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Lloyd, It's a problem. Years ago, one of our members noted that the pre-war Coupes had very good performance statistics with the 65 hp engine. The pre-war Coupes were VERY light. He then stripped his plane down. He removed all the old instruments and those he needed he replaced with light weight ones. He removed all the upholstery except the seat cushions. He removed the generator, regulator and big battery, replacing them with a small motorcycle size battery to run the transponder. He used a hand-held navcom. I can't remember if he changed back to a wood prop or not, probably not. In other words, he lightened his plane as much as possible. I don't know how light he got it to be. Perhaps you could take a Coupe and do all the lightening on paper, calculating how light you can get it. Then see if that's enough for your purposes. Also, remember that you don't need to start the lessons with full tanks. With my C-85, I habitually only burned 5.4 gallons/hour in cruise and 4.5 gph for puttering around, practicing maneuvers, "stalls," touch and goes and such. If you measure carefully, you can lose 72 lb. easily by only taking off with 6 gallons in the main tanks. That still leaves you with the 6 gallon reserve in the nose tank for LOTS of safety. It would also teach weight control to your students like nothing else. Please post what you find out. Please especially post your results if you actually do the exercise. I'd really like to hear hard numbers for this project. Ed Burkhead http://edburkhead.com/ ed -at- edburkheadQQQ.com (change -at- and remove the QQQ) ========================================================================== ==== To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm Search the archives on http://escribe.com/aviation/coupers-tech/
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