High Country

Update, the tail is covered and eko fill complete, I'm going to fly it gray until summer when the weather is warmer for painting. just have to get the light bolted on and wiring hooked up. FWIW this was a much easier project than I had expected it to be. I'm happy with the results so far. 

Jim Chuk, the original KF bungees work great with 3 wraps on front cross over and 4 wraps on back. I made specific ones for my avid gear but can't remember off the top of my head what the size is. I don't want to steal this thread if there is an interest I would be happy to start a new thread. 

-Robert-

The gear on our Bird sits just shy of 8' outside to outside and I just completed a whole new gear for a friends KF IV that sits about 7 1/2' outside to outside. We are running bungee struts rather than the springs and love them. I have built all the jigs to fabricate complete gears for both the avid and KF and hope to start building them sometime next year if anyone is interested. I would say that any wide gear modification is better than the original gear. this is probably the best upgrade you can do. IMHO 

Looking great Ron, I love the yellow it sticks out well in the air so hopefully you will be seen long before a mid air could occur. this is one reason we picked bright yellow for our build. 

keep up the great work

Almost completed the taillight install- till I ran out of Stewarts glue with only the finish tapes to go grrr. 

your spring should be just fine. I have a friend running this 8" on a single leaf and I run it on the double leaf. works great either way. just make sure the angle is correct. can easily be adjusted in a floor press. you're going to love that tailwheel 

Vance the issue with the fiberglass tanks is the use of ethanol fuels otherwise they are great, and some of the tanks (mine are good) are ok to use with ethanol. the plastic tanks would require lots of fittings ie. places to leak. i would stay away from them. if your tanks are not ok for ethanol and you want them to be you could cut the top off and coat them with the new resins and glass them back together. another option (read that $$$) would be to have Rod at performance products make new ones, that's the route I went. 

-Robert-

if the z stiffeners that you have fit the .083 tubing than I would just use it. this setup will be plenty strong for you KF 1. I'm running .083 tubing with just flat plywood stiffeners as per the original Avid manual and have no concerns with it for the gross weights that these early planes are for (I'm set at 1050) FWIW the setup you have with those stiffeners is probably stronger than mine and I have no worries at gross or even ahem... above. 

Well I finally received my strobe light but they forgot to send the mount and cover for it I may just fabricate one. I'm hoping to have my tail lit soon. so far my impressions of this light are good. seems well made very small, contains 3 sides of LED's with a total of 9 bulbs. the controller is pretty small so I hope it will not be too difficult to feed down through the vertical stabilizer and up to the front of the plane. it has 4 wires. hot, negative, one for setting the strobe pattern (19 options) and one for tying it to other lights if you wanted to (may tie to wingtip strobes at some point). I'm cutting the fabric off the top of the tail down to the first cross tubing that goes fore/aft then cut top tubing where it ties into the vertical tube where the rudder hinges are. this is where I'm welding in the mount. I hope this will give me enough room to feed the wires down and back up the fuselage. then I will just have this small piece of fabric to replace and once the tape is across the seam at the structural tubing it should look like I never touched it when I'm done. I plan to put aluminum foil on everything around the area before welding to keep from seeing the magic smoke  I may gas weld it to reduce the sparks if i still have any acetylene left. I will take pics next week and keep you all posted on the progress. 

p.s. still looking for pics of how others have faired the light back into the tail. 

the build manual says bolts but I used pins, easier to get a cotter pin in to hold it rather than a nut. just my .02

looks great, no one is ever going to notice a little "texture" in the cargo bay anyways. keep up the good work

These http://www.extremetacticaldynamics.com/catalog/led-hideaway-p-93.htmlare still a bit pricey but a lot cheaper than the "aircraft" ones. Still looking for pictures of how others have mounted and fared them in

pics would be great. I'm still very open to ideas. I found some nice lights by Aveo Engineering but wow such a big price tag for such a small part. I'm looking at these http://www.crazedpilot.com/bullet-led-tiny-high-output-landing-strobe-light/now.I could put a couple on in different areas and still afford lunch afterwards. what do you guys think anyone have experience with them.

you might find this helpful scroll to the bottom for lifting the plane http://www.stoneylake.org/pipcom/floatrig.htm

I'm working to make my Avid night legal. mostly for safety to just be seen better. I already made the necessary changes to the wingtips and wiring for the nav lights so good there. what I'm working on now is the light on top of the vertical stabilizer. there doesn't seem to be too much out there that I can find on this. I know some of you are running one how is it mounted and faired in to look nice and be aerodynamically clean? I see this for a mount seems easy enough to add in. or is there something else that would be better? also still looking for an LED light to go here.pics of what some of you have done would be great. 

