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Apis motorglider
Does anyone have experience flying the Apis MC motorglider? What are
its performance and handling like? Any problems to watch out for? Thanks, Key |
#2
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Apis motorglider
On May 4, 8:26*pm, key wrote:
Does anyone have experience flying the Apis MC motorglider? *What are its performance and handling like? *Any problems to watch out for? Thanks, Key JJ making fun of you for flying a motorglider. Darryl |
#3
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Apis motorglider
"Darryl Ramm" wrote JJ making fun of you for flying a motorglider. Perhaps, but when there are no active glider operations close by, being able to go fly when you want to, where you want to, not having to drive a couple hours to fly, without having to depend on finding someone to give you a lift up, a self launching glider makes a bunch of sense. It is the way I'm probably going to have to go. -- Jim in NC |
#4
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Apis motorglider
I have an APIS MC. What would you like to know?
Mark |
#5
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Apis motorglider
OK- I have a few minutes so I will give you my impressions of the
aircraft. First, the aircraft is built very well with a lots of attention to detail. Cockpit is very comfortable but it is tight and could be longer in the trunk area. I am 6ft and OK. Plenty of leg room. Plenty of width. Panel is DG style and enough room for 7x 2-1/4 size instruments. Rigging is fiddle-ish. I have not managed it without at least a modicum of help. If you are going to fly alone, you will need a remote control self rigger to move things about. The trick is that the wings need to be in anhedral to fit into the drag pins, then the tips come up to align the mains. Derigging is quick. I timed myself from taxi to trailer through driving away at 40 minutes. Avionic is a very good trailer. The engine installation is the crown jewel of the aircraft. Just beautiful. The 447 is a tried and true powerplant. I have never had trouble with starting or relights, and I make it a point to do one relight a flight even if I don't need it. The only issue I see is that the toothed belt driving the prop is sealed inside the mast. No way to change it. I hope is lasts a long time...... I get generally 500fpm. The engine should be turning 6000+ rpm's and I get only 5800 so I think the factory prop is too coarse in pitch, but I am not ready to change it yet. Also the engine temp runs very cool, rarely getting above 180C even on hot days. Good for longevity but I think that there is a lot of power there still not being utilized. By lb/hp it should do better. I am Still messing with the carburetor. I am roughly getting 1000 ft per liter of fuel. I have recently put turbulator zigzag as recommended at 65% MAC and that dropped 3 kts off thermaling speed. 30 deg bank and 40kts. I think the rudder needs turbulators as well. Rudder forces at low speeds are initially high, then release giving more yaw than you asked for. Feels like I am pulling a high drag bubble. It swims in yaw a bit in cruise as well. That should be correctable. More to come. Flaperon forces are high. You are pushing a big wing through the air. I climb with most anything, Run is not bad up to 80kts. The trim is unsatisfactory. It is a simple spring arrangement. (I was spoiled by Glasflugel's push button trim). You can adjust it for enough back trim or enough forward, but not both. The elevator has a deep recurve on the trailing edge, so the stick forces go up with airspeed. At redline, the forward pressure is prodigious. I don't think I will fly in that speed range often though. That is all that comes to mind. Questions or comments? Mark |
#6
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Apis motorglider
On May 5, 8:25*am, Mark Jardini wrote:
The trick is that the wings need to be in anhedral to fit into the drag pins, then the tips come up to align the mains. Similar adjustment required to rig any modern glider. With a fixed height one man rigger the adjustment can be easily made with the trailer ramp jack. Raising and lowering the fuselage is the same as lowering or raising the wing tips but it has the advantage that you can monitor the alignment while you make the adjustment. The only issue I see is that the toothed belt driving the prop is sealed inside the mast. No way to change it. I hope is lasts a long time...... Can the belt be inspected? How is it replaced? Andy |
#7
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Apis motorglider
Andy
