N166TA
N166TA
The Star-Lite was designed by Mark Brown in 1986. It's the single seat predecessor to the Pulsar 582 and the subsequent Pulsar XP/III which can all be found at Pulsar Aircraft . The Star-Lite is a single-seat economy cruiser designed to use a Rotax 447 engine. It cruises at 115mph and burns 2.5gph. Top speed on my plane is 147mph at full throttle. Stall speed is a relatively low 45mph. My plane isn't a stock Star-Lite, it has a 20' wingspan, 1.5ft shorter than stock, and it has shorter ailerons that are 42" long near the tips. A stock Star-lite has full-span ailerons.
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These two mods increased the roll rate, the top speed, the wing loading, and the sink rate. The aileron mods also reduced the size and mass of the ailerons. The inboard portions of the ailerons had minimal rolling effect but had braking action at full deflection which slowed the plane which slowed the roll rate. So by decreasing the size of the ailerons roll rate was increased. Most Star-Lites are tailwheel planes and this one started life as a taildragger but was converted to a tri-gear in 1997 with fully castering nosewheel and differential brakes. This did not cause the speed penalty most people would assume. The main gears on the tailwheel version occur right near the rather high pressure wing/fuselage intersection and so by moving the gear back away from this area the drag of the mains are reduced which makes up for the drag of the nosewheel. The cockpit is real cozy at 17" across the seat and 25" width at the elbows, but my 6' frame fits just fine, and with the 40deg reclined seat it's more comfortable than my old Cheetah.
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The 40hp Rotax 447 is a 432cc inline twin 2-stroke engine and uses a 2.24:1 gear ratio on a "B" gearbox, and a 47.5" x 50" Perry wood prop. The empty weight is 281lbs. Gross weight is 500lbs. Climb at 55mph is 1200fpm, glide ratio is 14:1. Fuel capacity is 8gal. Range at 115mph is 384sm. It's an aerodynamically clean airplane with even the Rotax exhaust buried in the fuselage bottom via a custom exhaust header. When I bought it in Dec 2004 I pulled the wings off and trailered it out to Propwash airport where I gave it an extensive Annual. I put about 300hrs labor in the annual but that includes a lot of refinishing of parts and engine work. The engine was replaced with a more updated Rotax 447 with Ducati CDI ignition which got new seals and a thorough internal inspection. I rewired the panel because the old wiring was a mess. It's now got a KW regulator, a fuse box, and a grounding bus. The interior has been repainted white, and the instrument panel received a coat of glass and was repainted. The firewall got a sheet of .018 stainless steel since the fiberglass firewall is the front bulkhead of the fuel tank. Also replaced were the tires and upholstery. The exhaust was cleaned and repainted, and the EGT's were converted to screw-in types, and a smoke system was added. I could go on and on with things like that. It will look really nice, perform really well, and be reliable after this annual. The plane currently has 450hours on it. I'm in the ultralight club DFW Lite Flyers in Dallas, TX. Several members of the club helped me put this plane back in the air. Thanks go to Wayland N. for all his help with my engine rebuild, and thanks to Bob W. for his help with the exhaust, wings, and engine tuning.
