Rogers Affordaplane

Roger completed his plane in the last few days. He built a fiberglass fuel tank, that fits in place of the wing seal. He also made his using aluminum ribs.

He tells the story best, Roger wrote:
"I made quite a few changes to the plane and did not
want to talk about them until the thing flew. It will now be until spring
because of the cold weather. Some of the things I changed are; gap seal fuel
tank, droop tip wings, wing ribs made from sheat aluminum, US 35b wing foil. I
uses a 400cc polaris snowmobile engine which should put out about 40 hp as
arranged. I also made my own prop with ptips. It pulls very well. It weighed in
an 72 lbs. Many of the changes I made did reduce the weight. The finished wings
without droop tips weighted 27.5 lbs the tips were about 4.5 lbs each. The gap
seal tank serves two purposes of tank and most of the gap seal. I also went with
Y struts to make it easier to get in and out. I will try to post pictures when I
can figure out how to do that. There are some pictures on cheapaircraft 2 under
kenneths and under Rogers. They were posted by my son. I put it in our county
fair in Aug. and won a sweepstakes with it. I also took it to our local flyin
and did a bit of taxi work. It handled better than I had expected on the ground.
I also got a little experience in a two seater but it was a trike gear. I need
tail dragger experience and that a a bit harder to come up with here. I do not
know the final weight but I believe it will be under 300. I learned a few things
along the way like fiberglass tanks do not hold up to ethanol fuel. I had to
coat the inside of the tank. I would like to find plain gas but can't find any
here locally. I spent less than $2,500 out of pocket but I am a really good
scrounger. If you want any more information please contact me direct and I can
give you more info. Keep building. Roger"

"I was very careful to check out weights of all the changes I made
and everyone except putting very large tires on were under or at the weight that
the plans would have been. and the wheels were lighter than wheel borrow so that
would have been close to a wash. I wanted large tires to make up for no
suppension. The sheet aluminum ribs were almost half the weight of doing the
foam ones. I made one out of foam to compare. It took me about 20 minutes per
rib to make them but the time is in making the jigs. once set up they are almost
fun to make and turn out exactly the same every time"

That's a darned good looking plane. I can't wait till spring when we can get some flight reports about it!

Some new information from the horses mouth:
"I do not know the weight of everyone elses wing, but mine did come in with fabric and paint at 27.5 and 27.8. One wing was a bit heavier because I ran out of 1.8 ounce fabric and finished that wing with a bit of 2.7 ounce cloth which I had on hand. I did install droop tips which weighed about 4.5 lbs each The material is siding coil which comes in 2' x 50' rolls."