Bellanca 260 project

C

cobra180kts

New member
Hello, I have been on the Viking chat for a while and maybe I fit more there, but I thought I could gain some advice here also as I am not really a Viking (I am in limbo) not really here nor there.

I am completely rebuilding a 68 260 into a homebuilt experimental. My main goal is to shave as much weight as possible then streamline it. I was even thinking of turning it into a taildrager.

I see a lot of talk about the hydraulic power pack. I thought that the earlier Bellanca's had engine driven hydraulics like mine. I am leaning towards a manual system using a porta-power or the stock hand pump. any idea on how many pumps it takes to get the gear up?

This will be a cross country ship and my goal is to be able to fly between 14,000' and 20,000' comfortably.

Dan
 
Take off all the wood covering on the wings and glass the wings. That is the 2nd heaviest thing on the plane. The first being the engine. I had a 68 viking N7321V and it had a IO-520 300hp. :lol: :lol:
 
And don't let all the power pack talk I've instigated allow you to abandon the notion. Your aircraft has a power pack that is readily overhaulable. Do so and don't worry. Just move the switch and the gear come up in seconds without effort....they come down the same way :) These aircraft have exceptional rates of climb. Best have your eyes and attention out the windows during departure.

Randy's point has an enormous additional benefit: you can look - really look - and the ribs and spars. The third heaviest thing is the fabric covering the fuselage IF the aircraft has been painted more than once since its last recover. Mine has been painted roughly three times and it's one fat little.....friend.

Jonathan
 
I have a 14-13-2 which I am planning to covert to an experimental homebuilt, similar to the Viking. I was surprised by Randy's' suggestion to replace the plywood/fabric covering with a fiberglas/graphite fiber cover as it had never crossed my mind.

How much weight would be reduced by doing the change? I am not too familiar with the glassing processes so here are a couple of questions.

Would you leave the wood ribs and form glas sheet covers to replace the plywood or would you completely build new wings with foam shaping the wing under the glas?

How difficult would it be to determine that your wing strength is better than the original wing?

I look forward to your comments, Joel
 
If you are going homebuilt you could use a Prestolite inboard outboard tilt motor off a dang boat......same thing as the Viking hydraulic powerpack but probably a bit slower.


I have some drawings a guy wrote up to convert a 14-13-2 to a dual door, stick control homebuilt. He didn't ever finsih it I I have the cut up scraps.

Ken McCune
 
Oy, I've been trying to hold back on this Frankenbellanca notion, but keeping my mouth shut is not my event.

An excellent case can be made that the WWII British Mosquito was the finest foundation for composite construction (the German version went kaput when the Army Air Corps unintentionally hit the kraut resin factory), but in practical GA terms Bellanca was the pioneer. We have materials now that G.M. did not have and it's easy to conceive mahogany plywood replaced with glass lay-ups. Problem is it's hard to cook 'em (without an enormous autoclave curing them, they must be painted white and you have to hope for the best). Even well cured composites, such as the Cirrus line, remain white for this reason.

How much weight will you actually save? This is tough to calculate. Randy was speaking of a Viking - hardly the most efficient of high performance singles. Heck, Navions with 300hp are as fast. Unless you're talking >150lbs in weight savings I wonder what the point is.

If you stick with 200 or fewer horsepower if makes a big difference...less so when you get into the realm of shoving air with cubic inches. In the latter case your chief concern is wetted area and drag as a square function. This is why a simple Glasair I TD with 150hp can reach 185mph with fixed gear and prop at 75% power. A Cruisair with 150hp, retractable gear, and an Aeromatic prop is luck to see 130mph.

So what do you get if you simply restore your Cruisair? A classy four place brilliant design that can go everywhere and do most everything with simple systems and enormous ramp appeal. Plus you'll get there faster than the Glasair because it has 24 fewer gallons of fuel (assuming you have an aux. tank) than your airplane.

Finally everyone knows that flying a Cruisair is fun. You cannot know the handling characteristics of your FrankinAir until you fly it. If it's fun, you win. If it's not then you're just another fast airplane, blowing by all those things that captivated us when we first decided to take to the air. Maybe that stuff has grown old to many of you, but it has not left so much as a skuff mark on me :)

Jonathan
 
I'm curious about what you have to do to get the Feds to grant an experimental license. I thought you had to construct 51% of the airplane.

Even with reskinning the wing and fuselage modifications, it doesn't seem to me that 51% will be new construction.

What do your local Feds have to say about it?

Dave
 
"14-13-2 Conversion to Amateur-Built Experimental Class"

I've started a new Topic above, in this forum so comments on the two planes won't get intermixed.

Thanks, Joel
 
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