Avionic does not have a "jacked ramp". The cradle has an over center cam that lifts the aircraft off its main wheel. Agreed, the jack would be better for rigging purposes. The belt can be seen and inspected through it s length. The center portion of the mast is enclosed trapping the belt within by some mid shaft cross sectional enclosings. I can only assume this is one of those fiberglass impregnated toothed belts they use in cars that last 60k miles. My guess would be you send the mast back to be opened and reclosed or you buy a new one..... Mark |
#8
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Apis motorglider
On May 5, 10:19*am, Mark Jardini wrote:
Andy Avionic does not have a "jacked ramp". The cradle has an over center cam that lifts the aircraft off its main wheel. Agreed, the jack would be better for rigging purposes. The belt can be seen and inspected through it s length. The center portion of the mast is enclosed trapping the belt within by some mid shaft cross sectional enclosings. I can only assume this is one of those fiberglass impregnated toothed belts they use in cars that last 60k miles. My guess would be you send the mast back to be opened and reclosed or you buy a new one..... Mark And for those Cobra trailers with hydraulic jacked ramps and heavy motorgliders, I'd rather trust the hand cranked gears in my one-man rigger or the person holding my wingtip than trust the hydraulic jack with the weight of my motorglider while tweaking the jack height. I slide in a triangular wooden block as a safety device under the ramp scissors. If the jack fully collapses, I don't think the jack has the leverage to jack up mu ASH-26E again. Darryl |
#9
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Apis motorglider - drive belt replacement
Mark Jardini wrote: The belt can be seen and inspected through it s length. The center portion of the mast is enclosed trapping the belt within by some mid shaft cross sectional enclosings. I can only assume this is one of those fiberglass impregnated toothed belts they use in cars that last 60k miles. My guess would be you send the mast back to be opened and reclosed or you buy a new one..... My Nimbus 4DM syndicate has had two engine drive belt failures over the last 8 years, one at the launch point just before the after-C of A test flight six weeks ago. The belt was changed within a week, but could have been quicker had we stocked a spare. In the case of any belt-driven MG engine, there really should be a relatively straightforward way of replacing the belt if it fails, without rendering the engine unit unserviceable for a considerable time. After all, preventing lands-out is the whole reason for having, and paying for, an engine installation. Ian Strachan Lasham Gliding Centre, UK |
#10
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Apis motorglider
On May 5, 8:25*am, Mark Jardini wrote:
OK- I have a few minutes so I will give you my impressions of the aircraft. First, the aircraft is built very well with a lots of attention to detail. Cockpit is very comfortable but it is tight and could be longer in the trunk area. I am 6ft and OK. Plenty of leg room. Plenty of width. Panel is DG style and enough room for 7x 2-1/4 size instruments. Rigging is fiddle-ish. I have not managed it without at least a modicum of help. If you are going to fly alone, you will need a remote control self rigger to move things about. The trick is that the wings need to be in anhedral to fit into the drag pins, then the tips come up to align the mains. Derigging is quick. I timed myself from taxi to trailer through driving away at 40 minutes. Avionic is a very good trailer. The engine installation is the crown jewel of the aircraft. Just beautiful. The 447 is a tried and true powerplant. I have never had trouble with starting or relights, and I make it a point to do one relight a flight even if I don't need it. The only issue I see is that the toothed belt driving the prop is sealed inside the mast. No way to change it. I hope is lasts a long time...... I get generally 500fpm. The engine should be turning 6000+ rpm's and I get only 5800 so I think the factory prop is too coarse in pitch, but I am not ready to change it yet. Also the engine temp runs very cool, rarely getting above 180C even on hot days. Good for longevity but I think that there is a lot of power there still not being utilized. By lb/hp it should do better. I am Still messing with the carburetor. *I am roughly getting 1000 ft per liter of fuel. I have recently put turbulator zigzag as recommended at 65% MAC and that dropped 3 kts off thermaling speed. 