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New bird about to be in the barn

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firefly9r68

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Well after flying around the US and looking at a few different Pitts i decided on the one in Little Rock. If you have followed my other thread you know some of the back ground on the planes i was looking at. Well i put a Deposit on a nice Pitts s1 with alot of ultimate parts on it.

The pics are not current and ill get some up as soon as it get here, but the rudder is bigger now and is going to be checkered black and white. Im also going to be doing alot of cosmetic stuff to it to change the look for the Airshows.

First up is to loose some weight. With all the ultimate parts on the plane and the CS prop she is a little fat so time to shed some LBS. Ive been emailing Sky Dynamics and York about getting some weight saving parts on here and here is the mod list.

Carbon fiber:
wing root fairings
wheel pants
cabane covers
landing gear fairings
seat back

on these parts im hoping to save 3-5 lbs

Skydynamics:
oil sump and cold air intake
LightWeight FlyWheel

these two should drop around 13 LBS off the nose of the plane


Next up is the battery. It has a full size concord batt 22ish LBS i think is what they weigh in at. Im changing it out to the Earth X batt same as i did on my eagle. so there is another 19 lbs gone

so right there is around 35-40 ISH lbs ill loose. Then there is the big transponder im wanting to change out, and there are a few other things like the vent tube that goes to the tail. Ill be removing that and going with a line into the exhaust to save weight there. Hopefully a couple LBS. Batt cable wire, Charging port and a few other things will be 2-5 lbs more.
so in the end im hoping for around 45 lbs of weight to come off of the plane, and if my W&B calculations are right i should still be good. if not ill use some lead where needed on rear or front to move it where it may be. I also have things on the plane i can move around to make it work im pretty sure.

I will be adding a smoke system to the plane so there is weight :-( but it is what it is and ill have to do a custom one off kit for it to fit AND to put weight where i need it for W&B.

I should take possession of the plane in about two weeks when it gets out of the getting new fuel system, and control surfaces recovered. This thread will be showing from when i get it and weigh it for the first time to when i get all done. This will give people that want to know how much things really do move W&B around AND how much these parts do really weight and take off the plane. This work will take some time but ill update the thread as i get time and get around to doing all the work.

here is the plane a couple year ago. ill get more pictures as soon as i get her here


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STEPHEN COVINGTON
 
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