Flying the Merlin Lite, Part 103 Legal All Metal Ultralight Aircraft, Aeromarine LSA.

[Music] [Music] yes part 103 compliant aircraft kind of an amazing thing a lot of you simply didn't believe it and one of the ways you didn't believe it despite the small fellini engine that it has up front is that how could something like this make part 103 wait it seems like an impossible task but those the three yeah yeah you're right you only need two so we'll use those two okay these two i checked with my weight they are very close [Music] so if you didn't know as i once did not know either the way you weigh an aircraft is using a scale for each point touching the ground so we use the scales you just saw a moment ago under the main gear but if you look back at the tail of the airplane there you'll see that might be hard to actually weigh anything this light on scales of this type and indeed that was the case so we came up with another method that you'll see here in a moment so here you're observing mr chip irwin the developer of the airplane and many other aircraft including once upon a time the very well-known sport cruiser came from this gentleman right here but he's focusing on single-seaters these days merlin and now merlin so we've used all six scales that we had three sets of two scales and we use those on the main gear as you're observing right here so this is without the cowling but with the door should be less than the door you say so we used all three sets of two scales each six different scales used and wrote down all the numbers that each of them showed so we can average them and come up with the right one the tail was so light all right we had to use a different system and chip that brought one along just for this purpose here it lifts it up and as you will see it weighed 30.6 pounds and we logged all this down added them all up and averaged and came up with the numbers that we did that you'll see on this final screen here but this aircraft had not only all the stuff inside it had a door on it as well but it did not have a cowling the two weights are going to be relatively similar and so we wanted to check that out that parachute in there is not just a fake that's an actual parachute with its full weight and the inside of the aircraft had all the stuff you'd want the seat cushions the nicely padded belts there's the parachute handle two brakes on in front of the joystick for differential braking instrumentation everything else but let's weigh that door too and see what it weighs separately and since the cow is something similar well there you have it 4.2 pounds so you put it all together this thing makes legal weight let's go see how she flies this flight that you're watching here by the way occurred within about three weeks of the time everyone saw the merlin light at the midwest lsa expo here chip is hands off demonstrating how smooth the airplane flies of course i'm sure it was a nice smooth day too but nonetheless this is not some crazy little airplane this works the way it should here is demonstrating the flaps that's down one notch they go down really deeply but they are foul or flaps you're beginning to see a little daylight there between the top of the flap and the trailing edge of the wing so mighty impressive package here still got a little bit of work to do it does have a nose cowl by the way the nose cowl weighs only four pounds much like the door did so you probably gotta have one of the other to stay within legal weight but it's possible he could get both of them on there a little bit of work yet to do on this airplane but a very impressive job and this has created more interest than any other single article we wrote about this year thousands of you responded to this thing we're going to see some more about it and you'll see a full video interview with more flying scenes and more views of the aircraft that'll be coming later what i want to ask now is this question well that was exciting first flight's always our and that one was exceptional and it's back on the ground all in one piece that's one that's exceptional the other one is it works and it was flying hands off 75 miles an hour and the lowest speed i could see uh indicated was 30 with some not quite full flaps but i think 32 degrees flaps so basically it does everything i expected to do the engine only ran a little bit warm right around the red line on the water temperature that full extended climb other than that the cht was fine and uh perfectly smooth that's uh that's it now to debrief thank you for watching well i can hardly wait for my own shot at it and maybe you too [Music] you

Channel: Light Sport and Ultralight Flyer

Views: 233,713

Keywords: ultralight, ultralight aircraft, experimental aircraft, amateurbuilt aircraft, homebuilt aircraft, Merlin, Merlin Lite, Merlin Ultralight, Merlin Part 103 Ultralight, Aeromarine LSA, Chip Erwin

Id: BeMjJbo2yv4

Length: 6min 56sec (416 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020