Pee Wee ultralight - any info?

William:

I have located Dennis Harbin and learned that the Pee Wee was taxi tested but never flown due to the loss of access to the KFM powerplant (a loaner engine)...

 Dennis says:

" If you generate any interest in the Pee Wee let me know I have 30 years of ideas to improve it lurking in my head but the basic plane is sound and simple.  I would really like to work with someone interested in doing finite element analysis of the airflow and resulting loads on the wings. "

If you would like to e-mail Dennis put "Inquiry regarding the Pee Wee UL" in the subject line and send to d.harbin@ragbag.com

I am hopeful that others will help revive this simple / attractive true UL...

Sincerely,

Steve Kiblinger

My web pages at: http://www.angoraaffaire.com/leu/

Thanks, Stephen, I have already sent Mr. Harbin an email. I appreciate you taking time to post the info here.

Bill

Bill:

Please post outcomes here...

Thank you, Steve

Here are some excerpts from his email :

The Pee Wee never flew.  We were doing taxi tests and fixing some air gaps which caused the lower wing sail to collapse when the fellow who donated the engine to EAA wanted it moved to the Museum because he was going out of business and would not be able to fix it if we had any more trouble.  The engine seized during our taxi tests, better than in the air. 



The plane sat for years in our basement and eventually at my hangar.  [Due to family circumstances I had to get rid of some projects].  The structure of the Pee Wee went to the recycling.  I still have all my notes, drawings, and the sails.

The cool thing about it was that I built the whole thing from scratch in one year of about 400 hours work.  There are not many planes that simple.  The simplicity was all do to the sailwing.  If I did it again I would rather use an electric engine, but a noisy gas engine would work easier.  Other than producing cool battery explosions and fires, electrics are just not there yet.

It handled well in high speed taxi test so we were encouraged the controls were well sized, etc.

Currently this project is to far down my wish list of projects to have any hope of bringing it back to life.  I have 3 active projects and work 12 hours a day so the time just is not there to even do much to help someone else.  I would love to build another one some day so we'll see.

Bill:

Been doing a little looking around the Net - attachment a publication of Princeton Sailwing research in 1961... Enjoy the read... Steve

Bill:

More from the net...A Zenair photo of Chris Heintz's Zipper using the sailwing with ailerons and a NASA lifting body with the sailwing... Steve

Bill:

Some food for thought at this link regarding the sailwing warping for aileron control:

http://www.acesim.com/rc/p2/p2.html

Steve