Nose Ballast with O-320

[Hank Clark]

Somebody stuck an O-320 on my Long EZ project before I got ahold of it.  Not complaining mind you, but I'd like just one of you sister ship owners to tell me how much lead shot I'll have to stuff into the nose.  This is the standard plans nose.   A long nose would be a thing of beauty, but that's a project I'd like to put off for some other winter.  I really wanna fly SOON:!: :!:  
I want to hollow out some foam around the pitot and refill with lead shot before we paint  .  Hoping to keep the electric starter and aluminum spinner.  Perhaps I'm dreaming....   :roll:

[ColinK]

I have an O320 with a standard nose and didn't need to add any weight but when I built it I planed for the bigger engine.

            Colin Koebel Long EZ N5E

[Waiter]

Weight and Balance (or was that Wait and Ballast).  Set the plane up in a flight attitude, and do a good W&B.  You'll most likely need to put 50 lbs in the pilot seat to keep it from tipping over.

I think the Pilots handbook has a small section on W&B that describes how to do this.   When you gathered your data, you should be able to add 10 or 15 lbs into the nose datum, and see how this shifts the CG.

A note of caution.  Ballast must be secured in all three dimensions. 10lbs will weigh 50 when your pulling 5 Gs. You don't want it coming off or going thru the bottom of the plane.  

Before you add lead, see if you can add something usable, i.e. larger battery.  I installed a Odyssey 925, simply because it was 10lbs heavier, yet fit in the same spot. (This battery is way overkill, but, I believe in caring usefull weight)


By the way, I have an O-320 with a 45 lb MT Constant speed prop, and NO Ballast in the nose (CG at 102)


Waiter

[Snappy]

Did you move your master cylinders forward?  Anything else you can relocate?  Starter relay, electric nose lift?

Adding weight is like Anti Lift to me.  Like Waiter said, carry useful weight.  I have the long nose with battery and all related electrics, landing light and master cylinders all forward of my toes.  No ballast.

Steve
988AB

[Drew]

The point is---we can all give you an amount of lead that we had to add for preliminary sizing purposes----but you need to determine for yourself what you need by weighing the aircraft.  If you flew my plane, we would need to add or subtract lead weight based on how much you weigh----if you are about my size, it would probably be ok---but would need to calculate.  We would not need to weigh my aircraft since I have already done so and can mathematically figure out how much lead to add or subtract to fly you as the pilot.  When I take passengers in my plane, I don't need to calculate balance since the passenger is basically sitting on the CG.   Very generally (for standard nose), really heavy people don't need lots of lead.  Light weight people like me need lots of lead.  Longezs are a lot different from "normal" aircraft.  In "normal" aircraft, the pilot generally sits on the CG.  In a Longez, the pilot is way forward of the CG.

With your aircraft (and your body weight), we have no idea how much lead you will need.  Don't even think of flying that plane without performing a proper weight and balance------It will kill you.  You do not have to have the lead already in the nose to do a proper weight and balance.  The proper weight and balance will tell you how much lead weight you will need to buy.

You will definately be able to keep your starter.  The lead just eats into your load carrying capacity

[Anonymous]

T  Don't even think of flying that plane without performing a proper weight and balance------It will kill you.  You do not have to have the lead already in the nose to do a proper weight

Out of CG is a real killer.  Over gross weight won't kill you.  That Beech 1900 that went down right after takeoff on the East coast few years back. It was out of CG and they went up and came righ down with fatal results right after takeoff.

Do a proper W&B and you will live to fly another day.

Jack

[Harry A]

Hank,

With my original nose O-320 with starter I ended up with about 12lbs in the nose. That has been reduced over the years as I have changed things around and added stuff up front that offsets it.

 Advice given by others is quite right that you will have to determine for your own plane with a thorough W&B before flight. I would not suggest sealing up the ballast as you mentioned just from the standpoint of being able to access it in the future as you add or remove equipment etc.

You might want to add a nice nose retract system sometime and that could offset all the ballast.

Somebody stuck an O-320 on my Long EZ project before I got ahold of it.  Not complaining mind you, but I'd like just one of you sister ship owners to tell me how much lead shot I'll have to stuff into the nose.  This is the standard plans nose.....  
I want to hollow out some foam around the pitot and refill with lead shot before we paint  .  Hoping to keep the electric starter and aluminum spinner.  Perhaps I'm dreaming....   :roll:

[Hank Clark]

Excellent advice!   Thanks to all.

