MINI IMP

Here's another tail prop design - the Grinvald G.801 Orion.

Anyone building, or know of someone building a Taylor MINI IMP here in Australia.

 

I'd like to know more about the plane and it's building prosess.

 

Cheers,

 

Graeme

 

[ATTACH alt=Mini Imp 6.jpg]43106[/ATTACH]

"Mini Imp" caught my eye. I love the aircraft. Get rid of the retracts and it's pretty simple to build. I can't speak for builds in Oz, but I know of none that are building in the US. I bought the plans for Molt's Mini Imp some time ago. He used a flexidyne (ABB 75D X 1 3/8 FLEXIDYNE DRIVE) the get thru the torsional harmonic problem typical of long driveshafts. The flexidyne is designed to be used on heavily loaded motors to soften the starting load. It has steel shot that drives a "turbine" until the rpm is such that it locks up. From my research, the flexidyne doesn't last more than 100 hours on the Mini Imp. A driveshaft on a propeller is just a bad idea. One of Burt Rutan's first jobs was working for Jim Bede, assigned to figure out how to make it work on the BD5. Interesting to note that Rutan's pusher designs have no drive shaft.