Sounds fun. You really have me interested in building an ultra-light now. I saw an ultra-light float plane, and now I am hooked. However, I wonder if I could put a multi-blade propeller inside a cowling. So many thoughts, I need to put ink to paper. Anyway!!!!! Good luck!!!!

If you live in the States to qualify as an ultralight it can have an empty weight of less than 254 pounds and carry no more then 5 gallons of fuel. And then you have stall speed and max speed restrictions.

There are some good scratch built designs out there that could be refitted with newer engines.

Awesome! Too bad you couldn't get into aircraft design professionally without an engineering degree. After all, Wilbur and Orville didn't have diplomas.

I'm glad I'm not trained as an engineer... even as much as Rich tries to think outside the box he was trained to think inside of... he still thinks inside the box much of the time.

Another engineer friend said, "A good engineer copies good ideas and a bad engineer copies bad ideas." There was no mentioning of comming up with your own new ideas. I witnessed this a number of times while working at Genie Industrys welding man-lift parts. They showed a complete lack of practical knowledge and experience yet they were the first to tell the welder and fabricators how to do the job. At one point I handed my weld gear to the engineers and told them "Show me how you think it should be done assholes!"

Not one would even try, I called them cowardly know nothing assholes. The manufacturing engineer was standing there with the biggest grin on his face. He knew I was right.

What is a box?! Keep reaching for the stars!

Hehe tunnel vision, myopic vision, all the same as Thinking Inside the Box.

You don't have preconceived notions holding your back. That's pretty important for innovating.

I wrote computer programs for a living for over 25 years. I had a Computer Science degree; most of my coworkers didn't. A manager I had said the best COBOL programmers were good copyists. I realized that's why she was a manager, because she couldn't write code for squat.

I had to maintain those people's code; most of it was c@rp, thousands of lines of garbage, copied whole from another program because it sort of did what was needed. When I would have to change the program I'd waste hours or days tracing logic that went nowhere because it was part of something else. Ten years into my career I realized it was more efficient to write fresh code or copy my own work.

The funny part came when I hurt my back the first time and I was on opioids for the pain. I'd take one on the bus before I got to work so it would be working when I got in. I needed to revise an entire program to bring it up to date to work wit the latest version of the computer language it was written in. I started with a 'clean piece of paper', writing all fresh code. I cranked out a really complex program in 5 days, which is an accomplishment. The first time I tried it, it didn't work, but I realized after walking through it that I was calling parts of it in the wrong order. Easy fix. The client tested it and pronounced it good -- better than the one it replaced.

When I got off the meds, I looked at the program again because they asked for a new function. It took me two days to figure out how it did what it did. I made LOTS of notes and included the most important ones at the top of the program. My friend John had taken the package after a merger but came back as a consultant, working for me. I assigned him another tweak for the program and he came back a couple hours later shaking his head. I just smiled and sent him all my notes about it in an eMail. The next day he asked me to test his changes, and it worked fine. He said he had never seen code like that before -- beautiful and efficient, but not the usual stuff he was used to. When I told him I wrote it higher than a kite on the opioids I thought he would laugh himself silly. He said I wrote better code zonked out of my mind than most people did cold sober.

Oh I can understand why that would happen, the logic barriers are not in place from the wrote from school.

Rich offered my idea of the spine is cluncky as engineering goes, but is elegant and simple in design and function. Why add stuff thats not needed for the task.

Sounds spiffy sounds like a good trade off. Module spine concepts in other designs so a great possibility to explore

It seems to be a good concept, talked with Rich today and he liked what I sketched out for him.

I'm working on strong, light and simple to build.

I like it too…

Vix

I thought you would like seeing this idea comming full circle... only it's not an ultralight this time!

But I'm not ruling out the possibility of a light weight single place design... I have a design in the back of my mind of personal air recreational craft... much like the Australian Tyro aircraft.

I do like your designs and ideas Fem…

Vix

Thank you dear one... I enjoy sharing my crazyness with others. Can you tell?

Oh yes…

Vix

I want to see it, please. As I get closer to leaving, I have so many things I want to look at before I go.

Hmm and where mite you be leaving for?

Russia if they will have me

Ahh