Inventorying the Feather Lite Order

1 May 2012 — Today I tore into the downstairs room that will become the second of two shops here in Germany. The main build shop will be in the single car garage. The glass cutting, prep and small layup shop will be downstairs in my house. It has a fairly large window that vents out to the outside, so ventilation is ok.

I have three (3) large boxes from Feather Lite currently sitting in this room. I cracked the boxes open not only out of shear curiosity, but to ensure all the pieces were there and make sure there wasn’t any visible damage. Two of the large boxes contain the foam cores for all my Long-EZ’s flying surfaces: Wings, Upper & Lower Winglets, Roncz Canard & Elevators. [This order also included the Main Landing Gear Bow, which can be partially seen in some of these pictures]

The third large box contains the Upper & Lower Carbon Fiber Cowling halves that were originally designed by Mike Melvill and made off the composite plugs he designed. The CF cowling weighs around 13 lbs, so its almost half the weight of the original glass cowling.

Feather Lite Order Inventory - Cowling Plans

Included in the large boxes were smaller pieces for the cowlings and the instructions on how to configure the cowlings to maximize engine cooling. It’s cool thinking how these cowlings have such a significant part in the history of the Long-EZ!

Project Update

Posted on 4 December, 2023 by Airdog

Hi Folks,

I’m happy to report that I’m nearing the end of the final exhaust pipe configuration and installation. I have one major weld remaining on the left outboard (cylinder 3) exhaust pipe and then I’ll roll into trimming them to length. I’ll caveat the exhaust pipe effort with the fact that I may need some welding on the ends of these pipes to get them pointed in the right direction, but I’m of course hoping not.

I’ll note again that I’ve knocked out the EGT probes install and assessing final clearances on those.

The convergence of a few intertwined components I spoke of before is slowly coming to fruition, which will set me up to be nearly done with the entire engine install, sans the firewall (at this time). As the exhaust pipes saga nears its end, I have started glassing up the CF engine inner baffles. With these completed and installed, I can then finalize the aft lower side of the engine baffle install. That will, in turn, allow me to identify where the bottom cowl cross rib baffle/stiffener needs to get glassed into place (got all that?! ha).

I’m still intent to focus solely on the plane for the next however long it takes to finish this bird… ASAP!

A Long EZ Push

The Building of Long-EZ N916WP

Feather Lite Order

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