Original Posted By: Jay
I obtained mine at Coastal Supply, a building lumber yard in Manchester, NHabout 12 years ago. My local lumber yard also had some, just not as many topick thru to find good grain patterns, although most of it is pretty nice.I would think it would be available at most good lumber yards. It is goodquality stuff. One caution, however. Though it an "approved" wood, andquite a bit stronger than Sitka spruce, it is also quite a bit heavier. Ibelieve it adds about 20 pounds to the weight of the plane if my memory andmath are correct. Because so much of the wood in a piet is aft of the CG,using fir everwhere, as I did, makes the plane more tail heavy than italready tends to be. I had to put a starter and generator on my C-85,extend the nose 4", and tilt the carbanes back a lot to get the CG in range.You may have a very strong Piet, but it won't be the lightest one in thestable. Mine does fly hands off, however. If I were to do it again I wouldmake the spars and fuse longerons from Fir cause it is strong andinexpensive, but make the tail feathers, the diagonal braces, and the wingribs from Spruce or some other lighter wood since they are way strong enoughanyway.________________________________________________________________________________Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2000 20:29:45 -0500