On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 09:52:34 -0800, Jay wrote:

Regarding earlier comment...
A tight rope walker uses a 30' balance pole, not a 2' pole. The large
moment makes everything happen slower, disruption AND correction. Think of
the stability of an arrow vs. a badmitton birdy. The birdy always points
into the wind, but any little disturbance causes it to wiggle, like your
C150 with the engine 3' from the CG, when you hit rough air, the tail bobs
around.

Regarding the fus. area in front of the CG, the Rotax engine is smaller
than the Lycoming its replacing, so you could make the cowling smaller.
And we're really only talking about 2' max on the extension.


You are confusing inertia with stability. They are not the same thing at
all. You need to learn what stability means before you can deduce what
effect a particular modification is likely to have on the stability of
the aircraft.

Read and understand the info at the following links, then we can have a
useful discussion. It is not possible to have a productive discussion
when one party does not understand the terminology used.

http://142.26.194.131/aerodynamics1/...ity/Page3.html
http://142.26.194.131/aerodynamics1/.../Negative.html
http://142.26.194.131/aerodynamics1/...y/Neutral.html
http://142.26.194.131/aerodynamics1/.../Positive.html
http://142.26.194.131/aerodynamics1/...ity/Page4.html

--
Kevin Horton RV-8 (finishing kit)
Ottawa, Canada
http://go.phpwebhosting.com/~khorton/rv8/
e-mail: khorton02(_at_)rogers(_dot_)com