Road Trip – Finally. And a Merlin Lite update

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I have been locked down in our Florida pool home on a private ski lake for over a month. I am only skiing once a day. Sigh. And the last container of aircraft and floats has been quarantined in our Dayton hangar. But from May 1st with the restrictions lifting I can finally make a long road trip starting with the transport of a set of floats and some 737 jacks to Dayton.

Loaded and leaving sunny warm Florida.

Our Dayton hangar has been totally packed with 3 Merlins, 1 Zigolo, a Merlin Lite, and a set of 1450 floats. The Merlin Lite has been moved out for engine installation and now I am delivering the 1450 floats and a Merlin QBK.

Builder Don helped a lot with the packing. Motive: Make more room for his Merlin build.

First stop from Dayton was Green Bay to hand over the 1450 floats. Then on to St. Paul, MN to meet our newest builder Frank. And while in St. Paul I stopped by BRS to pick up the new Merlin Lite 500 parachute.

Frank in St. Paul with his new Merlin QBK.

Now buried in this post a small Merlin Lite update: 1) We ran the engine! That Polini 250DS is super! And the clutch makes it very smooth. 2) New longer wings are in design. This will allow us to meet the 26 nm stall speed. 3) Next step is to install the control system and BRS. We have started this work now and hope to complete it this month. We can begin our test flight program with the short wings and not worry about the stall speed. We know we can meet that parameter. The big task is to verify our empty weight when the aircraft is completely finished. As it stands now we have weighed the components seperatly and are good. Have a look at the first engine test run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmrd4nU9_qw

Excerpt from the Merlin Lite wing strength calculations
Polini 250DS: Note tempoary fuel tank
Right side. Electric start of course

This will not be your 1980s ultralight: Liquid-cooled, dual ignition, electric start Polini engine. Instrument panel with full EFIS and iPad with Foreflight moving map. Electric trim. All aluminum cantilevered wing airframe. Fully-enclosed cockpit. 3-blade carbon ground-adjustable propeller. BRS rescue system. It even has brakes! Nothing else like it in Part 103 class. Not even close. We are pushing hard to complete and fly it.

Inexpensive yet very sophisticated glass panel. In an ultralight! Air speed, altimeter, G meter, VSI, artificial horizon all on EFIS and more. iPad has Foreflight installed. Wing tip strobes and nav lights. Even a USB power source! My other ultralight has a rain gauge for an ASI. What a contrast.