Adventure Airplane w/ Motorcycle

[givemethewillys]

This is so cool, thanks for sharing!

 

[SBaircraft]

Great vision, incredible stuff! I must admit, as a pilot myself, I was horrified at first until I continued to read and see your educational background, your testing, and your abilities!

Thanks!

 

[OVRLND]

Hello SBaircraft,

Last fall I tried to contact you a couple times at MotoPOD regarding buying an XT-225 (or altering one).
Is this a product / service you provide ("Let us build one for you")?
If so, I am still interested.

 

[SBaircraft]

Hello SBaircraft,

Last fall I tried to contact you a couple times at MotoPOD regarding buying an XT-225 (or altering one).
Is this a product / service you provide ("Let us build one for you")?
If so, I am still interested.

Yes that's me. I built a handful of bikes for customers but I had to focus on other business areas. The motorcycles weren't making much money and the removable pod design turned out to be really attractive for special mission projects. I'll let you know if I'm able to build more in the future.

 

[calicamper]

I only lost a couple knots. The RV-10 belly is already flat and draggy to begin with, so the pod hardly hurts. At one point, I covered the pod with yarn tufts and found a little separation on the aft sides. At some point, I'd like to install micro vortex generators and see if I can keep the flow attached a little longer.

In my opinion, pilots care about airspeed too much. Certainly, airspeed is important when air racing around pylons at Reno. For transportation purposes, I prefer to think about the overall door-to-door trip speed. NASA did some research on this as part of the SATS program. It turns out that inter-modal delays are a big problem. A 200 knot airplane only has a trip speed of around 100 knots in the real world.

NASA envisioned aircraft with shorter takeoff and landing capabilities, along with thousands of tiny airports, each integrated with public transportation. The idea was to land closer to the final destination and hit the road faster.

Bringing a motorcycle saves a lot of time too. I'm not restricted to airports with ground transportation services so I often land much closer to the destination. I can also pull the motorcycle out much faster than I can reserve a rental car... wait for Enterprise to pick me up... top it off with gas on the way back, etc. In the end, I've found that traditional airplane speed mods shave 15-25 seconds off a typical real-world trip. Bringing the motorcycle often saves 15-25 minutes!

Admittedly, in the last few years, Uber has made ground transportation a whole lot easier. However, it's still nice to be independent and even Uber doesn't work everywhere.

Just depends everyone is different. Some like to drive prius to work others like to drive 911’s to work.

I built a Rutan Veri eze back in the mid 80’s with my grandfather who flew in WWII. The Veri EZE was the first plane to grab his interest since gettin out in 1946. In our case it was about seeing how strait and efficient of a plane we could build. We used a builders sight to set up jigs for the build. In the end zero trim tab was needed a rare thing. And with 5 point harness and both of us leaning the inch and a half to one side we could get a 2-3 degree bank. LOL

190knot cruise at 70% with a 4gph burn rate. Fun plane. But lousy for hauling gear. You could only pack a fresh pair of underware and a shirt. But damn it was fun to fly!

 

[jkam]

This is a great idea and well done. I like the way you think.
I have always wanted an amphibious airplane capable of carrying a motorcycle and big enough to actually live in.
Traveling all over the world with that setup would be pretty awesome.

 

[SBaircraft]

The VariEze is definitely a cool looking airplane. Hopefully I'll have a chance to fly one someday. Did yours have an electric starter or did you keep it really light?

 

[SBaircraft]

This is a great idea and well done. I like the way you think.
I have always wanted an amphibious airplane capable of carrying a motorcycle and big enough to actually live in.
Traveling all over the world with that setup would be pretty awesome.

That would be pretty cool. I've often wondered if I could sleep in the RV-10. It's pretty spacious and I might be able to configure the cabin like the interior of a teardrop camper.

 

[jkam]

If I could afford it, I'd get a Grumman Albatross, plenty of room to live in one of those and carry a nice 250 along.

 

[calicamper]

The VariEze is definitely a cool looking airplane. Hopefully I'll have a chance to fly one someday. Did yours have an electric starter or did you keep it really light?

Goal #1 was light, fast and simple. No starter batt and starter added about 130lbs. Getting off the ground with a high pitch fixed prop spun by an ancient Lycoming running standard 91 octane auto gas ment every pound translated to more runway needed. That little rocket didnt fly till it was doing 90. Doing the patern at 120-130 at small non controlled airstrips surrounded by Cessnas doing 80 was always an adventure in patience and constant radio reminders to traffic that we were out there and not to cut a short pattern or we’d be flying up your ******** on final before you called final. Countless times I had to get on the power and go around due to a 80 knot bucket flying a short pattern droppin in right infront of us. Fun times. The eze is hard as hell to see, and fast as **** when surrounded by Cessnas its like a game of frogger lol

Oh and once you were down around 100 the high pitch prop was near useless regarding just throwing throttle on to extend or get out of an approach. You were prett much committed at that point. Lots of pilots crashed the EZEs trying to fly them and land them like Cessna.

 

[Tinkers]

Very cool & looks like proper workmanship!

 

[OVRLND]

I'll let you know if I'm able to build more in the future.

Thank you. I (really) hope you have the time to build more (2).
... although the pub/pvt sectors are probably just getting warmed up to the uses of your pods.

 

[SixLug]

Incredible. Well done

 

[Arjan]

Very interesting.....
Planes to me are platforms to jump from and to haul things along.
You mention very few issues with the good old FAA - we had some serious trouble moving stuff in the '90s on floaters..
Please keep the pics & stories coming.
CoG is not affected a lot with the bike underneath ?