Looking good!

Definitely the build I'm most excited about. Are you going to be enlarging the baggage? I've had an idea to make some sort of pass through from the cabin into the baggage like cutting a triangle on either side of the control wires to have 2 longer areas to make larger objects easier to haul.

Visualized like this

Looking towards the back seat from the front of the cabin

Rear seat top bar
[\''''''''''''''''''' ]c['''''''''''''''''''''''/]
[..\ ...o..... ]o[.......o...../..]
[....\....p....]n[....p....../....]
[......\....e..]t [....e..../......]
[........\....n]r [...n.../........]
[..........\---]o[---- /..........]
[...............]l [.................]
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Yeah. That's one great thing about the baggage compartment the previous owner built. The aileron cables are boxed in but there are removable panels on either side where your illustration" indicated. He used the type of nut plate that's very tight though so I may just leave them off. There's also a removable panel on the back of the baggage compartment. One could either remove or modify that to allow more room for longer cargo and extending the bay would be easy enough too. Rear seats might end up being fabric covered like these:

http://lakevueaeronautics.com/id3.html

You can see the baggage panels partly covered by the woody panels (I'll probably go without those) in this pic.:



It already has a huge "hat rack"

Very jealous! If I re-cover down the line the baggage and a bigger baggage door are pretty much the only things I could think of changing on mine.

Ooo! I like these Stinson stories. There's a Stinson in Alaska that moved the control cables behind the back seat off to the sides and opened up back to the baggage with rear passenger door and bigger baggage door. An amazing possibility for you guys in the experimental class. The only thing that I don't like about a Stinson; I can't carry my popup ice house with me because it's 6 feet long folded up. I'd love to extend to the baggage.

You guys are AMAZING! Lots of innovation and attention to detail. Good luck to both.

As to floats, the EDO 2425 floats are some of the best performing floats EDO built, which is saying something. They are also very scarce, so given an opportunity to buy some.....

Keep posting, I for one am enjoying this thread immensely!

MTV

The last one I did, we put a "fish pole" tube in, aft of the baggage and at an angle. You could put skis and poles in through the baggage door. I've seen them setup with a small door on the aft cabin wall, on one side or another, so you could access it through the cabin, but we couldn't do that because of the fuel tanks between the cabin and baggage.
John

hardtailjohn wrote:The last one I did, we put a "fish pole" tube in, aft of the baggage and at an angle. You could put skis and poles in through the baggage door. I've seen them setup with a small door on the aft cabin wall, on one side or another, so you could access it through the cabin, but we couldn't do that because of the fuel tanks between the cabin and baggage.
John

I’ve seen that mod and considered it. The clam popup is just big enough it required the whole width behind the baggage to swing around to get it in the door. I really like your mod, but didn’t think I could get it to work. Maybe I’ll play with it some more. I also have thought I might be able to make a pass through from the cabin under the baggage compartment on one side. Or a belly pod would be nice, but none are certified and I’m not aware of any FA’s.

Nice project, I am jealous. Tim

Thanks for all the support! I'm glad you are enjoying it.

I'm planing to add a long cargo tube for sure.

Right now I'm working on the strut fairings. This is my first attempt so it's a little rough. The originals are just strut shaped tubes cut off at a 26 degree angle to cover the strut ends and attachment points. I'm going to make proper aerodynamic fairings. I'm making the diameter of the fillet about the same as the thickness of the strut. I found a paper showing the majority of the interference drag of a pair of parallel streamlined shapes drops off once it's one thickness apart from it's neighbour.

I'm hoping to find the optimal fillet diameter that results in the lowest drag as a trade off between increasing the frontal area and reducing the interference drag. If anyone has links to good info on strut fairing design, I'd be grateful. NACA has a basic one that's not super helpful.

I'll tell you what....those right there, in that current state, already look at least 3,000 times better than ANYTHING I've ever gotten from Univair!!!
John

Nice work on the fairings. Can't wait to see what the final result of those are.

