Hatz Biplane Association

I purchased Hatz # 699 the one Jim Miglino built about four months ago and found one of the flyingwires had a nick and small crack. I ordered the wire from Steen Aero Lab (very nice and helpful people) and it should be in soon. I wanted to see if anyone would know the proper tension the wires should be. The javelins are held on with what it looks like rib stitching and some sort of clear or varnish brushed on the stitching. I think I am going to do it the same to match the rest of the plane unless their is a better way of doing it.

I Posted this on the Biplane Forum and had great replies but wanted to post it here for more input. I did order a TENSIOMETER from Holloway engineering.

Thanks

I tensioned the wires on NX1279 to around 650 lbs.

What's more important than the actual tension is that parallel wires are tensioned evenly. If one is a lot tighter than it's neighbor, it will be carrying all the load rather than sharing it. If the one carrying all the load then fails, that load will be instantly transfered to the slacker which will likely also fail.

Regarding how often to check them, I've found that there is often a little settling in that occurs during the first 50 hours or so, but after than most biplanes don't change very much.

Mark

monteithrp wrote:<snip> I did order a TENSIOMETER from Holloway engineering.

I found the Holloway web site but didn't see a price for their tensiometer. What does he charge? Spruce sells a similar tensiometer for $244.50. Just curious. Any used ones collecting dust that someone wants to sell?

Scott
HC86

Holloway sells them for 250.00 but you get all kinds of support from him and he is a wealth of knowledge on biplanes.

Wes