[Frank Colver]

OK! Bob tells me this is ready to go now. I thank him for going through a considerable effort to get all of the posts, from this forum and another forum, together in this one place. I'll try to keep up that coordination as time goes by.

BobK and i spent a lot of time on the phone yesterday with him wondering why I don't move ahead by making my own battens (WW doesn't have the tubing available yet). My main reason is that i wanted to avoid having to make them by modifying and utilizing certain Condor 330 battens. There are two reasons for this: first I'm lazy, second I wanted to be able to tell anyone who wants to build the Puffin how to get the battens from a commercial source and all I would have to supply would be the modification instructions.

Frank C.

[Bob Kuczewski]

BobK and i spent a lot of time on the phone yesterday with him wondering why I don't move ahead by making my own battens.

I guess my thinking is that the first iteration of this design will answer a lot of very important questions even if It's only an approximation to the design you really want in the end. Depending on those answers you may not need to go any further. If it does start looking promising, then you might have a lot more people interested in moving forward with it once you've got a working prototype.

So a "quick and dirty" prototype will be helpful for several reasons. Even if you end up throwing it away, that first prototype will help put everything in motion for the next version.

[Frank Colver]

Of course I agree with Bob's post, it's just common sense. However, I do have other projects going on and only so much shop space, so it's easy to put off the project that i don't have enough materials yet.

That said, I have collected a lot of the small hardware for the Puffin project.

FC

[SamKellner]

Hi Frank,

If you need battens , I have ~50 of various sizes that I can give you if you just pay shipping.

[Frank Colver]

Hi Sam, thanks.

I am planning to use certain ones of the Condor 330 battens because of their very high camber. I'm intending for the Puffin to have a very slow and low sink glide using a high lift camber in the airfoil (pitch stabilizing that with a lot of reflex).

I'm guessing that you don't have any of the C330 battens, since it was such a low production glider from WW. Since WW still has the bending jigs for those battens I'm wanting them to make me the ones i have ordered. Their problem is that they are getting slow delivery of 10mm, 7075, batten tubing which they use for most of their glider battens. My order is low priority compared to keeping their production running.

Thanks again,
Frank

[SamKellner]

Frank,

I have the Condor 330 for first day instruction, but no extra battens. The 330 battens are longer than most.

Keep us posted on the progress.

Sam

[Frank Colver]

Back to the future! i'll explain that:

When we were still covering hang gliders with ploy traps DuPont invented a poly material that was tough in all directions and had less stretch than a poly trap. It was called Tyvek. Joe Faust first brought it to my attention. I called DuPont to find out how I could buy some and was told that it was only available from them and i would need to buy a railroad car load as minimum purchase - price in the thousands of $. That was the end of my interest in Tyvek.

Now to the present: We now see it on most new construction of buildings and homes. My local Home Depot has 9 rolls in stock. There is also a fantastic tape, that i have used for many other things, that is designed to stick to it very well and the tape stands up to UV radiation for years.

So, last night I looked it up on the web to see what size it comes in. It's a roll that is 9 feet wide by 150 feet long (1350 sq ft). The material weight is 1.8 oz per sq yd so on my glider this adds up to a total of about 3.4 lbs of sail. Very much in the ball park of a light dacron sail.

I am now seriously considering making the sail for the first go around on the Puffin out of Tyvek. At 9 ft wide it will only require one short span direction seam near the center and the center joining seam. Tyvek tape will do that job.

Since first flights will be at Dockweiler it will hark back to a long tradition of plastic tarp gliders flown there. However, the frame won't be made of bamboo (unless Wills waits too long to get me the aluminum).

Still waiting for the aluminum

Frank C.

Basic Trainer, sail & battens design.jpg (324.29 KiB) Viewed 6159 times

[Bob Kuczewski]

Still waiting for the aluminum

That's why God made bamboo.

[Frank Colver]

Puffin project put on indefinite hold.

For those of you who have been following my posts about my HG Basic Trainer design ideas I apologize for what may be a big disappointment to you.

The time has come for me to make a decision about whether to continue the project. The metal materials are now available and of course this will amount to a big expenditure (almost the cost of a new glider) then the sail is the ever looming problem after the airframe is constructed.

I have decided to not proceed any further with the project and I’ll list some factors in that decision below.

The money is not a problem except that I don’t want to spend money on something that I may not choose to continue “down the road”. Therefore the need to make that decision now.

I have a nice shop but I don’t have the floor space to lay out a glider which would be critical when it comes to the sail. I don’t even have a driveway to use as I did in 1971 when I built the Skysail. Even then I did the covering in my living room (not available now).

I have an almost constant stream of small projects going on in my shop (the swing seat harness development was a recent one) making it more difficult to work on a big project like the Puffin.

Time constraints. At almost 85 years I just don’t put in the time I used to on big projects. I’m probably more active than most men my age but it’s not like it was when I was 40. When I’m working on something now I usually only spend about 4 hours in the shop if that much. Of course with the computer I can do drawings, order parts, etc., at home in the evening.

I did intend to build the prototype when I started the project but I also posted my ideas and drawings, model tests etc., as “open source” and giving up all claims to the ideas and designs so that anyone else could use them to build a similar design. CONFESSION: All along I’ve been hoping that a manufacturer like Wills Wing or Northwing would get interested in the general ideas of a different approach to HG pilot first flights and build and test something along these lines. Anything I have done would be free to them (however, historic recognition for design ideas is always nice). Unfortunately, it has not “caught fire” with any HG manufacturer.

So here is where it rests. I’m glad that I carried the project through to a flying scale model to prove flight characteristics, which exceed my expectations, but I will cancel my order to WW and put the project on “hold” until something else develops.

You can find a summary of the Puffin project on my web site: ushga.aero/colver

Frank Colver

[Bob Kuczewski]

At almost 85 ... I’m probably more active than most men my age ...

It's hard to disagree with that!!