultralight Aircraft (such as the FAR Part 103 Belite Aircraft)

I hope you've had a great Christmas season!

In this continuing online assembly manual, we'll attach our flaperons to the wings of our ultralight aircraft, the FAR Part 103 compliant Belite.    This assembly procedure is designed for our Belite aircraft, but the procedure is educational for any ultralight aircraft builder.

This is easy:  all we need to do is to clamp the flaperons in place using vise-grips; a couple of alignment templates make accurate alignment very easy.  After everything is lined up, the flaperons are bolted in place using AN3 hardware (bolt, washers, nylok nuts).

Here's the view looking down the flaperon, with three vise-grips already in place.

Belite Batteries demonstrate their power!

There are many things to do in preparation for the first public showing of our electric airplane. 

(I call the plane the Electric Lite.)

One item on the preparation list is a battery test.

There's nothing like a bunch of very high capacity lithium batteries to put smoke into a building when showing their power during a discharge test.  That's exactly what happened when we first tested our batteries, about a year ago.  Here's the video we made at the time, which has never before been seen or posted:

Some of the technical details of this battery test are contained within the video.

It's not much to look at -- just batteries, enormous dummy load resistors, a lot of smoke, and a room that got warmer and warmer as the test progressed.  But maybe, just maybe, you'll enjoy looking at it and wondering:  what is Belite up to?

Please watch and enjoy!

If you want to receive formal information from Belite on our electric airplane, you must register here.

If you are interested in partnering with Belite in electric aircraft development, please correspond with me directly:  james at beliteaircraft dot com

Sneak Pictures of Belite's Batteries

Earlier today, I had a conversation with my marketing manager, Kathy.  She also happens to be my wife and business partner.

"I think I'd like to start posting some more information on my blog concerning our electric airplane design," I said.  "But I won't really release any information -- I'll just create some teasing posts which show elements of our design.  Then, when we're ready to announce our progress more formally, we'll hopefully have more people attuned to what's coming."

Kathy said that sounded like a fine idea.

So, without further ado, here is a photo of a battery pack I found lying around our production facility:

LiFe04 Battery Assembly at Belite Enterprises

This particular battery is part of an electric battery system with the following selected characteristics:

Magazine Does a Photoshoot of Superlite

I enjoyed the experience of being a part of an aircraft photoshoot. It's even more interesting when you're flying an ultralight aircraft!

The photo session had several parts:

a)  Some fly-bys, down the runway, to the left and the right of the photographer.  My objective was to keep the wheels one feet off the runway, and to keep a wingtip over his head as I passed by.  I was free to start a pullup when I was within 100 feet of him.

Building a Carbon Fiber Wing with Aluminum Ribs - Part 2

Please subscribe to Belite's news updates here.  You'll receive our customer mailings and news announcements. 


Please follow James' tweets here.  You'll receive advance peeks as to what James and Belite are doing.
This is the second part on our online tutorial of how to build a carbon fiber wing.

Our objective is to have a truly great ultralight aircraft - our FAR Part 103 Belite Aircraft.

The first part of this assembly document may be found by going to this link. 

I have completed my online updates to this wing assembly manual.  Further updates may be obtained by purchasing a kit, and receiving the printed wing assembly manual.
Building a Carbon Fiber Wing with Aluminum Ribs - Part 2

Last Updated December 13
Updated December 7
Updated December 4
Updated December 2

16.  Installing the Sail / Anti-sail tubes

The photos in this section show the sail / anti-sail tubes without Zinc Phosphate primer.  The primer will be

Building a Carbon Fiber Wing with Aluminum Ribs - Part 1

Building a Carbon Fiber Wing with Aluminum Ribs - Part 1

A completed wing.  It weighs 20 pounds. 

Last Updated December 13, 2010

I have finished my online edits to this revised wing assembly manual.  Further edits are contained within the latest version of the builder's manual, included with each kit.  No further online edits are planned at this time.