30 deg bank and 40kts. I think the rudder needs turbulators as well. Rudder forces at low speeds are initially high, then release giving more yaw than you asked for. Feels like I am pulling a high drag bubble. It swims in yaw a bit in cruise as well. That should be correctable. More to come. Flaperon forces are high. You are pushing a big wing through the air. I climb with most anything, Run is not bad up to 80kts. The trim is unsatisfactory. It is a simple spring arrangement. (I was spoiled by Glasflugel's push button trim). You can adjust it for enough back trim or enough forward, but not both. The elevator has a deep recurve on the trailing edge, so the stick forces go up with airspeed. At redline, the forward pressure is prodigious. I don't think I will fly in that speed range often though. That is all that comes to mind. Questions or comments? Mark I've been building an Apis M from a kit purchased 4-5 years ago from AMS-Flight. I obtained an amateur-built airworthiness certificate last summer and flew it as a pure glider, and promptly "bent it" a little -- I'll come back to that. Let me address the issues I've come across over the several years of putting the glider together, and visiting the factory (both AMS and Pipistrel) several times. (1) The 447 installation has been problematic, for all concerned. So far as I know, only 3 with that configuration were delivered by the (AMS) factory. One, a kit put together by Jack Lurowist (deceased), did not go together at all well -- there were major vibration problems, confirmed in a factory-built ship by Paul Yarnell. As best I was able to determine, the issues were mostly due to the inherent vibration of the 447 and inadequate shock mounts (at the mast/fuselage hinge), a lack of torsional rigidity in the carbon propeller mast, and propeller balance and/or symmetry issues. The sealed mast was one of the factory "fixes" and apparently cured the torsional rigidity problem. The recommended belt (which I understand to be essentially a Harley-Davidson belt) replacement procedure is to cut, with a Dremel, the epoxy/tape that bonds the belt cover to the carbon mast, and then rebond/tape it when done with the belt replacement. One of the results of the excessive vibration was that the exhaust system developed cracks with a very few hours of operation. I've been told that the factory fixes (replacement rubber shock mounts, bonding the belt cover to the mast, and a redesigned propeller) essentially solved the problems, and perhaps Mark's experience is proof of that. The more recent fix for all the 447 problems was a complete redesign and replacement of the propulsion subsystem; the current self-launch Apis uses a Hirth F33 engine in a mast built up from aluminum plates, hinged on an entirely different lamination bonded into the upper fuselage immediately in front of the mast door opening. (2) My experience with flaperon forces is a bit different from Mark's. The problem in my fuselage, and apparently many others, was misalignment of the flaperon bell cranks mounted on the engine compartment sidewalls. Pipistrel has redesigned those bell cranks to incorporate a self-aligning bearing to accommodate the wing dihedral. I'm currently in the process of replacing these bell cranks and will insure that the bearing housings attached to the sidewalls are precisely aligned with the flaperon hinge post axis. Another flaperon (static) force issue discovered by Robert Mudd is the misalignment of the several flaperon hinge posts; this misalignment, if present, can be felt when moving the flaperon from one extreme to the other with the glider disassembled. The flight result of my particular problems was that the flaperons were _extremely_ stiff, and controlling the glider on tow was a two-handed operation. I expect all these static force issues to go away with the proper installation of the new bell cranks. Hopefully I will discover Mark's high speed control force issues when I get the ship flying again. (3) Finally, my "event" (it wasn't an accident or incident, so that's what my FSDO inspector called it) last summer. To make a long story short, I landed in a bit of a crosswind and when my steerable tail wheel touched down, I entered a PIO (yaw axis) and left the runway. When I tried turning to parallel the runway, the ship yawed (to the right) but continued straight ahead in the soft dirt, putting a substantial side load on the main wheel. The tire peeled the right wheel half completely off the wheel assembly bolts, fortunately with no other damage to the fuselage. I've replaced the factory wheel (and brake) with a Tost Tria wheel and disk brake. BTW Mark, I've been meaning to come over and see you, and your Apis for at least a couple of years. I. and my Apis, are in northern Idaho during the summer. -- Bob -- |
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