A Stitts Skycoupe Restoration Project

The Stitts Skycoupe is also known as Stitts SA7 D

Friday, December 16, 2011

Weight Watching

This session was a first stab at weight & balance of the Skycoupe. Although there were missing elements, notably the fuselage fabric and paint for the whole plane, we got a good idea of where we stand in regard of the Light Sport rule of max weight.
 Here are pictures on how this session wound down:

First put the wings on (Terry had to fabricate temporary wing struts - fabricating time: 10 minutes!) :




Then look at the scales:
Main Left:

 Front:

 Main Right:

Hardly visible here, the tail feathers were also installed and counted (I don't mean the tail feathers of the dog!):

This is Terry's take on the weight status:

The Skycoupe had a total weight of #428 pound using the wing attach points as the horizontal datum

Left Main #190
Right Main #208
Nose #30
Total  #428

This was with unusable fuel, full oil, with no battery, ailerons, struts, avionics, instruments, or panel.
I figured a quick conservative finished weight with 2 standard adults, 12 gallons of fuel, and all the missing parts and coverings/coatings etc. of 1288 pounds. Keep in mind LSA max gross is 1320 Pounds.
Thanks to Mike, Martha, Mike son Mark, JP, and Jim Cronin