A New Pod could get your ship down to 140 lbs. I'll bet.

Too bad I lost track of the all carbon/divinycell hull I formed and delivered to 'Bill' Best here in the early years of this century. It was very rugged and yet as I recall weighed about 11 lbs. I asked a guy in Phoenix, AZ (he knew 'B' about that hull when I visited with him at his home in 2015 and unfortunately he did not know of its existence. Bill died shortly after I delivered to him....but surely the hull is out there somewhere sitting up in someone's rafters....(maybe his son's in Wichita, KS) I think his name was John and he is who I helped strap it to his hauling trailer when I shipped to Bill in AZ. Maybe he is still in the Wichita, KS area and could be found if you had interest in saving yourself some work. You could probably save a whole lot of work and a bit of cash even with the transport to you there in Ireland.

Note: the pod was vacuum molded in the mold I used to make my Aramid hull for my Alnair. It is about a foot longer than the CD pod and that is how I got the smooth curve from nose tip to spar on mine. it was rounder and smoother overall and you certainly can see that in the landing photo on this site. Just a thought! In fact I think I'll spend a little time looking for it online and should I find it I'll let you know.

Alnair stalled clean at about 19 mph. It was very quick though to drop the port wing when stalled so had to be really careful with altitude. I once stalled moments after release from an auto tow at only about 300 feet AGL and that one was really a full fear factor as I pulled it out only maybe 80 feet above terrafirma! Guess I count that as one of my proof of will to live work non-stop experiences. Looking seemingly straight down and spinning with the earth coming at me fast was not fun....but I am here to write about it so guess I did something right!

Anyway, congratulations on your success at both building and flying and keep up the good work all the while having the time of your life my friend!

Gus

¡¡¡ CONGRATULATIONS Phil !!! Very good termal flight and amazing place to flying it. Very beautifull and instructive video. Thank You !!!

Hi all. Was a big fan of all building progress. Will you find some time to complete all references on building full carbon carbon dragon ?

And a hard question - if building another one, would you build it in more traditional fuselage type - ie without a tail tube separated ?

stanislavz wrote: Hi all. Was a big fan of all building progress. Will you find some time to complete all references on building full carbon carbon dragon ?

Hi Stanislavz,

Thanks for following the build! You're right - I never properly finished off writing up the construction articles. I'll *try* to get down to writing a few more over the winter! For now, however, the photos in my various photo galleries cover most of the project in some detail.

stanislavz wrote: And a hard question - if building another one, would you build it in more traditional fuselage type - ie without a tail tube separated ?

I definitely need to write up an article on what I would do differently second time around, but building my pilot pod with a removable tail boom and removable vertical tail fin was one of the better decisions I made! The removable tail fin is extremely strong and sturdy when mounted on the tail fin, and allows for a much lower trailer. It also makes handling the pod/tailboom much easier when removing and returning them from/to the trailer. You can also hide any extra ballast (i.e. bottles of water) under the tail fin very easily.

Being able to separate/remove the tail boom from the rest of the pilot pod is really handy for when you need to do maintenance on the pilot pod. Handling and supporting the pilot pod on its own, without the tail boom is a big bonus.

I'm currently working on a new pilot pod (tubular aluminium frame (like the Swift) with ultra-light clip-on farings) and I will be able to simply discard the old pod and attach the tail boom to the new pod.

Phil.

Thank you for an aswer. It is with piced fuselage then. I saw in other designer a phrase of composite connetors to be an headache..

Try this tech for fuselage pod www.homebuiltairplanes.com/forums/threads/devfus-foam.32338/

Could even do it for you. Just some logistics questions to transfer it across eu

Hi Stanislavz,

I came across Profili and the associated devFus / devWing CAD/CAM and other packages, and was impressed with their potential... but I never got around to downloading it and learning to use it. I was (and still am!) confused as to exactly which packages I'd need to use to design and fabricate a foam core - there appeared to be so many options! I'd like to use these packages to build my next project, an electric Windrose (15m), so I'll have to investigate them again in a bit more detail!

www.profili2.com/eng/default.asp
www.devcad.com/eng/default.asp

Phil.