Kickstart: STC to improve useful load with full fuel.

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Light and Sporty Guy
One common complaint about "typical" light aircraft is the lack of capacity for passengers / baggage with full fuel. For example, a Cessna 172S can only carry 578 pounds of people and bags with full fuel. Essentially making it a two place aircraft.

I have a plan. A great big beautiful plan. You are going to love it!

TankBalls! Lightweight, fuel proof balls 1 1/2 inches in diameter that can be pushed through the fuel filler. Here's how it works: Suppose you typically need to carry 760 pounds of people and bags in your 172S. By inserting 107 tank balls, your new full fuel weight will allow you to carry every ounce of that!!! With FULL tanks!!!!!!! A 182 pound improvement in the real (full fuel) useful load!!!!!

But that's not all!

At $5.00 per gallon for av-gas, you will save up to $151.67 per fill up! Just think of how much more flying you can do with this kind of savings!!!!!!

What I need from you:

Quite frankly, developing an STC is expensive. But with just $350,000 in up-front funding, we can develop this and see it to market. And! You can get in on the ground floor! Just click on the link in my .sig to be one of the firsts to donate!
 
Would it help if we sacrificed, errrrr, volunteered @eman1200's Mooney for the tests? It is just a Mooney after all.
 
Brad W said:
upgrade option....fill them with helium
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I think you're on to something here. What if someone developed a lightweight balloon that fit in that vast empty space behind the bulkhead clear of all control cables and filled it with helium?
 
If 578lbs is a 2-place plane.... you’re dealing with some large folks!!
 
Sorta related...when G-Force and Dallara built the first couple of generations of IndyCar open wheel racing vehicles in the late 90s, the maximum allowed fuel load was 35 gallons. A few years later it was reduced to 30 gallons.

The solution to reducing the fuel cell capacity was orange plastic balls between two and four inches in diameter. We had to fiddle around a bit to get the correct size and number of balls to accomplish the five gallon reduction in capacity.
 
Timbeck2 said:
I think you're on to something here. What if someone developed a lightweight balloon that fit in that vast empty space behind the bulkhead clear of all control cables and filled it with helium?
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A real back of the envelope calculation gives me something like 3-6 pounds of lift by filling the empennage with a helium balloon. 1 cu ft of He will lift 28 grams. Someone with access to drawings or a plane calculate the volume that
You could fill with balloons and make the calculation better.
 
Matthew Rogers said:
A real back of the envelope calculation gives me something like 3-6 pounds of lift by filling the empennage with a helium balloon. 1 cu ft of He will lift 28 grams. Someone with access to drawings or a plane calculate the volume that
You could fill with balloons and make the calculation better.
Click to expand...

The weight of the structure to hold the helium would likely “outweigh” (haha) any benefit.
 
dans2992 said:
The weight of the structure to hold the helium would likely “outweigh” (haha) any benefit.
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Not if it is just a balloon. Doesn’t matter if it fails in flight as you will have burned fuel and be under gross.
Might not need any STC as the airframe only lists a gross weight and if you add helium balloons, you are just making the actual takeoff weight less. Baggage areas list maximum weight, not minimum or negative weight limits.
But I am not talking from any place of authority. So don’t take this seriously.
 
Filling the empennage with balloons might not be good for the (rather critical) control cables that pass through there. :)
 
dans2992 said:
Filling the empennage with balloons might not be good for the (rather critical) control cables that pass through there. :)
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It would also make the airplane nose-heavy, and the increased downward force on the tail would offset the decreased weight.

sounds reasonable, anyway. ;)
 
Wasn’t it you that had the Kickstarter for the Duck and Cat instrument flying aid too?
Can I still get in on that ground floor?
 
A goofy friend of mine put a weather balloon in a plastic garbage can in the back of a four seat airplane and filled it with Helium. He wanted to see if it would fly any differently.

I never heard the results, but we had some fun that night at a party breathing the stuff and making funny voices!

Yeah, College...
 
IK04 said:
A goofy friend of mine put a weather balloon in a plastic garbage can in the back of a four seat airplane and filled it with Helium. He wanted to see if it would fly any differently.

I never heard the results, but we had some fun that night at a party breathing the stuff and making funny voices!

Yeah, College...
Click to expand...
Removing a headset or bottle of water would have about the same effect.
 
MauleSkinner said:
I can see the ads now, once the competition builds...
“He’s got big balls, but we’ve got the biggest balls of them all!”
Click to expand...

And in Texas, they could be marketed as 'Big balls in cowtown.'
 
Timbeck2 said:
I think you're on to something here. What if someone developed a lightweight balloon that fit in that vast empty space behind the bulkhead clear of all control cables and filled it with helium?
Click to expand...
Why limit it to the tail area. Put it in the wingtips, too!
 
Timbeck2 said:
I think you're on to something here. What if someone developed a lightweight balloon that fit in that vast empty space behind the bulkhead clear of all control cables and filled it with helium?
Click to expand...
Yeah, at about one ounce of lift per cubic foot ...
 
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