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Update: Feb 27, 2005
Today I got to fly the Star-Lite for the first time today and it is really a fantastic plane. The flight went very smoothly from takeoff to landing. It's exactly the type of plane I was looking for. It's just like sitting inside a model airplane. The little wings are so short and tapered they look toyish when I look out over them, and the response to the stick is very sensitive, like a hot model airplane. To help prepare for the change to this plane's short 6" control stick I had used the RC flight simulator Realflight G2. I put a 6" long stick extension 1" diameter on the right hand control stick on the RC controller box. This helped me get a feel for controlling a quick airplane with small wrist movements. I expected that my 23 years experience with RC planes combined with my experience as a Private Pilot would allow me to control the plane smoothly right from the start and I was right. The stick felt just as sensitive as a hot RC plane, as was the rudder. Imagine being inside a 60 size pattern plane on high rates and you get an idea of what it's like to fly this thing. I think the roll rate is about 240deg/sec. I was startled the first time I banked into a steep turn. Before I could even get a lot of aileron control pushed in it had already hit 60 degrees bank. I doubt I used 1/2" of control stick movement. It would probably roll all the way around in 1.5seconds. I was able to fly the plane in cruise mode with just two fingers. These light control forces give the impression that I'm flying inside a model airplane. The takeoff was started by throttling up to 3500rpm with brakes set, and about six seconds later I was at 50mph starting to rotate. The flight consisted of about 25 minutes of circles at 3500' over the field. Temps on the Rotax were about 1125f on the EGT's at 6000rpm, and 200/250f on the CHT's. The cooling shrouds I made worked good, almost too good. I made a few notes on airspeeds. An economy cruise at 5200rpm yielded 90mph. The engine is loafing at this rpm. At 6100rpm I got 115mph and at wide open the airspeed marched right up to an amazing 147mph. This is very close to the 157mph reported by the previous owner. I did not have the wheel pants on it for my initial flights so I think that 157mph is attainable. I was seeing 7200rpm at that speed so I think I could probably prop it up a little in pitch and see an even faster cruise speed. (It was 42 degrees outside so it was practically supercharged. Before I make any prop changes I'll fly it in hot weather).
Mark Brown is flying the tailwheel version and John Hutson is flying the tri-gear on this 1986 KITPLANES cover.
The amazing thing about this plane is how much performance can be had on such a little motor. 40hp normally won't get you faster than about 65mph on a clean ultralight. I'm pretty sure I will be able to cruise at 120mph or better after I clean it up, and with a different prop, maybe cruise at 125mph. The cruise on my Cheetah was about 125mph so it's almost as fast with only about 1/3 the fuel burn if that. I used only a gallon of pump gas for the entire 25min flight today. The landing was uneventful but on final I definitely felt a bit tense as I guided the plane in for my first landing with it. I kept telling myself "easy does it" because usually with a spam can I am practically wrestling the large heavy control yoke to keep the plane in line and the wings level. On a Cessna if you want to keep the wings level in turbulence during the slow speeds at landing you look like a Japanese steak chef with arms flailing the control yoke around. In fact the control yoke on a C-152 takes a whopping 20lbs of elevator force to maintain a steep turn. (It's like that to keep the average pilot from overcontrolling). Those kinds of control inputs would put this plane into the ground in seconds, probably inverted. I reminded myself it's like a model airplane, and flared it using gentle steady back pressure. I had trimmed it for 60mph so the back "pressure" for the flare amounted to ounces of pressure, maybe 12 ounces, not even pounds. I love the light stick pressures required to fly this plane. I have always wanted something that was truly "effortless" to maneuver. To have and fly this type of lightweight pocket rocket is the reason I got my pilot license. The landing was a greaser, no jounce, no bounce, not even a wiggle, with touchdown at 50mph. I could not have asked for a better first flight.
Update 3-06-05
I flew it for an hour today, what a great little airplane. It flies faster with 40hp than many planes fly with three or four times that much power. I burned about three gallons, oh dear, that cost me almost five bucks. Of course every ultralight pilot in the world knows what I'm talking about there. The little Rotax 447 is very inexpensive to operate and overhaul. Last year I flew the Cheetah 220hrs. I think I'll surpass that this year with the Star-Lite. I'm getting used to the light touch required on the control stick. I'm so used to large inputs to control the Grumman Cheetah I had. It had about 75 deg/sec roll rate. This airplane is flickable. Full aileron deflection is strictly reserved for rolls, as all the flying can be done with no more than 1/2" stick movements. I did about 10 landings today. The plane needs about 1,000ft of runway for landing because it simply does not want to come down when it's above 55mph. It glides great, almost too good. I have to slow it down to 65mph before the base turn, then 55mph on final. I made some landings where I was 80mph over the threshold at 20 feet and that uses an additional 600ft of runway. I think I could do with an airbrake of some kind. Then I could steepen the landing approach and shorten the flare.
