Radio antenna

Joe McCollum

20 Copperwood Road, Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, BT38 9EU

email: joe.sam-1_@tiscali.co.uk

Update 12th Feb 2007

I now have over 300 Hrs. on my Menestrel. The VW is running sweet - they seem to get better after 200Hrs. The Aero Vee seems to be a very nice engine and looks right for the Menestrel, I would have used this engine had it been around when I was building mine. I bought all my parts from Great Planes in the US and had to throw  a lot of them away as they were of poor quality so beware. I understand that Silver Fern are the agents for Sonex and Aero Vee on this
side of the pond I have been told that the Sonex kit is going to be £5000 dearer I hope the engine is'nt going the same way! Roger has now finished the test flying and should have his permit by now that makes 4 flying in the UK and I think there might be 2 more flying this year we are building up a nice fleet ,soon we will have our own Menestrel fly-in. Enclosed is a photo of the radio antennae  of which I sent you a drawing sometime back showing how the cable is fitted and where I fitted mine. It would be possible to fit the antennae inside the fin or rudder at the construction stage and it would be out of site. This has given me the best radio I have ever had and it is so simple and cheap. I hope to meet up with you all this year at some of the fly-ins. I hope its not like last year where the weather stopped me getting across the Irish sea - hopefully I can give some of you a flight.

Initial posting

My Menestrel was the second to fly in the UK the first being that that of Ryan Fenions in Scotland so we all owe Ryan a lot of thanks for doing all the ground work! My aircraft has now flown over 260 Hrs. and gives a good cruise of 100 Kts. @ 2900 RPM on the 2.2 liter VW burning around 14 liters of fuel per hour. The aircraft has no vices that I can find, my wife and I flew around France last July and it proved to be an excellent touring aircraft.

I used Oregon Pine/Douglas Fir which was mush more easy to get than Spruce and I find is nice to work with even though it is a bit heavier. My aircrafts empty weight was 287Kgs which was good as I thought it might have been more. It took me 7 years or 2000-2500 Hrs I can't be certain as I didn't keep a record of my time, but it was very enjoyable as the Menestrel is not to difficult to build. Finally the glue I used was Aerolite 306 and Aeroducts which is used for laminating such as the spar.

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Last updated: 17th February 2010.