dows. The spar spacing is fairly close
to being the same, so I took a bunch
of pictures and measurements on a
PA- 18 and made everything to fit the
Tri-Pacer wings.”
When asked how much angle of
incidence he has, he says, “…some!”
CUSTOMIZATION
One of the beauties of scratchbuilding is that since you’re starting with
a pile of raw tubing and a set of
plans, you can do pretty much anything you want, even though you’re
working to a pre-existing design.
Kenny took advantage of that freedom to customize the fuselage to his
own taste and needs.
“I moved the baggage compartment back one bay,” he says, “and
moved the elevator bell crank back
“One of the beauties of
scratchbuilding is ...
you can do pretty much
anything you want . . .”
the same amount. Then I eliminated
the jackscrew and the movable stabilizer and put a trim tab on the left
elevator. I also put a strut on the
leading edge of the horizontal tail to
reduce the number of wires. I then
made the first of two mistakes that I
wish I could do over.”
Rather than going with the Super
Cub’s mass and aerodynamically balanced elevators, Kenny decided to
make the elevators simpler with no
balance area at all. “I now wish I
hadn’t done that,” he says. “The
stick pressures in flare become much
higher than I wish they did. Who
knows, next winter I may pull the
tail off and modify it. It’s not a huge
change, and I think I should do it.”
The other things he would have
done differently?
“I definitely should have widened
the fuselage to Super Cub width. I
don’t know why I didn’t,” he says.
“That couple of inches would have
given me much more foot room.
I moved the engine as far back as
I could and set the airplane up to
solo from the front seat like a Super
Cub, rather than the back like a J- 3,
and the wider fuselage would have
been nice.”