Update 3-22-05
Over the weekend I moved it to a closer airport, Aero Country, T31. This airport is only 3 miles off my daily commute to work, and only about 13miles from the house, a lot closer than the 37 miles to Propwash. I was fortunate to find a ride back from Propwash in Terry's Citabria. I just love the adventure of flying.
I have about 10 hours on it now. With the wheelpants on it cleaned up to 120mph at 6100rpm. Sunday I had a "10 gallon day". 3.5hrs in the air and I burned about 10 gallons. What a blast. I went to Cedar Mills 3T0 for lunch enjoyed the scenery of Lake Texoma, then over to Bob's place where he flew his Hiperlite (which is for sale) alongside for a bit, and then over to Northwest Regional 52F for gas, then to Propwash 16XS, then to Mike's strip, then Ruby's strip, then back home to Aero Country. The GPS says it was 325sm total. I figure I spent about $2 a gallon average with some 100LL, the oil mix and 87PON gas mixed, so it was a $28 hamburger (actually the Pelican's Landing at 3T0 served a $6 catfish sandwich that was great).
I need a better carburetor for it, I can't lean these Bing 84 dual carbs for high altitudes. I'm going to try a single RevFlow carb on it. That carb still has an adjustable and midrange needle (changeable for other needle shapes) , low end and top end adjustments like the Bings, but has no float chamber and has a full mixture control. I have had hard starting and I think running resistor plugs with a resistor spark plug cap and .020" gap is the cause. Each has a 5,000ohm resistor built in but both of them together produce 10,000ohms, so I'm going to try regular NGK B8ES plugs gapped to .017.
Update 4-27-05
The pic at the top is the latest pic taken at Plant City Muni shortly before taking off to land at the Sun N Fun convention. Bob Heybrock took this pic which is the best picture for showing the relative size of the plane. I'm 6' tall so the plane is around 5' at the tail and about 4' at the canopy's top. I have about 32hrs on it now. All the starting problems are resolved, it turns out the B8ES plugs should be gapped at .015", and I replaced the plug caps, they were worn inside and the movement was wearing out the contact inside. Some new NGK 5K ohm caps worked great. I flew it to Sun N Fun and back, 960NM each way. The trip was uneventful and I got lucky with tailwinds both ways. Four fuel stops were required each way, and it's just as well because two hours was all I want to sit for anyway. I am working on the carb conversion to the RevFlow injector carb, and have also ordered some hydraulic brakes for it from tracyobrien.com. These are the smallest, most compact brakes with floating discs captured by two donut shaped brake pads that contact every square inch of the brake discs. This are the best holding 4.5" disc brakes out there. They'll probably hold it at full power and fit entirely inside the wheel pants. Rated up to 1200lbs, my 500lb gross weight will be easy to stop. Also in the mail is a new GPS, the AnywhereMap.com software and Mio 168 combination. Terrain and obstacle avoidance built in, plus the speed and utility of a PDA. This is the future of handheld GPS units, a PDA running an application. I expect it will be way better than my Garmin Pilot III.
