Hello Everyone

[wlovesy]

Hello everyone my name is Wayne. My wife Sandi and I are from Vancouver British Columbia, Canada. I am Chief engineer for Harbour Air Seaplanes in Vancouver. My wife and I have recently finished a teardrop trailer that I roughly based on the Campp-Inn style. Being an aircraft mechanic I had to use up some of the old patrs I have collected over the years. This also cut down on the cost of fabrication."Once a packrat allways a packrat".The windows and door handles are actually from a DeHavilland DHC3 Single Otter floatplane. Along wiyh other misc. bits and pieces. It took us just under a year, working weekends and before work to complete. So far we have been out 3 times and have put aprox 2000 miles on it. Unfortunately there are no teardrop clubs in canada that we have found. Maybee I will have to start one?? Anyways I really enjoy this site and hope to chat. You can check out my trailer at www.freewebs.com/wlovesy/. Am toying with the idea of going into business. What do you think??
Wayne & Sandi

[Nitetimes]

Very nice, a job well done!

I like the idea of the stainless soup pot for a sink, very cool.
Where did you get the fenders? Make them? or bought?

Come on in and join the funny farm! Welcome aboard.

You might as well sell them if you can, you're gonna build another one anyway!!

[wlovesy]

I fabricated them. I just looked at the pic from Campp-Inn and winged it. they are plywood sides, maple stringers with 5052 alluminum sheeting

[TRAIL-OF-TEARS]

Welcome Wayne,
that is some nice country up there. The wife and I spent our honeymoon in Victoria BC. Our hotel was right next to were those sea planes docked/parked. That is one great looking tear, as well. The aircraft windows are very nice.

If/when you start production what will be the prices ranges? and how much for the side room? That is slick.

[wlovesy]

Thanks for the positive feedback. Haven't quite figgured out the pricing yet. We are hoping to set the base models at around the $5000-$6000 range depending on options and between $8000-$10,000 Canadian $ range for the delux model. We dont want to price ourselves out of the market, yet it has to be worth doing.

[mikeschn]

Hey Wayne,

Welcome to the forum... Wow, now we have our very own Chief Engineer! Has our resident engineer checked in yet? How about all the designers?

Anyways, your teardrop page looks wonderful. So do your teardrops.

Regarding teardrops as a business, very few people make it in that business. You're walking a very fine line with pricing too. But people like Cary from Camp-Inn have proved that it can be done.

I wish you luck, and hope you can find your niche.

Mike...

[Cary Winch]

Wayne,

Nice looking trailer. Keep up the good work. There must be something to the aircraft connection. The Camp-Inn factory is a hangar (well a burnt and mangled hangar at the moment) and a bunch of aircraft nuts work here. At lunch we go out and run one of my turbine engines sitting in a stand outside for a homebuilt I am building just to hear it whine, aahhh.

If ever you have some questions about getting into the biz just drop me a line and I will help where I can. Another good person to ask is MadJack. He has done a tremendous amount doing that recently and has it well figured out.

Cary

[asianflava]

Nice looking trailer. Keep up the good work. There must be something to the aircraft connection. The Camp-Inn factory is a hangar (well a burnt and mangled hangar at the moment) and a bunch of aircraft nuts work here. At lunch we go out and run one of my turbine engines sitting in a stand outside for a homebuilt I am building just to hear it whine, aahhh.

Watcha buildin'? a James Bond BD-5J?

[Gage]

Good looking Teardrop there Wayne. What did you use to shine the skins?

Have a good day.

[wlovesy]

I used white jewlers rouge on a 1" buffer wheel @ 300 RPM and about 60 hrs of elbow grease. I found muscles I haddn't used in years.

[wlovesy]

Cary, What kind of turbine engines do you have, for what kind of homebuilt?? We work on primarily Pratt and Whitney PT6A-34's. Also I have 21 years on P&W R-985 AN14B, and R-1340, 9 cylinder radial engines.Now those make real engine noises

[asianflava]

Cary, What kind of turbine engines do you have, for what kind of homebuilt?? We work on primarily Pratt and Whitney PT6A-34's. Also I have 21 years on P&W R-985 AN14B, and R-1340, 9 cylinder radial engines.Now those make real engine noises

Arrrgh arrgh Round Motor sounds! In school, there was an outfit across the field that used Convairs. I had an instructor that would stop class so that we could listen to "them round motors."

PT6s like the starships had. I have a short blurb on my website about the Starships that Raytheon has in mothball. In a nutshell: I saw an airplane graveyard on our way to IRG. I looked it up on Google earth and saw that it was where all the starships were gathered. On our way home, I wanted to stop and get some pics but got turned around by the guard and the signs that said "No Cameras."

[Cary Winch]

Wayne and Rocky,

I am playing with little stuff. You were close though with the James Bond BD5, pretty much the same engine. I have a couple of the 160HP Solars. Really simple little engine, once you come up with a electronic contoller and get all that sorted out. That is why the test rig, making sure I get plenty of time on the electronics.

Here is the cool part, the plane is definetely not what you would expect to see it on. It is a Bakeng Duce. If you are not familiar with a Duce it is a two seat tandem open cockpit parasol wing. It was based on the old Fairchild 22 and looks alot like that except for having much simpler Cessna spring gear.

I was thinking of putting a round engine on it, I know where I can get a 160hp Kinner and I also know where there are enough parts to build a Warner but these Solars just kind of fell in my lap. And I must admit I am having more fun with them than I thought I would. Once I am satisfied with the first engine I will pull it and put the gearbox on so I can start prepping it for the plane. The controls will transfer over to the second engine so I can put some hours on it and then sell it off to pay for the whole deal. I already have a electric prop for it.

But right now all that is on hold while the hangar is being repaired.

Cary

[asianflava]

I know that a lot ot the Lancair guys use those Walter engines but that would be overkill for the Duce.....which is an interesting choice for a turbine install.

I googled it:

[angib]

If it's not too insensitive (not meant to be - just popped into my mind), what Cary needs is a Rover turbine fire pump:



You get to play with a turbine and it puts out fires - can you ask for anything more? More pics here (scroll 1/5th down)

I can't say that I've seen one of these, but I did see one of the basic Rover turbines that powered it. Two were fitted to a boat under the helm and navigator seats - 55hp from an engine that fitted in a 12" x 12" x 12" cube and could be picked up easily in one hand! (Of course the 12" excludes the intake and exhaust ducts which were about as big!)

Andrew