2 more vague questions

[jetdriven]

Composite structures move in turbulence. It's just the properties of the material.  They're plenty strong 

[carusoam]

watch some of the Mooney videos posted around here.  Depending on where the camera is placed you can see all kinds of flexing.  But nothing like what you see in big jets.

I'm a big fan of factory built airplanes.  It takes too long to learn each step before actually building a plane.  Thousands of hours to produce one plane....

Best regards,

-a-

[Doggtyred]

On 8/17/2016 at 9:54 AM, gsxrpilot said:

We often fly through rough air here in Texas, and the owner was explaining how it can make you a little nervous to see the Canard out front bouncing up and down in turbulent air. He suggested that the tail on my aircraft likely did the same thing, but you just couldn't see it and therefore nobody worries about it.  I thought back to all the rough air I've flown through and often at gross weight since we use the Mooney for traveling. I enjoy the confidence that over 50 years and thousands of examples flying, the Mooney is one of the strongest airframes ever built. Later on another turbulent flight, I turned around to look at the tail on my Mooney, and it's not moving at all.

I got to thinking that not only are there comparatively few examples of the Velocity out there flying, each one has been manufactured by a different person using unknown standards and methods. And with enough to worry about while flying a piston single, IFR, often at night, over desolate terrain, worrying about the airframe coming apart in heavy turbulence, was just one thing too many.

I'm not a builder, I'm a flyer. I'm also not in a position to tinker on and be fully immersed in the construction of my airplane. So it's better for me to leave most of those issues to the manufacturer and a really good A&P/AI.

Thanks for the followup. A friend of mine built a Velocity and I was highly involved in the first few years (airframe, and turbo'd mazda rotary auto conversion, I actually did the engine in my garage. Hence my curiosity. I eventually stopped participating when I felt the level of "attention to detail" wasn't being heeded in the installation and testing of systems...  But you are right... workmanship can vary from builder to builder, but typically the airframe is sound. The only real difference is a poorly built airframe will be heavier than a well built one, due to excess epoxy and materials.

The actual airframe assembly is straight forward.  Engines and peripherals are where it can get twitchy, and after the guy I was helping managed to trash the first engine by running it without a prop or instrumentation (and also had a leak on the intake sensor tubing that caused it to go overrich on first start (we'd known that if we'd been instrumented.... as I requested)... I think we scorched the ramp where the exhaust torch shot out... . Thankfully the auto engine was only about 2k in parts to replace with new, but it was clear we had different philosophies and I stopped helping (even with the offer of free and open access for cost of fuel, and having bought components for the plane.. I walked away. Needless to say, auto conversion ended up not being his forte, and theres a TSIO-360 on it now, and I still dont fly in the plane. 

Regarding that particular builder who told you about the flexing of the canard... thing is.. your tail on a mooney is a trim device providing some downforce. The wing is doing all the lifting. With the canard, the main wing does MOST of the lifting, and the canard does the rest of the lifting, and by design is at a higher incidence and AOA, so it stalls before the main wing and lowers the nose preventing main wing stall. So slightly more efficient in that regard. The other peculiarity.... Traditional planeform is faster/less stable at forward CG (because of less trim drag from the tail). Canard planeform is faster/less stable at AFT Cg (less drag from canard lifting the on the more forward CG)...

Anyways.. I'm not opposed to glass or metal homebuilts and might do one some day.. the right way... but I'm here to learn about the Mooneys for now. 

[MB65E]

4 hours ago, Doggtyred said:

Thanks for the followup. A friend of mine built a Velocity and I was highly involved in the first few years (airframe, and turbo'd mazda rotary auto conversion, I actually did the engine in my garage. Hence my curiosity. I eventually stopped participating when I felt the level of "attention to detail" wasn't being heeded in the installation and testing of systems...  But you are right... workmanship can vary from builder to builder, but typically the airframe is sound. The only real difference is a poorly built airframe will be heavier than a well built one, due to excess epoxy and materials.

The actual airframe assembly is straight forward.  Engines and peripherals are where it can get twitchy, and after the guy I was helping managed to trash the first engine by running it without a prop or instrumentation (and also had a leak on the intake sensor tubing that caused it to go overrich on first start (we'd known that if we'd been instrumented.... as I requested)... I think we scorched the ramp where the exhaust torch shot out... . Thankfully the auto engine was only about 2k in parts to replace with new, but it was clear we had different philosophies and I stopped helping (even with the offer of free and open access for cost of fuel, and having bought components for the plane.. I walked away. Needless to say, auto conversion ended up not being his forte, and theres a TSIO-360 on it now, and I still dont fly in the plane. 

Regarding that particular builder who told you about the flexing of the canard... thing is.. your tail on a mooney is a trim device providing some downforce. The wing is doing all the lifting. With the canard, the main wing does MOST of the lifting, and the canard does the rest of the lifting, and by design is at a higher incidence and AOA, so it stalls before the main wing and lowers the nose preventing main wing stall. So slightly more efficient in that regard. The other peculiarity.... Traditional planeform is faster/less stable at forward CG (because of less trim drag from the tail). Canard planeform is faster/less stable at AFT Cg (less drag from canard lifting the on the more forward CG)...

Anyways.. I'm not opposed to glass or metal homebuilts and might do one some day.. the right way... but I'm here to learn about the Mooneys for now. 

Welcome! Lots of great people here. Thanks for sharing your story about the Velocity. I'd love to build one one day. 

-Matt