Today is Friday and since the last update on Wednesday after stopping the flight to inspect and repair the Mini Me again, I have made plans and am implementing them to make a major change in this flight.

Larry Hinton retrieved the Mini Me and myself from the Coolidge Airport on Wednesday after I landed with a broken muffler support tube. It had vibrated in two like the prop guard ring supports had done. This one bothered me more however since it was not just the prop ring.

Yesterday Larry and I addressed the muffler support problem, and as Larry was welding in the new supports, I was doing a close inspection of the rest of the frame. I started on the main frame and all appeared to be well as it is 2" square 4130 chromoly and the welds were all visible. Then I got back to the top cross member where the top prop guard support tube connected to it, and it was breaking out from the vibration. Then I looked at the C/G tube connections to the cross member and they too were braking out and one side had a hairline crack all the way to the end of the steel.

Larry must have been finished with a weld and saw the look on my face as I said out loud "this F-33 is going to kill me". He knew something was bad wrong and I asked him to look for himself and verify what I was seeing. I thought that I might have to call it quits and head home, but that just is not in me. Instead I thought that perhaps we could replace the bad steel, and I could swap the F-33 single cylinder with a 40 horse twin cylinder so it would be smooth and quit cracking the chromoly.

I called Don at Airframes Unlimited to check stock and my price for a 40 horse engine, and we discussed the pros and cons of attempting that course of action. Don then offered me a "Pup" airframe that he has in storage. The Pup was designed to be a 103 legal powered parachute and use the F-33 engine. My engine has done well so far, it is just the frame that is not holding up. My mistake was using the thin walled chromoly. While it is stronger than mild steel, it is also brittle and does not fare well with the vibration of the single cylinder engine. A powered parachute, unlike a fixed wing aircraft, does a lot of low rpm running, and that is when the vibration is at it's worst. On these flights so far, I started at sea level and went up and over numerous mountains on each flight. That is a lot of low rpm running when descending to land.

After a little thought, I decided to take Airframes Unlimited up on the offer, and then spent the rest of the day trying to secure a rental pick up truck for the 1100 mile drive to Athens, Texas with the Mini Me. I had no luck and the only rental company that was even close to affordable would not allow the truck to go into Texas from Arizona. Finally I decided that the best thing to do was to just buy a used compact pick up truck and then sell it later or take it home after the flight. I got lucky and found a 1990 Ford Ranger for $1400 total from a dealer that had just taken it in from a fellow that towed it behind his motor home. It only has 62,500 miles on it and it runs great and everything works on it. That was at about dark yesterday.

Larry and I had some supper and then we went back to his place and loaded the Mini Me into the bed of the truck. I headed out and made it to Lordsburg, New Mexico before stopping for the night. This morning I found a Wally World in Deming and had the truck serviced, then made it to Midland, Texas tonight and stopped early to write this update.

I should get to Athens sometime tomorrow and will get started tearing everything useable off of the Mini Me, and swapping it over to the Pup frame. The 310 Thunderbolt wing has been making these flights possible and we have already worked it out so that the spread geometry will be correct for it on the Pup.

Weather permitting, I will test fly the Pup in Athens, otherwise I will haul it back to Marana, Arizona and test fly there at Larry's place. Either way, I plan to return to Arizona to continue the flight in the Pup, hopefully by the end of next week.

On a flight like this I have plenty to worry about without having to worry about airframe problems. After this I should be able to enjoy the flights and not have to stop and repair something after each one.

While I am in Athens I will work on the missing updates and missing photos from the quickie updates of a few days ago and we will get those on the website. It has been a very busy week. :)

Have a good one!
Steve
 

| Home | Contact |

© 2004 - 2005 AmericanSpiritPPC.com