Posted Wednesday, January 3, 2007 @ 04:17 AM  

I guess the RF4's cockpit was built around Rene Fournier, and as you can see from the web site photos, he is not a big guy.

I am 6ft 1 in, and I do fit, but with a squeeze. Rob Dorsey, Richard Bach and John Taylor are much bigger than me, and they fitted too. I would advise caution in modifying the airplane. If you move the rudder pedals forward you might reduce their travel, then how are you going to recover from a spin? or even make a crosswind landing, or turn through 180 on the ground?

I fiddled with cushions, foam etc for a year or more. Here is my final solution:

You do not want 'squishy' normal furniture foam, otherwise you will sink when you pull G and your eye line changes, also your seatbelts go slack... not nice. If you land heavily (maybe wheel-up like me last month) or crash, compressible foam compresses immediately and the bottom end of your spine hits the wooden structure under the seat. Then your vertebrae compress. This can paralyse you. Or kill you if the top of your spine goes upwards into your head. Not nice.

So... I lay half an inch of styrofoam in the flat, recessed wooden base (I know it's flammable, but so's the whole airplane). Over that I have a standard 16" by 18" sheet of two-inch thick conformal foam (Dynafoam, Temperfoam, Confor foam -- all pretty much the same stuff, you can get it from Aircraft Spruce). This only compresses slowly, so it saves your back and is extremely comfortable to sit on. It's what Oregon Aero use for their wonderfully comfortable seats.

Behind me I have the original moulded black fiberglass seat back (dished, to take a parachute). Into that dish goes an ordinary hunk of foam, cut to shape. Over that I use a one-inch sheet of confomal foam, with half a three-inch block as a lumbar support at the bottom of it. My wife sewed black covers for all these foam sheets/blocks, and the job's done.

My left knee tucks just under the throttle, with my right knee pretty free under the trim lever. My head touches the canopy (so I can see forward as much as possible in the nose-high landing attitude), and I use a Peltor headset in a 'universal' leather helmet. The Peltor has a thin band over your head, not like David Clark's thick head bands. An ANR kit completes the comfort suite.

Yes, the canopy rear bar touches my back, but it's not uncomfortable.

I flew 3:30 straight off on a cross-country, then another two hours in formation on the same day. Flew a low-level aeros display at the end, with NO discomfort.

Good luck.

Bob

Posted Saturday, April 19, 2008 @ 11:04 PM  

That little sliding window was itself the source of many of the cracks in both the canopies I have used so far.

You don't need it for ventillation if you fit the vent hoses you can see on my Bob's Mods page, although you will need either to remove the inspection flap into the rear fuselage (as I have) or to put an opening in it, to allow all the incoming air out of your cockpit for good airflow.

Either way, you should put netting or mesh over the resulting hole, so that small items don't migrate into your rear fuselage and jam your flying controls. The weather was so hot for my Red Bull display that I removed the flap, but didn't get around to putting mesh over it. Of course, during my first routine, the plastic battery cover came off the ANR battery box and whirled straight through that hole and right down to the far end of the fuselage. Not being magnetic, it was difficult to retrieve -- eventually achieved with a long pole and lots of duct tape. I have mesh over that hole now.

However, much more importantly, without the little hole, there is no way of opening the canopy from the outside. Ask my buddy Peter, whose BD-5 ended its last flight in a circle of flaming fuel with him unconscious inside, why that's important.

I have been trying to figure out an alternative way of opening the canopy from outside, without compromising the strength of the fuselage by cutting a hole or slot in it. Schelicher Ka 13 gliders have a kind of sliding lever that slides between the canopy rail and the fuselage top longeron, with pins engaging into lugs like the canopy frame's hinges. It is not as elegant, simple, light and neat as Rene Fournier's method, though.

Does anybody else have any good ideas?

Posted Wednesday, May 28, 2008 @ 06:20 PM  

The mods on your UK ship are exactly what the other Bob in South Australia did to fit into his Fournier – he’s a tall fellow. I think he inserted some sort of wedge between seat back and cushion. I guess some cut Styrofoam would do the trick, but I can ask him if you want.

Anyways, when I sat in his Fournier just before buying mine, I found the reclined position very comfortable and glider style.

BR

Tim

Posted Thursday, May 29, 2008 @ 05:40 AM  

-A-

Posted Wednesday, July 16, 2008 @ 02:14 AM  

http://scramlings.de/~scram729/D/download.html

Toward the bottom of the page...

I couldn't get the gear to go up and down. Hope you have better luck.

Posted Friday, February 6, 2009 @ 10:51 PM  

I finally found that photo of the forward rudder pedal in our red RF4. It is annual inspection time for the blue one, so I am incorporating the same modification on that one. Mostly because it allows me to get full left aileron, by ensuring my left knee is below the throttle.

I did most of the mod yesterday. It took an afternoon.
You have to make up a couple of wooden blocks to go under the floor to support the pedals.

Then you have to make the links to extend the cables. Neither job is very hard or time-consuming, once you have removed the snail (wheel cover) and in my case, the wing, too.

When I dismantled my pedals from their hinges, I was surprised to see how much the hinge pin holes had worn into the floor-mounted brackets. All four were badly ovalised. That's in a 1,300-hour airplane (yes, mostly aerobatics for the past 300 hours). I'll get some more photos later today and put them under 'maintenance'.

It might be worth a look during your next big inspection.

Once everything was reassembled, it became clear that it would be very difficult to move the pedals more than two inches forwards from their original position, because the outboard side of the pedal would hit a vertical fuselage member at full forward rudder travel. There would also be a possible interference between the pedal stop (a block of wood on the front of the pedal) and the variometer's vacuum flask etc.

So far, I am coping with the original pedal return springs, although of course they now have slightly less effect. I'll let you all know if I have to change them. I suspect I might, because the red airplane had them changed.

By the way, don't be confused. These photos are from the blue Fournier, but it was originally red when it lived in France, and they didn't bother to re-spray under the lower cheek cowlings.

Yours, Bob

[Edit by Bob Grimstead on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 @ 10:07 PM]

[Edit by Bob Grimstead on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 @ 11:46 PM]