I might ad that this is fast becoming a great bulliten board.  When you get six good answers practically overnight, it's a good sign.

The MiniMax builders had a really good board, good bunch of guys, always very friendly, no spats, nothing ugly, and always lots of help with your project.  The Long EZ seems like a much bigger project and is more complex, with less room for error.  This is where the voice of experience is most valuable.  There is much more to know.

Thanks,
Hank Clark

N72HM

[Waiter]

Hank,

Did you  find the W&B stuff in the operating handbook?

I'll be redoing my W&B in a couple months. I'll write something up in the next couple days and put it on my web site (www.iflyez.com)

Waiter

[Drew]

After putting on an 0320 engine on a standard nose long and not adding or removing the lead that was already in there, I got this reading from the scales (nose gear needs to be down---and the longerons need to be level---use wood blocks to prop up the nose wheel until level---make sure to zeroize the scale with the wood blocks on it):
--------net-----arm--------moment
Right--485-----110--------53350
Left----483-----110--------53130
nose---29------19.6-------568.4
ballast-neg30--40---------neg1200  (this is temporary weight next to inst panel to keep nose from flipping over)
total----967-----109.4-----105848.4

You should then cross check these with several weight figures (pilot + 36gal of fuel, normal single cruise (16 gal of fuel), normal cruise with my wife, max gross wt).

As an example of me (pilot + 36 gal of fuel)
-----------------wt---------station-------moment
empty A/C-----967--------109.4--------105848.4
fuel (36 gal)---219.6------104.5--------22948.2
pilot------------145---------59-----------8555
total-----------1331.6------103.15------137351.6

If you check the CG of 103.15 with the CG limits, you will see that I am beyond the aft limit by .15 inches (the aft limit is the more dangerous of the two).

Doing some quick math, I found that 9 more pounds in my short nose would do the trick---here is what you get:
Same example of me  but with ballast (pilot with 36 gal of fuel)
-----------------wt------station-------moment
empty A/C-----967----109.4--------105848.4
fuel (36 gal)----219.6--104.5-------22948.2
pilot-------------145-----59----------8555
ballast-----------9-------5------------45
total-------------1340.6--102.48-----137396.6

102.48 puts me pretty far back in the envelope (97 is the forward limit---103 is the aft limit------99 to 101.5 is the is the first flight limit-------keep in mind that weight is another dimension of the envelope----but I won't discuss here).

Doing a quick check with my other sample configurations, I get the following:
Normal single cruise (by myself with 16 gallons): 101.5
Normal wife cruise (wife and 16 gallons) 101.2
Load up (wife, bags, 36 gal of fuel): 102.12 and 1520 lbs

This little exercise shows that for the conditions I have listed, I have a safe balance.  The other thing you need to check from here is how much deviation off of my pilot weight can I tolerate and still be within balance limits----you will want to post this weight tolerance in the front cockpit.

If you use a spreadsheet like Excel, this goes pretty fast

[Gilbert DRIEUX]

Hello,
I use an excell spreadsheet, and it work prety good. I use it also in my Palm 505, on airfield.
The W&B procedure (as you clearly explain it above) is described in the VariEze Owner's Manual.
I fly a VariEze.

Drew, I have a question. As a nonfluent english langage user, what exactly means "nose down fuel" ? Is that at maximum tanks capacity?

PS : For french readers, I can send them the exhaustive translation I performed for 142" canard.

[Drew]

Gilbert,
I agree.  W&B procedures are spelled out clearly in both the Varieze and Longeze owners manuals.  You can still buy them from Rutan if you don't have them.  I have mine from the TERF CD collection.

Full nose down fuel was the max gallons I could load into the airplane with the nose sitting on the ground (nose gear retracted)-----36 gallons.  Actually, I think I can get more than 36 gallons into the tanks with the nose gear retracted-----but I used 36 gallons as my calculated fuel.

I went back to my prior post and replaced much of the "full nose down fuel" with "36 gal of fuel" to make it clearer.

[Don]

Really good information.
Thanks guys.