For some of us, 10 to 30 pounds could come off the waist line. It would be cheaper. Leaving the spare tire at home would be a lot better way to gain useful load. ;~)
Richard
N99904
At 01:51 PM 6/16/2005 -0500, Ed Burkhead wrote:
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John,
Thanks for the kind words and good luck on the project!
Also look into everything you can do to lighten your aircraft. For example, can you get one of the new avionics instrument boxes approved - the trouble is that the affordable ones are not TSOed.
Yet these boxes contain all the instruments I had in my Coupe, other than the gyros, in a single box weighing about 1.5 lb. And solid-state gyros are available that are also similarly light.
Do you need a heavy floor board? Do you need side-wall upholstery? Can you get lighter seat cushions? Replace a rotating beacon with a lighter strobe? Do you need a 20 lb. battery or would a 12 lb. do the job? Do you need the classic starter or can you replace it with a modern one at 1/3rd the weight?
The original 415-C models had 65 horsepower engines and performed wonderfully, I've read. That's because they were very light. The earliest had NO gyros and no starter or battery. 1260 was a very usable gross weight, back then. What can you do to your Coupe to approximate that light-weight state?
You might scrape up 50 lb. of extra useful load this way, too. (But it will cost $$$.)
Have fun.
Ed Burkhead
http://edburkhead.com
ed -at- edburkhead???.com (change -at- to @ and remove "???")
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