Update 9-10-05
Well the Mio 168 running the AnywhereMap.com software is the Swiss Army Knife of GPS's, and the Tracy O'Brian brakes worked out great after I rebuilt one of my older Matco master cylinders that I used. They hold at full throttle and are smooth as silk. I have put another 25 hours on it since the Sun N Fun trip, including a trip from Dallas to Galveston. With the wheel pants off it again it's cruising around 110mph again. I need to make new brackets for them. Since the launch of my new construction business in June I haven't had much time to work on it but I did get my BFR done today. Did it in a Cherokee 140. Yuk. A necessary evil since my plane is single-seat. It's like comparing an old pickup truck to a Ducati motorcycle. With gas prices soaring above $3 a gallon for unleaded regular I have started to cut back on my fuel burns. I found that I can thermal the machine at about 4200rpm which only burns 1.3gph. Ok I'm just kidding about lowering my ridculously low fuel burns. The real reason I've been thermalling this near motor-glider is because it's tons of fun. It won't thermal with the engine off but it will sometimes stay level in strong lift or slightly decend with the engine off and the prop completely stopped. With the prop windmilling it's a fast descent so I just run it at 4200rpm which is about 35% power, about 16hp. I know the Rotax 447 spec sheet says that rpm yields a burn of 2.6gph but thermalling this airframe/engine/prop combination yielded and average of 1.3gph, probably less since what I burned overall today was about 3 gallons in about 2.3hrs including the takeoff, a half-hour of cruising at 5800rpm and the rest thermalling with maybe ten minutes of engine-off gliding. The engine doesn't work very hard with such a clean airframe. I doubt it's even putting out the 15hp at 4200rpm because of the slick airframe. Next time you feel strong lift and you're outbound from an airport on a trip, you can save gas with just about any airplane by catching a thermal upwards. So it will take you a few extra minutes but save you several gallons of gas, especially if you have some kind of slow-climbing gas guzzler of a plane that sucks 15gph at full throttle. Not only that but blasting through multiple thermals before you reach the cooler and smoother altitudes isn't that comfortable anyhow, so you might as well be spiraling upwards with some free energy and having fun with the "turbulence". To catch a thermal right after you feel that sudden surge upwards wait a few seconds and turn one way or the other. If the lift subsides as you turn away make your turn a 180 back into the lift then a 360 turn. You really can't turn tightly enough to stay in the center of lift at first but that lift center will broaden as you go up and you can flatten the turn to 20 degrees bank. Generally speaking you'll be circling under a small cloud but sometimes the cloud forms a few minutes after you've ridden the bubble of rising air upwards. Well that's all I know about thermalling, except you have to drift downwind with the bubble to stay in it. I got 2500' of climb today several times to 6000MSL. One thing to bear in mind that if you just fly through the thermals you fly through large areas of extraordinary sink. Staying in one bubble of rising air helps you avoid the sink until the thermal itself cools down at the cloud base.
Update 1-18-06
The Star-Lite is still going strong, another 30hrs on the clock. I've been doing a lot of emergency practice work in it. I can't believe how good it glides. Only when I slow it way down to 55mph does it sink. All the flying activity in the area has slowed to a trickle, I think this is a good time of year for some maintenance. I'll do a top end overhaul on the engine and convert the dual carbs to a single carb with mixture control. That will allow me to fly at higher altitudes with a leaner and smoother engine, which will give more power and economy. Now I don't really need better economy, but I could use more range and better altitude choices. The throttle body works inverted without spilling gas, unlike the dual carbs I have now. It will also work better at higher airspeeds, the rear carb goes lean with higher power settings, mainly due to the increased airflow into the cowling. The E-1 electronic gauge system needs a new software load so it will come out and go back to the manufacturer. The only other thing I would like is perhaps a new GPS for it. One thing that sucks about the Mio 168, and about most PDA's in general, is that if they lose battery power completely or are rebooted, you have to manually reload any "User Application". The Mio can reload it in about three minutes, but it's quite unacceptable a characteristic to have for an aviation GPS. Twice now the Mio has just gone dark for no reason. If this were to happen in the air I would be able to reload it from the backup application and from the SD memory card in it, but that's a bunch of BS.
I think this category of "extralight" experimentals is very underrated. Most people look at the short wingspan and think it would be difficult to manage, but just the opposite is true. It's very easy to manage, the wing loading is very low, and it does exactly what you tell it, exactly when you tell it. It all comes down to the wing loading which is a function of weight and size. This Star-Lite's wing loading is only 9.6lbs/sq ft and 12.5lbs/hp power loading. I've been thinking that I could make a 45% scale P-38 Lightning in this size and wing loading, with two 28hp single cylinder engines.
