Standard LE Dimentions

[Bob Sommers]

Hello, fellow Legal Eagle builders!

The other day i received my plans, and ordered some spruce to begin building wing ribs. (I decided to start with an indoor project on account of this beautiful Ohio weather). I had a couple questions regarding dimensions of the fuselage and the wing. So any help from people with experience building this plane would be much appreciated. My first questions is regarding the length of the two lower longerons. On page 8 of the plans, there is a sketch of the plane with multiple lengths drawn below. it shows the overall length of the fuselage to be 155". My question is, when i build the lower part of the fuselage flat on the table, what should the length of the two lower longerons be? (from station 9 to 3) The way the plans are drawn it would seem that they would be 113" according to the sketch on page 8. However, the confusion arises due to the fact that the drawing is after the bend... So, are the lower longerons 113" or do i have to do some trigonometry to find some decimal laden length?

My final question is regarding the overall length of the wing ribs, not including the rounded nose part of the rib. Does anybody have the exact length of just the ribs? Although the plans included the full size wing rib drawings, it seems that parts of the drawing overlap on each set of paper and when building the jig i would like an overall jig length.

Thanks in advance.

[Mike Gracey]

I just made sure station 1 and tail post are were there supposed to be and bent the lower longerons up.

Mike
XL Builder

[Vince Carucci]

I just finished making the rib-form the other day. It took some creative pasting to get all the images lined up but it's do-able. I then measured from the tip of the leading edge to the end of the trailing edge and measured 55 inches almost exactly (- 1/16). This wing is described as having a 55" chord length so I was satisfied. If a *skilled technician does his *best effort, everything should be fine. Without both of those qualifiers... all bets are off. 

Note: I tested a 1/4 scale model of the wing in a wing tunnel and the results scaled up nicely. I will be a 170 lb. pilot so I've got a nice margin. My point is that if my form were 1/4 - 1/2 inch longer or shorter, I would have used it anyway. 


Vince