EAA Chapter 1218

Mission Statement

Why would anyone want to build an outdated 1929 aircraft design?  It is not easy to build, it is not inexpensive, it has limited performance and it does not have sleek modern lines.  It does however have a loyal following of supporters nationwide.  Our reason is as follows.

In late winter of 2009 (February-March) our chapter voted to build a Pietenpol in honor of Mr. Pietenpol and the 80th anniversary of the design.
We were to fly or haul the project to air adventure for display, as they were to honor the piet anniversary.  It was voted to build our plane with a steel tube fuselage.  This steel fuselage is an option offered for sale by our piet plans source.  Because of strength and durability our thinking was the steel fuselage would be more attractive to a future buyer of our completed plane.  Little did we know of the problems this fuselage would present and the reactions of piet purest to our efforts.


Building

On barnstormers we found and were going to purchase a wood pietenpol project that was very far along.  We thought this would help with our limited construction time of four months.  We contacted the seller and agreed with him to buy the project.  One member worked his trailer over so as to be able to transport everything in one trip.  By the time, this was done and we contacted the seller, to arrange for a pickup date, he had sold the project to another buyer.  All this cost us a month of building time.
     
We made up a materials list of supplies we needed to be started and ordered them from wicks.  We took a pickup and trailer and picked up the supplies ourselves.  Work started on april 28 th when one fuselage side was tacked together.  The next day the jig was modified to incorporate two drop down side doors.  One for each cockpit and located on the right side of the fuselage.  That was change number one.    Everyone knows how hard a piet is to get into and out of.  We thought the doors were a good idea.  Several builders past have modified the wing trailing edge to help the pilot with this problem.  We were cautioned not to do that and chose doors instead.  We were told to make the rear cockpit larger in width and length to accommodate larger pilots of our era, and this we did.

A friend of mine found if you superimpose the steel airframe plans over the 6 inch longer wood fuselage plans you will find differences in dimension.  Using the rear cabine attach point as a reference the long wood body is 3.75 inches longer from there to the firewall and 7.625 longer aft to the tail post. This is a total of 11.375 difference.  We were told to make the fuselage 6 inches longer.  So we did and added the 6 inch length to the tail end.  It would have been better for us to have added it to the front of the plane.  Even so ours is 1.625 less long in this area than the long wood version.

All pietenpols tend to be tail heavy.  The six inches added aft on our fuselage did not help this tail heaviness.  However if we added it to the front it would have helped but not enough.  Later we had to add 18 inches to the front of our fuselage to make weight and balance work out.  We are using a 65 hp cont. Aircraft engine.

For the metal fuselage all you get on the plans are the truss structure.  There are no details for building and mounting anything else.  Every attach fitting has to be custom designed and built.  If you have not built a piet steel tube truss fuselage then do not criticize ours.  

The empennage can be built from wood but we built ours from metal tubing.  We used the exact plan dimensions for the rudder, horz. Stabilizer and rudder.  Next the empennage needed to be attached to the fuselage.  Of course no plans are available for this.  We wanted  our horz. Stabilizer to be adjustable for trim purposes.  So we designed and build these parts.  As our leading edge would move up and down for trim we could not attach the vertical stabilizer to the leading edge of the horz. Stabilizer.  So the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer was attached to the fuselage structure forward of the leading edge of the horz. Stabilizer.  Looking at the plan form of the vertical stabilizer for pietenpols this would make a very severe angle for the l/e of our stabilizer.  Another consideration here is we chose  to use a push tube system to operate the elevators. I, bill ghan,  designed our vertical stabilizer to meet the requirements listed above.  I chose a shape commonly used in the post ww1 era of 1929.  Yes it is larger than pietenpol’s but should be more stabilizing with the longer nose we have.  Area behind the c/g are stabilizing and areas forward of the c/g are destabilizing.  Also it provides additional attach points for the tail brace wires, increasing safety.  I know this shape is not palatable to the piet purest.  The sign on 1218’s hanger is experimental aviation.

Everything on the metal fuselage had to be custom designed and built to fit function.  There are no plans for these items.  Example, we used the salvaged landing gear from another airplane.  We located the axil location as best we could from the long and short wood fuselage plans.  We placed the gear axils on the floor at this location and build fittings on our fuselage to match the location of this gear’s upper mounting requirements.  No it’s j-3 shape does not match the looks of conventional piets.  However it is functional.

The wood ribs and wings were build according to the plans.  Even though the airfoil is less than desirable. We chose the three piece wing.  The only change here were the aileron hinges.  We built our own rather than use plan called for hardware store strap hinges.

Our landing gear’s mounting brackets were located differently from the piet’s.  However our lift strut brackets were designed , built and attached where the plans called for them to be.  We used salvaged struts with adjustable piper like forks on the fuselage end.  This made the attach brackets different but they still retained the ability to move the wing location forward or rearward.  We added inter plane struts to stabilize and strengthen the mid point area of struts and wing spars.

The plane is covered and finished using air tech directions, system and materials.  The colors are cream and green with gold pin striping.
          
So the question is: is it a pietenpol?  Any airplane is a series of compromises.  We used piet plans where ever we could.  We used the piet wing and airfoil.  We made changes to comply with the function of the parts we had and things we had to do.  This we are allowed in experimental aircraft.  Best said is this is our chapters version of a metal fuselage pietenpol.  It may not fit your version of what is a pietenpol.  As far as i am concerned it is a pietenpol.
 
Anyone with serious questions may contact me by e mail.

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