Update 6-7-07
A lot of setbacks occurred during the overhaul combined with launching a new business but I got it all done and with the new carburetor installed I am able to control my mixture completely. I had it up to 14,000 MSL and it was still climbing at about 350fpm. What a difference in acro, it loops with power over the top, rolls don't produce a gas smell in the cockpit, and I did my first true inverted flight in it, for about 6 seconds. It is downright physically uncomfortable hanging from a 4-point harness upside down! What a rush. I had to do a lot of testing to make the 36mm Revflow carb from Revmaster Aviation work on the engine, mainly I was getting too much fuel and flooding it out during the starting procedure. But now I know if it doesn't start by the second pull, SHUT OFF THE FUEL and continue pulling with the carb open. It gets so much fuel so fast I removed the primer system completely. I used a fuel pressure regulator set to 2.25lbs pressure between the standard Mikuni pump and the Revflow unit, and set the needle at 1/2 turn out. I also took .003" off the low end of the needle and .004" off the top end, to kinda lean out the midrange a bit. The thing to do is use the pressure regulator to set the top end in combination with the manual mixture control, use the needle setting and profiling technique to get the transition right, and file the needle's bottom end for a good idle. If you don't know what I just said there will be a Contact Magazine article about it. Power with the single carb is as expected, a little lower in climbout, but I'm still getting about 1150fpm initial climb. I'm also using pump gas and I know the ethanol causes a power drop as well. 100LL gives more power but probably only because it has no ethanol. I'm trying to find a way to remove the ethanol from the fuel, I might have some more info on that next time. The rings on a 2-stroke gum up and stick with 100LL's 2 grams of lead per gallon. Unleaded gas has .001 gram per gallon. Even with that low level of lead, with the 2% oil mix I have to run, the engine needs a decarboning every 150hrs. The new 82UL gas will be the answer I'm looking for. There is one place that sells Mogas, it's 40miles by air, probably an hour and a half by car. Kinda far to go for Mogas unless I can rig up a 50 gal drum or something.
I also rewired the voltage regulator so that it is out in front on the firewall instead of near the fuse panel, and only clean DC runs back behind the firewall, and the AC lines coming from the engine are nicely shielded and grounded. Also I used shielded wire for the ignition switch. Voila the radio is now usable in cruise. It's still very noisy inside during full power climbout, but in cruise or cruise climb the radio is clear.
I closed off the left air inlet and added a blister for the carb's air horn to clear the cowling and get enough air. It runs great now that it's not getting a direct blast of 140+MPH air from the left side of the cowl. Cooling is not as good, although it was running too cool in cruise, now it's about 280deg F CHT. My EGT's are finally adjustable and controllable, although in thermal turbulence the rpms are up and down between 5800 and 6200 constantly which causes them to go up and down. In smooth air I can dial up the speed and EGT's I want. I have been able to get and hold full throttle, and see 145mph without the nose wheel pant, I'll probably see 150mph when I put that back on. I want to do a few fairings for the gear legs and the main wheel pants. I'll be moving to Colorado Springs in July 07 so the new carb is just in time. The new airport will be 00V Meadow View. Elevation: 6872 ft. I've done some climb tests at that density altitude and it flew just fine. Hopefully on June 15 07 I'll meet up with Nelson Amen in Texas and see his Star-Lite too.
Update 2-7-09
I've been flying it regularly, but I stopped updating this blog. I moved to Colorado Springs in August 2007. Meadowlake Airport is where I am now, it is at 6840ft MSL. One other thing I did recently was to lengthen the exhaust manifold by 1" to give more lower end torque and allow the engine to come on the pipe at 6000rpm instead of 6200rpm. I got a great increase in power at this altitude when I did that. The smoke system is back in operation, it should be polluting the atmosphere regularly now. The top speed went down to 136mph when I lengthened the exhaust but who cares about top speed, it's all about the cruise. Now I can cruise at 6000rpm and be well within the power band, on the pipe, and mild thermal turbulence is less likely to get if off the pipe. Let's see, I have my own hangar for the first time, a t-hangar I rent at Meadowlake. It's large enough for my model workshop and the Star-Lite and a workbench for it as well, plus some storage for the business tools, plus a TV, microwave, bookshelf, and everything else required to keep going all day. I have a nice view of the runway to watch all the planes take off and land. It's three miles from the local model airplane club field, Pikes Peak RC Flyers. I have a nice little bubble there.