Lazair.com

KFM Bad Boy !

C-INCH@Sun-N-Fun

I thought I would send in a pic of my pod arrangement. It weighs about 8 pounds complete. This year I want to extend and streamline the nose by a couple of inches, (to give me more toe room), and add wheel fairings.

Cheers,
Karl

Dave Curtis

Brad Whites futuristic fully enclosed Lazair

Hey Tyler,

Thanks for the tip on installing Mike's wing tips with the trailing edge mod. Since I have one wing done already, I'll likely just deal with the offset between the wingtip and trailing edge, but that was before I made the decision to go with Mike's product.

...just on a side note regarding pods....I'm already looking at options to replicate a version of "The Gods Must be Crazy" pod for my 2-seater. As I get home from work every night...I'll pop my head in the garage, take a look at the heap of mangled parts on the floor, that once used to be the assemblence of a plane and realize my pod plan is as follows:

Step 1: get the plane in the air sometime this century (but this year is the goal!)
Step 2: build pod

John

Looks like I'll have to get a pic of CUN soon, so I can show it off too. I've got 3 hours in it since the pod installation. Two weeks ago, I flew for well over an hour without any heavy layers on and no face protection. Temperature was around minus 1 C. It definately floats longer in ground effect and the wind protection is fabulous. No real obstruction to visibility and still a very open feeling in the cockpit. I tied about 3 lbs of lead to the tail to balance the bird. It does behave a little different with the pod. Power off, it assumes best angle of glide speed and balances very well. Power on though, it requires a little back stick at all times. I don't want to go with trim tabs because I can simply remove the pod and lead on a whim whenever I please this way. The back stick required isn't enough to fret over. I haven't added the fairings to the wing struts, but that's coming soon. Overall performance is great so far. I couldn't find a way to fix my decompression valves, and just plugged the holes with bolts. A little more effort to start it, but I've had 3 of them fail so far. If you've still got some, it works fine without them if you're considering. Incidently, standard AN bolts had the right thread and screwed right in.
Brian

Hi Brian,

Lazairs fix for the compression releases was to tack weld a glob of metal on the end of the release. This would prevent the steel stem from coming loose from the aluminum head.

Shannon

Well, I'm looking for a little advice here now. We've got quite a few hours on CUN with the pod and all is good except for the handling difference vs. podless. It's my wife's plane, so I don't fly it too much. Lately the weather's been pretty good, so I've had it out a few times this spring. I've noticed that at low speed, the tail will start to shimmy which is unnerving and the nose down tendancy has scared me a little. I've put trim tabs on and I've got straight and level with cruise power of 30 - 35 mph. With power off though there's not as much wind over the trim tabs leaving them less effective. On final, if I stay around 30, it handles ok. If I go slower, the tail starts to wag and if I get to 35 or so, the plane will strongly pitch down and it is quite uncomfortable. My wife doesn't find it as troublesome as I do, but I worry just the same.

Has anyone else had these symptoms with the pod? Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Brian D.