Updated December 7, 2010
Updated December 4, 2010
Updated December 2, 2010
Updated November 30, 2010
Updated November 28, 2010


0.  INTRODUCTION

When you are done with these wings, you will have state of the art ultralight aircraft wings utilizing carbon fiber and aluminum.  They will work well with our FAR Part 103 Belite Aircraft!  The weight of the left wing (without flaperon or covering, but including the flaperon control cable and pitot tube/tubing) is slightly less than 20 pounds (9.1KG) when complete.  The weight of the right wing is 19 pounds (8.6KG).

Construction is straightforward, requiring only the ability to accurately place and glue parts together, with minimal riveting and absolutely no welding.

If you are building with aluminum spars (instead of carbon fiber) and wooden ribs (instead of aluminum ribs), you will only need to make slight modifications to the build instructions to complete your wings.


1.  VERIFY CONTENTS, YOUR WORKSPACE, AND YOUR TOOLS.  

First of all, check your materials.  For each wing, you should have the following:

a) QTY 2 Carbon Fiber spars, with pre-attached CNC Machined lift strut hard points
b) QTY 5 Aluminum ribs
c) QTY 2 Birch Ply ribs, CNC machined from 1/2 inch Birch plywood (for root and tip caps)
d) Aluminum Tubing - 6 inch (length) used for doubler for spar roots
e) Aluminum Tubing - 1.5 inch (length) tripler used for spar roots
f)  Aluminum Tubing - 0.5 inch OD x 0.035 wall thickness, 6061T6, used for false rib spar and sail/anti sail braces.  A total of 5 tube lengths of varying lengths are needed for sail/anti-sail tubes.  12' is needed for false rib spar.
g) Aluminum Tubing - 0.625 OD square x 0.035 wall thickness used for rib stiffeners and sail/anti-sail hard points
h)  Aluminum Sheet - 0.025 thickness used for front spar strap, you will cut to 10" by 0.5" straps.
i) pitot tube - 1/4 inch aluminum tubing, prebent to shape.
j) plastic tubing for pitot tube
k) QTY 2 machined jury strut attachment fittings
l) preformed trailing edge aluminum, 12' per wing
m) LEFT and RIGHT CNC machined flaperon control cable dropper
n) one 3/16" rivet for trailing edge attachment to wooden root rib
o) 1/8" rivets for rib strips and for trailing edge attachment
p) 1/8" rivets for spar doubler/tripler
q) Carbon Fiber rope for securing jury struts
r) cotter keys
s) wing blueprint


You will need the following materials to finish your wing kit:

a) Glue (3M 2216) is NOT SUPPLIED.
b) Zinc Phosphate primer is NOT SUPPLIED.
c) Epoxy (West Systems or equivalent) is NOT SUPPLIED.
d) Acetone for glue cleanup is NOT SUPPLIED.
e) Sandpaper / Scotchbrite is NOT SUPPLIED.

Also note that flaperons and flaperon cables are NOT SUPPLIED with this kit.  You will need to order them separately.  (Or hopefully, you bought a complete kit.)

Also verify that you have a flat, absolutely flat workspace for building the wings.  The workspace needs to have easy access to a complete wing assembly, which has dimensions of about 12 feet by 4 feet.  You'll also need all of the usual tools (aviation snips, sandpaper, rivet squeezer, mixing trays, small paintbrushes...).  Having a large quantity of right angle squares and small clamps is essential for building a square wing.

DO NOT START WING ASSEMBLY UNTIL YOU HAVE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS AND UNDERSTAND THEM.


2.  Spar Assembly.

Using very light sandpaper, clean and rough up six inches of the root portion of each carbon fiber spar, in preparation to glue on the 6 inch aluminum doubler.  Ensure that the doubler will fit over the spar.  This is what it will look like after the doubler and the tripler and the root rib are glued together, but don't glue anything yet:

Doubler, Tripler, Rib and root rib, along with some sloppy glue.  Don't glue it yet!

3.  Wood Rib Preparation.

Paint each of the two end cap wood ribs with a very light coat of epoxy.  This will ensure decades of life.  Lightly sand as necessary to remove excess epoxy and for better appearance.

Root Rib, in place.  It has been coated with a layer of clear epoxy.