Making progress on my one piece windshield. Almost ready to fire a full size one. This is a 2/3 test piece that came out of the leftover. Lots of trial and error in building the heating box and figuring out the best temperature and heat soak but I think I have a good process now.

This is the test piece in place. Super happy with the clarity. These are .187” thick but I wish I could use .125” to save weight. The 337 on these specifies .187. Anyone know if there are other aircraft with similar size one piece windshields in .125”?

VortexAlternator wrote:Thanks for all the support! I'm glad you are enjoying it.

I'm planing to add a long cargo tube for sure.

Right now I'm working on the strut fairings. This is my first attempt so it's a little rough. The originals are just strut shaped tubes cut off at a 26 degree angle to cover the strut ends and attachment points. I'm going to make proper aerodynamic fairings. I'm making the diameter of the fillet about the same as the thickness of the strut. I found a paper showing the majority of the interference drag of a pair of parallel streamlined shapes drops off once it's one thickness apart from it's neighbour.

I'm hoping to find the optimal fillet diameter that results in the lowest drag as a trade off between increasing the frontal area and reducing the interference drag. If anyone has links to good info on strut fairing design, I'd be grateful. NACA has a basic one that's not super helpful.

So, you must be handy with a planishing hammer and English wheel? Very nice workmanship!

MTV

VortexAlternator wrote: These are .187” thick but I wish I could use .125” to save weight. The 337 on these specifies .187. Anyone know if there are other aircraft with similar size one piece windshields in .125”?

You might talk to Judy at Aircraft Windshield in Los Alimitos, California. She did a one piece Stinson windshield for me back in the late 90's or early 2000's. Really knowledgeable crew there.
Looks like you really have it dialed in pretty well!! Very nice work! I did bubble side windows on one as well. The owner really liked it! We only went out a couple inches but it still seemed to make a difference in the "roomy" feel!
John

So, you must be handy with a planishing hammer and English wheel?

Most of this was done by hand hammering since I don’t have a powered planshing hammer yet but I did wheel the top piece to get some crown on it.

I did bubble side windows on one as well.

So was that a one piece side window or did you bubble one of the sliding windows?

Finally bought the right starter ring gear so I installed the magnets for my Lightspeed Engineering Plasma III system. My engine came with a small pulley assembly and the LSE system requires the large pulley with 8.5” ID. Looking forward to the extra efficiency, cheap plugs and never having to rebuild magnetos. I will have to have a backup battery at least, and dual alternators at best, but that’s some welcome redundancy since I’m planning on flying IFR in this bird anyway.

Then I went a little crazy with lightening up the “flywheel”. I keep having to remind myself that the only loads on this are at starting and to run the alternator. Some of the aftermarket ones are pretty minimal but I’m using them as a guide and staying on the beefier side of that. Trying to safely shave off, as much as possible, what the O-540 added. BTW, if anyone has a junk flywheel with a good 149 tooth ring gear, I could use a replacement for this one.

I just did one piece windows. He had vents blowing all over the place with inline fans, so occupant cooling wasn't much of an issue. It really was kind of interesting how much strength it added. I'd helped do bubbles for a Goose and for some helicopters, but these weren't near as extreme.
John

Finished the "flywheel" lightening... almost. There's a little more I'd like to trim behind the alternator pulley.





Started the mount alignment. I'll be picking up the centerline of the old Franklin somehow and then transferring it to the O-540. Luckily, the Franklin is dead centre on the fuselage. The vertical stab is offset to counteract the slipstream effect. That make the mount easier to fabricate.

The EAA Chapter President at Iowa Falls had me up there to do a clinic after the young lady flight instructor there had to angle across the runway to get back with a student in a 150 one day. He had a stock 108-3 that excelled at the apparent brisk walk rate of closure approach. With the 235 hp 0-550 and Fowler flaps, it would have been able to angle off halfway to the upwind large airplane touchdown zone marking I think, and angle back down halfway there. We had a good strong crosswind while up there and had no trouble getting off and back in on the angle from downwind corner to upwind white square. I don't know how that would translate to into the wind water work, but I think your project will perform well.