Thanks Robert 

what tire size are you going to be running? this will change the overall width of the gear. My Avid sits just sky of 8' outside to outside. I just built a custom gear for a KF IV that will sit about 7 1/2' outside to outside. we are both running the 21x12x8 tires to get this measurement. 

Great pics Joey thanks for sharing. we're ready for skis here in SW Idaho. -4 this morning and 18" of snow. here is a picture from friday near the beginning of the storm

necessary--- no however some would consider that it is in which case you might think about resale later. FWIW I stitched the wings and tail section of my avid it was pretty easy and not much cost or weight was added. It did take me about a day for each wing and a day for the tail. needles can be made very easily from wire coat hangers and you can bend them however you want to make it easier. regardless of the covering system you choose to use (I used stewarts) I would highly recommend reading the whole poly fiber manual http://www.polyfiber.com/products/proceduremanualno1.htmI read it twice long before I ever started covering. Its well written so not to bore you and has lots of very helpful information that can be related to any covering system you use, including the rib stitching process. also lots of great videos on youtube and the eaa website. keep asking questions the guys here were very helpful for us to complete our build. 

good luck

FWIW- I used lightweight on all but the bottom of fuselage/ sides around the door openings and bottom of rudder/elevator, may have done the ruder in medium as well can't remember. I don't see a real need to use medium on the whole plane and as Ed mentioned shrinking the medium fabric on these light airframes can easily damage it so if you decide to go this route be careful and don't shrink it too much. 

Per the Avid manual cracks are common, they advise to just drill a small hole at the end of the crack so it will not continue over time. I also chose to hysol in small wood triangle gussets inside the drag tube before covering. 

you beat me to it!!! thanks

My buddie who just built the avid/Kitfox hybrid built his own struts too. He made them from one inch material without rod ends on the front strut, only adjusters on the rear strut. Kitfox struts have four rod ends and Avids use only one.

I will see what he used for wall thickness.

hate to dig up the past but did you ever find out what size wall thickness he used and possibly what size rod ends. I'm planning to make new struts soon to replace my 3/4" ones that are on there now. I want to use 1" tubing. for the rod ends is it just a bolt welded into the tubing that the rod end screws onto? I'm thinking it may be better to weld a round coupling nut into the tubing then thread a rod end with male thread into it with a lock nut. thoughts??? 

Edit: or would these be better http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/an490.php?clickkey=4183  AN490HT11P seems you would have to weld it into a 3/4" .035 tubing or perhaps 7/8" .095  then weld that into the actual 1" strut tubing. or am I over thinking this??? 

Looking good Ron!!  As you now know this is a very rewarding part of the whole build. I like that the primer is white should save you some time and weight in the end. Using the Stewarts system I had to paint white over the gray primer just to paint it yellow again. with your white primer it would save you this extra step. keep the pics coming you will be in the air in no time. I can't wait to hear how those wing tips effect flight and what gains you get from them. keep up the nice work .

Congrats that's Awesome!!!! good luck with the business

Thanks for the input. I had a two blade ivo on my old skyraider and loved it that is partly why I chose to go this route again. Thanks for the heads up leni on the wrench but I already have a whole shop (used to be a self employed fabricator/mechanic) so should be good there. How much torque is required to lock the nut? Might be worth having a thick piece of aluminum cut at a machine shop to make a light weight wrench to carry along. I live high in the mountains and it would be nice to be set for climb when leaving on a CC but could be beneficial to adjust it to a more cruise setting along the way. thoughts??? as per the A box maybe I'm just remembering wrong.... darn now you have me curious I will have to dig it out this weekend and check just for my own curiosity. glad I'm not a cat.

-Robert-