Very informative building manual for wooden airframes

[Richard Mole]

There is a nice Bob Grimstead article on the Falco in the July Pilot magazine and a letter from Alfred Scott on page 38 explains that he is winding down the trading activity at Sequoia Aviation that has been selling the Falco F8L drawings and supplying kits and parts from the US under licence, for at least a couple of decades.

He has placed both the build manual and the drawings on his website as free downloads, just go to http://www.seqair.com

The build manual is an extremely well written and informative book of over 400 pages that is a major free resource. It may be of real interest - particularly to builders and future builders of wooden aircraft of whatever type. Indeed the first 100 pages or so are pretty generic in coverage and authoritative too. As it happens, I recently wanted to find out all I could on minimum bend radius of plywood. A Google search had produced a few odds and ends but left me wanting much more. Pages 10-7 to 10-11 of the Falco build manual told me what I wanted to know.

The drawings may not be everyone's cup of tea! There are so many of them and they are to a very high professional standard. They might well deter some would-be builders without a traditional engineering background and that would be a real pity. But taken in conjunction with the build manual they might also inspire others.

[dmcnicholl]

Thank you for posting this. That is one beautiful set of drawings, but then the Falco is one beautiful aircraft.

[Nick Allen]

Likewise, thanks for pointing us to this, Richard.

(How is the Mite progressing...?)

[Richard Mole]

Thanks Donald & Nick.

Richard

PS The MITE is coming on well with the wing, crew seat, flaps, ailerons, control systems finished and installed (save for wing tip mouldings) at about 25 kg the lot. Here is something I presented at a recent meeting on the wing design & construction

I'm doing the rudder now and will move on to the stabiator soon - here's hoping but progress is hard won.

[Ian Melville]

Thanks Richard for the link, most informative documents and filed for future ref.

Good to hear the mite is progresssing.
Cheers
Ian

[ColinC]

Hi,

I also came across this FAA publication "Aviation Maintenance Technician Handbook - Airframe" which has some good information on wooden aircraft construction and repair.

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies ... a_Ch06.pdf

I think I have seen a version of it before, but it must have been updated fairly recently as it has some good graphics in it.

The whole set of chapters is here:

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies ... _handbook/

regards,

Colin