Pod installation

[Shannon]

KFM Bad Boy !

[Shannon]

C-INCH@Sun-N-Fun

[flyalaz]

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

[Shannon]

Dave Curtis

[Shannon]

Brad Whites futuristic fully enclosed Lazair

[aroguetrader]

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

[b diedenhofen]

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

[Shannon]

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

[Shannon]

[bdiedenhofen]

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.