4.  Aluminum rib strap preparation.

Cut 5 strips of 0.025 aluminum to dimensions of 1/2 inch x 10 inches for each wing.  These will be used to attach the front of the aluminum ribs to the leading edge spar.  A total of 5 straps are needed for each wing.  Clean and rough up using Scotchbrite, then spray coat with Zinc Phosphate primer.

Hot Air

While working at the shop this morning, a hot air balloon landed on the runway.

I'd been working on a carbon fiber wing spar, and noticed an unusual hissing/burning sound from outside:  just like a propane heater being turned on and off.

Walking outside the shop door to investigate, a balloon floated and touched down mid-runway!

Fun!  A couple of us airport guys watched and talked with the pilot and crew as they loaded the balloon into their chase pickup.  The winds were calm, so they used a little envelope heat to help lift the balloon into the back of the pickup.  The balloon was then tilted over and collapsed.

Trike Test Flight; Pup Show Up

Today, while testing a customer's yellow trike, another ultralight showed up.  I played with him; not sure if he really saw me.

What a nice day to fly!  Light wind; clear skies; fall colors; 

Harley Up For Sale

We call this plane 'the Harley'.  Love the gorgeous orange and black!

Weighing in at 243 pounds, it's a beautiful ultralight.  We've got it flying with a MZ-34 engine with electric start.

Available for immediate delivery, it features our  Belite 254 design, with full fuselage fabric covering and bright orange paint.  The panel is 'steam gauge', and it is beautiful stained wood.  The wing has aluminum spars, and the lift struts are aluminum/carbon fiber.  The black powdercoating plays beautifully against the brilliant orange paint!  We've also added an aluminum engine cowling with bright chrome trim.

Priced at $24,995 + the following options:

Brakes -- $250
Steel Spring Gear -- $350
Electric Start -- $299
Full covering -- $1000
Full Paint -- $2950

FAF -- $29,844.

Pictures are below.  Enjoy!

Deadstick Landing! "Don't try this at home".

1.  "Don't try this at home."
2.  "The sound of wind rushing around the plane is awing, blood-rushing, soothing, clearing, empowering, pulsing, privilege."

And now, on with the blog post....

The conversation at coffee break this morning ranged through politics, Cessna's profit and delivery woes, and eventually wandered towards aircraft landing speeds.  Sitting next to me was a seasoned Cessna 182/185 glider towplane pilot, and he mused how he had to keep his approach speed up on final, so that he could execute a successful flare into our grass strip.

We talked about how the Belite would do:  was I able to execute landings with the engine at idle?

Why yes, I thought I could land with the powerplant at idle.

Why not give it a try right then?

It so happened that I had our gorgeous 'Harley' orange and black Belite 254 ready for flight; we'd recently completed some upgrades to it, and it was sitting, begging to be flown.  I had test flown it earlier in the day, and I knew that it was ready to fly some more.  Did I say it's gorgeous?  Did I mention that it flies beautifully?

 

Why not?  Let's do this.  I hopped in, hit the electric starter, and the single cylinder CRE MZ-34 soon came to life.  (Nothing beats an electric starter on an airplane.)

After a brief warmup, I took off into the light south breeze, climbing at about 200 fpm.  (Amazing.  I weigh 200+; the engine is just a miserly little 28hp 'single lung', the prop isn't quite optimum... and yet the performance is great.)  I swung the obedient airplane around the pattern, turned base to final, and retarded the throttle to idle.  With the engine at idle, the plane easily floated over the runway, and I landed without any difficulty whatsoever.  After touching down, I hit the power, went around, and did it again and again.  The Belite lands effortlessly with the engine at idle.  There are zero issues with flare authority, even with the engine at idle.

At this point, you're probably wondering why I would call that a "Deadstick Landing".  Well, I wouldn't.  It wasn't a deadstick landing.  But I had a sly thought....   why not try a true deadstick landing? 

And so the next time I came around and turned final, I verified to myself that the runway was assured.  And I reached over and turned off the ignition.  The engine went from idle to off... and the windmilling prop stopped.  I was floating over the runway a moment later, and flared to a beautiful, light landing with no noise other than the wind over the wings and the roll of the wheels.

