Monday, July 26, 2010

Trike in Cub Yellow, looks gorgeous, flies fantastic


These pictures show our Belite Trike in vivid Cub Yellow paint.  This beautiful airplane is currently at Oshkosh.  Did I say it is gorgeous?  It is gorgeous.  The Hirth F33 engine provides great performance; cruise is faster than what I expected.  We loaded it up with options!  Carbon wing, aluminum wheels (not installed in this pic), spring landing gear. 

It will soon be offered for sale at about $34.5K.   Here it is taking off:



And here's one final pic for today, showing off the carbon fiber wings:


Weight is exactly 251 pounds, including aluminum wheels.

If you want this airplane, call me (phone numbers on beliteaircraft.com website) or send me an email:  james AT beliteaircraft.com

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Black Dragon Superlite


Our Superlite, winner of Sun N Fun 2010 Grand Champion Ultralight, is now at Airventure Oshkosh with an improved paint scheme and many improvements to the airplane.  I am now calling it the Black Dragon Superlite, and it is one very sharp and powerful airplane.  I've posted a new photo suite on Belite's Flickr account of the Black Dragon.

This particular aircraft currently has some small enhancements on it:

Vortex Generators (reduce stall speed)
Prop spinner (looks sharp)
Glove tray with drink holder (looks sharp, finally provides a place to hold that can of pop and GPS while flying around)
Electric trim (allows inflight elevator trimming, great safety feature and allows hands off photography)
Machined aluminum fittings

and I will be flying it at Oshkosh. 

Here's all of the other options on this particular plane and how it's priced:


# Comments Yes Price Ext.
1 Basic Airplane.  28HP engine.  Ready to fly!  Taildragger configuration. yes 24995 24995
2 Carbon Fiber wing upgrade saves weight. yes 2200 2200
4 Trailer kit (4 steel support struts) yes 250 250
5 Powdercoating yes 595 595
6 Lithium Polymer starter battery and charger yes 350 350
11 Disc brake set, installed yes 400 400
14 Steel spring gear upgrade yes 350 350
20 Fiberglass cowling yes 340 340
21 Larger Flaperons increase wing area by 2 feet. yes 200 200
24 SUPERLITE -- Swap to F33 Hirth Engine with recoil start yes 2760 2760
26 Delete the original wood panel and gauges. yes -500 -500
28 Belite Half Panel - 4 instruments, wired, installed yes 600 600
29 Install Fuel Sender in fuel tank, wiring yes 200 200
30 Electric Elevator trim yes 200 200
31 Aircraft 600 pound BRS Parachute - installed yes 3300 3300
32 Dragon Paint, installed  yes 4000 4000
33 Upgrade Cockpit to Carbon Fiber (floorboard; seatback; seatbottom) yes 400 400
34 Upgrade tail spring to fiberglass composite. yes 100 100

Subtotal
$40,740

We also switched the BRS parachute out to a new Second Chantz parachute that uses compressed air instead of a ballistic rocket, and this reduces the price by $1000, so this loaded demonstrator airplane is offered at $39,740.


Second Chantz appears to have a great product, I love the idea of using compressed air ejection instead of a ballistic rocket!



I thoroughly enjoy flying this airplane.  If you are looking for the very finest Part 103 ultralight aircraft, you have found it.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Electric Elevator Trim on Ultralight Aircraft

First a friendly reminder:  This blog has many, many posts on many different topics.  Please explore the various posts -- I've written on all kinds things -- some serious, some contemplative, some informative.  Have a look around!  Now, on today's topic:  Electric Elevator Trim Tabs on Ultralight Aircraft.

Another item on our price list which is kind of unique is our electric elevator trim.  I thought I'd show a few pictures as to how we do it.

One of the joys of flying in an ultralight aircraft (such as our FAR Part 103 Belite Aircraft) is taking photographs.  In order to do this, I like to fly 'hands free', without the plane diving or climbing.  And I like to do it at various throttle settings, which means that I need a flight variable trim system.  There's a variety of ways to do this, but here is a system which meets all of the flight trim objectives AND provides an additional redundancy of elevator control, in the event of an elevator control system failure.  Just like a real airplane...  Jumping to what it looks like when it's all done, here's the electric elevator trim and manual rudder trim, as installed on our Belite Black Dragon Superlite (YES, the paint job is spectacular...):




The rudder trim is permanently set, and when properly set eliminates any left or right rudder tendencies.  (The big engine requires a lot of right foot, without rudder trimming, so I LIKE the rudder trim.)  The elevator trim uses an electric servo (designed by Belite) and a custom designed controller circuit board (which we'll get to in a few moments.) 

