My airplane needs a diet!

Hey Guys,
I just did the weight & balance on my airplane! Although I'm not exactly smiling about its pudgy weight, the good news is that it is in the ballpark of what I thought it would be... 1157# with everything installed except gear leg intersection fairings and paint. The tail weight is 59#, thus giving me a pretty good CG to work with.

Some particulars about my airplane to give you some aimpoints:

IO-360 Angle Valve engine
Christen inverted oil system
Std Hartzel constant speed prop
Std gear legs
Aft mounted Concorde battery
ELT mounted under empennage fairing
IFR panel including:
Std pitot-static instruments
Vac driven gyros
VM1000C
GNS 430, GTX 326, GI-106A

Aft mounted battery and ELT mounted under emp. fairing was critical. I hope this helps anyone considering similar equipment.

Later,
Jerry

Maybe

Hi Jerry,
Yup, a little pudgy but not bad really. How often will you really hang upside down in inverted flight? Consider that you can do aileron rolls, loops, cuban eights, immelmans, spins, snaps, split esses and wingovers and four point rolls without negative G's,...oh, and barrel rolls too.

Unless your airplane is spotlessly clean, you can expect dirt in your eyes/face when flying in a negative G condition and anything loose will hit the canopy and/or your face (chocks, window cleaner, oil, etc). I think you may be able to dispense with the Christen system, then use the money to go for a glass panel, eliminate the vacuum pump and heavy gyros, saving more weight.

The Odyssey battery can replace the Concorde for a few more pounds and it has 680 cranking amps.

The real weight savings would be removing the CS prop and governor but I doubt you'd do that.

Regards,

My rv 8 is 1130

It may be here somewhere but has anyone ever done a weight comparison for steam guages vs glass. I thought I read a thread on a G1000 in an RV and it seemed like the weight was way up there.

Good idea to put the ELT in the empennage. That's where I'll put mine. I will need all of the help I can get.

Glass Weight

I don't know the specifics, but from what I've ready, yes, the G1000 is up there. I think Pierre was referencing the "affordable" systems we're putting in RV's, namely Dynon, GRT, BMA, and AFS. These are all fairly light weight.

Jim

Hi Jerry,
Any photo's on the ELT empennage mounting??? When is your projected first flight???

Porker

Hi Gerry,

I'm with Pierre on this. Ditch the inverted system. You don't need it, especially if you a looking at doing aeros - even more important to get the maneouvres right when you are overweight....

Cheers

Martin

Grove Gear weight saver

Its probably a little late for you - unless you're just filthy rich - but the Grove gear will save around 11 pounds for a cost of around $1500 (from memory). For those still building it also saves the work of fairing the std gear. If anyone is going to order the finish kit tell Van's you are going to get a Grove gear and you don't want the std gear, Van's will credit you about $900 (again, from memory).

I did the Odessey battery too and believe that and the Grove gear are two of the largest and easiest weight reductions around. The rest I have to work for. Harold

Jerry, the weight of the plane is typically what is focussed on, but what really matters is the plane + pilot. One would hope that the plane doesn't go flying without you on board. I would think your aircraft weight with the angled valve engine is remarkably light.

The reported weights of these planes is distributed much more widely than I believe is realistic. For example, if I remove all the panel equipment and interior from my plane, it might still weigh more than others have reported with the same engine/prop. Scale accuracy, etc.......

Yeah, ditch the inverted stuff. Who wants an eyeful of floor dirt all the time?

Don't sweat the weight. It'll still go like stink but know full well that I'll poke fun at ya anyway.

I sure like my skinny 180hp -8....at 1069 lbs.