I told Gene to grab the camera.  I wanted to do that again!

I fired the engine back up, took off, and did a couple more true deadstick landings, with Gene recording the sequence.  There's some great pics!  Note the stopped position of the prop in each photo...

 

Here's some final comments.

1)  This plane is for sale!
2)  The cowling was not installed.
3)  The sound of wind rushing around the plane is awing, blood-rushing, soothing, clearing, empowering, pulsing, privilege.

Shortly after liftoff, the plane stalled, and then glanced hard into the runway...

Let's all learn from this: a Belite trike had a landing accident yesterday. 

My first thought after it occurred was that I would not take pictures; nor would I blog.  That was an expected first reaction; but incorrect.  I saw it happen; I can still see the whole sequence of events like a motion picture, in my mind.  With permission of the customer pilot, I am now blogging on what happened.

No one was hurt; and the plane was not badly damaged.  And I'm weirdly pleased with how the nosewheel took the blow and then failed in a manner which protected the pilot and the remainder of the airframe.

This particular airplane was equipped with the very strong Compact Radial Engine MZ-201.  I have flown this particular plane many times; we'd sold it and upgraded several features of the plane, including the engine.  We'd also added an inexpensive Second Chantz ballistic chute.

A transitioning pilot was practicing a takeoff roll in the bright yellow Belite.  Although this particular roll was to achieve a height of no more than about 6 inches; it didn't work out that way.  The pilot had been practicing taxiing and had demonstrated proficiency in low and high speed taxiing -- it was time to focus on the transitional takeoff attitude.   

I observed the plane rotate; the pilot quickly leveled the wings.  But by then, the plane was already quite a few feet off the ground and climbing...

In order to cancel the climb, the transitioning pilot cut power, and then the plane angled back towards the ground at a descent angle of perhaps 7 or 8 degrees.  This was probably an inadvertent departure stall.  The plane struck the runway very hard on the nosewheel, which folded under the airplane.  The plane skidded to a stop, briefly tipped sidewise and up onto the left wing, then settled back to the ground.  The main gear were still intact.  It was as if the plane was kneeling forward on its broken nosewheel.

By the time I had made it over to the plane, my customer friend had climbed out of the plane.  He was absolutely fine:  not a scratch, not a bruise.  He was even in amazingly good spirits, all things considered.

We rolled the plane back to the hangar. 

Here's an inventory of the damage:


Carbon Fiber firewall:  undamaged
Left Wing front spar (it hit the ground):  undamaged  (the spars are open and we can easily inspect on inside)
Engine:  undamaged (sheared blades and PSRU provide really good protection to engine)
Propeller blades:  destroyed
Propeller hub:  undamaged
Nosewheel landing gear:  folded under and destroyed
Nosewheel aluminum / delrin assembly and wheel:  no damage whatsoever, even after scraping along ground, but jammed against muffler
Left wing carbon fiber spar, which struck ground:  absolutely no damage
Left / Right nosewheel landing gear braces:  folded under, destroyed
Fuselage front cross member:  1/2 inch bend
Instrument panel bottom cross member (receives nose wheel landing gear strut)  1/4 inch bend

Here's a closeup of the bottom damage:

Nosewheel Destroyed on Belite Trike

 Here's the same thing, after removal of the nosewheel.  This clearly shows how the nosewheel strut has absorbed the blow, along with the nosewheel cross brace struts:

Bent nosewheel strut on Belite, with wheel removed

Look at the above picture very closely, one more time.  You can see the following:

a) bent nosewheel strut
b) bent cross braces
c) very slight bend in fuselage cross brace member (pushed back about 1/2 inch)

Just to make it crystal clear, here's a photo which shows the fuselage cross brace member:

Here's the basic process to repair the airplane:

1. Unbolt the nosewheel strut from the plane.  It has a bolt in the fuselage cross brace member (bolt hole visible in above pic) and below the instrument panel (not pictured).  Then remove.