Now let's back up and look at these two trim tabs in the paint shop:


Well, that's kind of a boring picture.  But it does show the general clutter around the workshop fabrication bench, as well as our big battery charger.  So let's move on to some closeups.  Here's a pic of the rudder trim, prior to placement on the rudder:


And here's a shot of the elevator trim tab, complete with hinge, servo, linkage and control horn.  (Some of which is covered by painted masking tape):


This trim tab weighs about 9 ounces, as pictured.  With cable up to the cockpit, and controller board, the entire weight is about a pound.  The big holes which are drilled on the attachment tabs are used to tie wrap this to our elevator.  Let's mount this trim tab on the elevator:


You can clearly see the black tie wraps, along with the electric cable which has been snaked around the back of the elevator.  The wires have not yet been hooked up, but the linkage is clearly visible from the servo to the control horn.

Now let's move up to the cockpit, and look at the panel:


The big red push button switch is for the electric starter relay, the two red toggle switches are magneto kill switches (left and right) for our big Hirth F23 50HP engine, the white switch is the master avionics switch, and the black toggle switch is our electric trim switch.  It is shown in the central (neutral) position.  Moving it up causes the elevator trim servo to move one direction, while moving it down causes the trim to move in the other direction.  VOILA!  Easy elevator trim.

Now let's take a sneak look behind the panel, and see what's attached to that black toggle switch:


You can see a module which is 'shrink wrapped' and attached to the toggle switch.  It contains a small circuit board which regulates power and controls power polarity from the toggle switch to the trim servo.  This entire design is a product of Belite and is available on our assembled aircraft for $200.  This includes the servo, the electric trim tab, the controller board, the wiring, all installed.

You can see the Black Dragon Superlite, complete with electric trim and several other surprises, at 2010 Oshkosh.  Please come by our booth in the North display, and we also have a booth in the south Ultralight area.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Vortex Generators and Ultralight Aircraft

Vortex Generators.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS ARTICLE, YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN THESE OTHER ARTICLES ON VG's and STALL SPEEDS:


http://jameswiebe.blogspot.com/2010/09/even-more-info-on-stall-speed-vortex.html

http://jameswiebe.blogspot.com/2010/06/belite-coefficient-of-lift-and-stalling.html

Vortex generators are mounted on the top side of wings, and are designed to create small vortices as air passes over the wing.

As a result of these small vortices, vortex generators (Let's call them VGs, OK?)  are responsible for doing some pretty amazing things.  Concerning VGs, Wikipedia says the following:


"Vortex generators are likely to be found on the external surfaces of vehicles where flow separation is a potential problem because vortex generators delay flow separation. [3] On aircraft they are installed on the front third of a wing in order to maintain steady airflow over the control surfaces at the rear of the wing.[2]boundary layer, and run in spanwise lines near the thickest part of the wing.[1] They can be seen on the wings and vertical tails of many airliners. Vortex generators are positioned in such a way that they have an angle of attack with respect to the local airflow.[1] They are typically rectangular or triangular, about 80% as tall as the boundary layer, and run in spanwise lines near the thickest part of the wing.[1] They can be seen on the wings and vertical tails of many airliners. Vortex generators are positioned in such a way that they have an angle of attack with respect to the local airflow.[1]

A vortex generator creates a tip vortex which draws energetic, rapidly-moving air from outside the slow-moving boundary layer into contact with the aircraft skin. The boundary layer normally thickens as it moves along the aircraft surface, reducing the effectiveness of trailing-edge control surfaces; vortex generators can be used to remedy this problem, among others, by "re-energizing the boundary layer".[1][2]

The use of VGs on FAR Part 103 ultralight aircraft has been debated at least a little; I've decided to get into the debate by actually giving them a try on our Dragon Superlite.  A couple of days ago, I temporarily attached a set of VGs to the Superlite and then flew the plane.  Here's what they look like:


How did they work out?  I don't really know.  The wind was gusty aloft, so it was difficult to check out stall speed, landing characteristics, and I've reached no conclusions so far.  But I've decided to leave them on the Superlite as it heads to Oshkosh.  Come on by our North display area and take a look.