Original Posted By: "Oscar Zuniga"
Walt writes->I'm thinking of putting dihedral into the wing of my completed/flying Piet.Have you flown one with dihedral and determined that it was more stable than with the flat wing? I have heard that there are drawbacks as well as minor benefits, but the one who could tell you right away would be Mike Cuy since he has very definite dihedral in his wing and has experience with other planes that don't have any. (By the way- there will have to be some sort of initiation party for Mike when he turns 40... have all the TACO guys form a gauntlet of juicy, dripping tacos that Mike has to run through, hot sauce, pouring beer, something).>I noticed in the pics of Johns plane that he added adjusting forks to the >bottom>of a normal straight streamlined strut tube. Do you know if that fitting >is available?I've seen the same detail any number of places, even in the old Flying & Glider Manuals (I think), as well as Bingelis' books (I think). I don't believe it's a standard fitting so much as it is a combination of welded-in nuts with a fork for the adjustment. Mike says he has adjustments available at both ends of the strut, but that seems like overkill to me and may be not a great idea at the top of the strut, which I would think you want to have closed shut to keep anything from getting into the strut. Plus, depending on how your jury struts are attached to the main struts, if you change the attachment of the top of the strut to the wing, the jury struts get messed up. That is, if the jury strut attach points are fixed in place, as are the ones on "Mountain Piet" (not clamped, as are most).>I could add that to the bottom of my existing tube to get the length that I >need.Yep. But I can't be of more help because there was so much to see on John's Piet that it was all I could do to just ooh and aah and snap pictures without thinking about details. And John was feeling bad about not taking me up for a ride in the plane, while a howling wind was blowing outside the hangar. I'd have to guess it was at least 30MPH and definitely not right down the runway! We watched somebody in a Scout or Champ or something, abort a couple of times. Not a good time to be Pietenpoling!Oscar ZunigaSan Antonio, TXmailto: taildrags(at)hotmail.comwebsite at http://www.flysquirrel.net________________________________________________________________________________