2.  Remove fabric from front bottom of airplane.

3.  Cut out bent cross tube.

4.  Cut and weld in replacement section and nosewheel strut receiver.  Use doublers as necessary.

5.  Repair fabric.

6.  Insert new landing gear strut and cross braces.

7.  Replace propeller blades.
  
8.  Inspect & fly.

How did the nosewheel strut perform under this failure condition? 
Everything worked as planned. 

a) The landing gear did not 'jam' up and into the cabin.  Both the lower fuselage cross member and the top receiver cross member exhibited backwards force, but very little bending.

b)  The landing gear did fold underneath and backwards.   In fact, a careful inspection of the nosewheel strut shows that it had gross bending failure at two places, and a minor bend at a third place.  These bends each absorbed substantial energy from the impact, shielding the pilot.

c)  After the landing gear folded under the plane, the plane then skidded along the ground.  The plane did not flip over.

d)  The main landing gear were not damaged or affected.

e)  The 4130 ChromAloy fuselage provided 100% protection to the pilot.  (The 3 point safety harness was an essential piece of his protection.  His torso could not roll forward.)

f)  The damage is easy to repair.  We already had replacement parts in stock.

This happened yesterday.  With the exception of the propeller replacement, the bird should be ready to fly again tomorrow.

Wichita's Aircraft Industry: Time for Reinvention?

In today's Wichita Eagle (Sunday, 10/10/10), a letter to the editor, from me:

Sedgwick Country Commissioner Gwen Welshimer presented a strong case for reinvention of Wichita's aviation core at last week's commission meeting.

In a presentation designed to help Wichita understand that it remains at a tipping point for its aviation future, she articulated the need to pay attention to developments in aviation — specifically in the light sport and ultralight niches — so that Wichita may continue to call itself the "Air Capital of the World" for decades to come.

It is disheartening that appropriate investments in the grassroots of our aviation industry were not made years ago. Instead, innovative small aircraft designs have been announced in many other cities and from many other countries. (Europe has become a hot spot for aviation technology development.) Some of these innovations are producing orders along with jobs.

All of these developments are in harmony with what this city already builds and sells — the world's greatest general aviation airplanes, jets and airliner components. But the smaller, less-expensive products rebound first from difficult economic times, and they are lacking from our community's collective product offerings (with the exception of Cessna Aircraft's Skycatcher and Belite Aircraft's "254" and derivatives).

Welshimer should find support from our community for the development of programs that will enhance the ability of our entrepreneurial private sector to create new aviation products and resulting jobs. Will she?

JAMES WIEBE
CEO
Belite Aircraft
Wichita


Read more: http://www.kansas.com/2010/10/10/1535343/letters-to-the-editor-on-incentives.html#ixzz120aM0WKV

Wichita Eagle quotes James on aviation incubator idea

The Wichita Eagle wrote an article about Gwen Welshimer's propsoal for an aviation technology incubator in Wichita, KS.  A couple of her ideas were pretty far out there, but most were based on realistic aviation products that are happening now. 

The Eagle's article was slanted towards the stuff that was 'far out', and slanted in a negative way. 

But they finished the article with a very nice quote from me.

You can read the Eagle's article here.

Technology and Aviation Leadership in Wichita, KS?

Today, at the invitation of Sedgwick County Commissioner Gwen Welshimer, I briefly presented my viewpoint of the difficulties of starting an aviation business in Wichita, KS, Air Capital of the World:

 -- Difficulty raising capital or debt financing
 -- Lack of vision on the part of government for supporting entrepreneurial aviation and technology business in a meaningful way.


My comments followed a presentation by Commissioner Welshimer, in which she made a case in which Sedgwick County should take its rightful position as incubator for aviation technology.



She's absolutely correct.

You can see her presentation, and my response to the Commission, in this eVideo


Two of the three local TV stations interviewed me; fantastic interviews; and they each took great video of the Belite flying out at our base airport.  You can see the videos and their stories here:

Channel 12 - KWCH Story on Personal Planes and Belite

Channel 10 - KAKE Story:  Could Innovation keep Wichita the Air Capital?

Wichita is in danger of losing its status as Air Capital of the World.