First, a little history. When Burt Rutan designed the moldless construction method, he was working with available materials and developing a new technique for homebuilders. He used foam developed for floating boat docks. It was stable, light weight and could be cut with a hot wire to make wing and fuselage shapes. A few attempts have been made to improve on the process over the decades. Perfecting those techniques Burt had started can result in very good aircraft. Dave Ronenburg did so on the Berkut and produced very good wings by adding a few modern materials and techniques. Making the foam as close to perfect before doing the lamination, using best practices and current materials, then vacuum bagging at 10" insted of 28" vacuum to prevent crushing the foam results in wings that were very strong, light and straight. An attempt was later made to produce molded hollow wings. The improvements were obvious in outside surface finish, but the cost went way up and the weight was the same.
Making one set of wings using prepreg fabrics would be cost prohibitive as you would need hard molds and an autoclave to cure the parts in. Adopting the best current fabrics and epoxies will result in very good products that we can afford.
The whole paint it white thing is way overblown. The temperature at which plastic materials start to soften is called transition of glass temperature.
(helpfull definition here
faculty.uscupstate.edu/llever/Polymer%20...urces/GlassTrans.htm)
The point Dow floatation foam starts to soften (165 F) is higher than planes get to in the sun. The same is true for epoxies available today. Even Burt's brother defied the white rule and painted his plane light blue! It is true that glider techs could change the twist of a wing by painting it black with watercolors, getting it as hot as possible and appling a force to the end if the wing for a day or so. That is a long way from structural failure because you painted your plane red or purple. So bottom line is the problem was never as big as some made it seem. There are no examples of accidents resulting from painting a plane a darker color.
www.tom-morrow-land.com/tests/cartemp/index.htm
So can we improve on the way Quickies and LongEzs were made? Absolutely. But as noted, we want to improve on , not redesign the product. So selection of materials and refinement of processes will result in improvements. The improvements will be more in the area of ease of construction. We will all get better planes faster, with more consistent results.
As for the landing gear we have already made that change and have done the testing. The gear is a Wittman design like the RV gear and we did not loose any performance, but it did make the plane easier to land and takeoff. The new kits coming will not offer the old style gear. After dealing with the FAA the past 6 months they have determined the old style gear to be the biggest hazard for the plane and first flight accedents. Todate they have blessed all the safety improvements we have made as wwell as our goal to make the 51% rule and keep the build time at or below 500 hrs.
Thank you,
Richard Kaczmarek
F.L.A.Ps LLC