Are there amphibious conversions available? That would be awesome if you could land on water.

In short NO. That would add a fair bit of weight that you will be carrying all the time.

BUT you could as you build it put in the needed hard points to put floats on it. And there are plans out there for home-built amphibious floats... Really the floats would also be safer because they have more then ONE or two compartments

I think I may have come across as rude and that was not my point. The projected empty weight for this plane is 550 lbs. To do that you need to keep things trim and light. To keep it light you have to make a number of trade offs and building the hull would add greater complexity and weight to the airframe.

For every lb you add to the airplane you add one foot to the take-off roll, take away one foot of the rate of climb and add about half a MPH to the stall speed.

550? That's light even for a sport plane.

Like I said that's projected weight... But I'll be very happy if it's under 600lbs.

femm

Too bad the FAA's so anal about rotary engines. A Mazda rotary is light weight, reliable, and stupid powerful.

You have to remember this is a HOME BUILT aka experimental class aircraft.... so you as the builder can put any engine you wish in it as long as it's under 230 lbs. because that's the max design engine weight.

I'm planing on using a direct drive Soob EA-81 and that's about 180 lbs wet but you could use a VW type one motor with a re-drive.

I know the Mazda 12B and 13B make a fair bit of power but by the time you add in the speed reducer to get your shaft speed down where it can be used they really don't have much of an edge weight wise.

This plane is really designed for less then 100 HP the added power is great for takeoff but is not going to give you much in the cruise speed range. Using 75-80 hp as a bench mark you will get about 95 to 100 mph cruise speed going to 100 hp you may get 105 to 110 mph for about 1.5 to 2 gallons more fuel burn per hour.

The FAA has a set of guidelines that an engine has to meet to get an STC and I know Norton had a rotary aircraft engine that passed the testing but no one wanted to use it and Rotax also bad mouthed the Norton. Myself I will not use a Rotax they are way over priced and to high strung for my liking.

femm

found it... did you purchase the plans or did you engineer them yourself?

V.

I purchased the plans for the J1-B that this is an enlarged version of many years ago and found a copy of his J2 a year or so ago.

Yes I'm doing the number crunching for this aircraft with the help of a friend. Even with it bring a new aircraft it's not as hard as some people think to crunch the number for. A big issue is how do you keep from making it to heavy.... I had one chapter member tell me the rudder was to big and it needed to be smaller... Mind you he did time in the Air Force and was part of CAP but he has no designing back ground.

Mind you this aircraft will stall slower clean than the planes he's use to flying will dirty. I'm happy with the numbers the computer is giving me.

femm

That is way cool... will you install one of those whole aircraft parachutes on it?

V.

I'm not sure. The design will be load tested to the FARs before it flies. the other thing is where would you put it?

I believe they mount to the back of the wing in the center section.

V.

Right and that's where the 2nd/back seat is... OOPS! hehe