INTRODUCTION

This is the Fisher Flying Products RS-80 Tiger Moth. I decided to build my own in June of 2000 after taking a flight in the factory demonstrator shown above. The trip to Edgeley, North Dakota, was a lot of fun and Gene Hansen and the rest of the folks at FFP were great. After Gene gave my wife Laura and I rides, we ordered the wing kit on the spot. (You can buy the entire aircraft or build in stages by purchasing the wing, fuselage and finally the hardware kits separately, depending on how fast you want your money to separate from your wallet!). I'd recommend FFP to anyone interested in a great wood plane kit. www.fisherflying.com

The R-80 is a 80% scaled replica of the de Haviland DH 82 Tiger Moth. The replicahas a 23' wing span and is 19' from spinner to tail. Empty weigh of the factory demonstrator, which is sporting a Norton Rotory, is 560 lbs and gross weight is listed at 1150 lbs. The kit comes with two fuel tanks, one inside the upper wing centersection and a larger header tank behind the firewall. I found the two tanks hold approximately 23. 5 gallons of fuel.

As soon as I started to work on my kit I decided to join an Experimental Aircraft Association (www.eaa.org ) chapter. I found a great bunch of folks in Chapter 338, in Mountain View, CA. Most of them are building RV's, but I've learned to overlook that! Several of the members, notably Ace Campbell and Gary LeGare (technical advisor) are very knowledgeable about wood construction and have been extremely helpful when I've gone to them with questions. Our chapters take pride in the fact that most members in the group are actively building, or have completed their projects.

While building this project I have been gathering as much information about other FFP Tiger Moth projects out there. Besides the factory's RS-80 (shown at the top of this web site), FFP also has a red and silver R-80. That plane has a Norton rotary (100 hp) engine. Oh, the R-80 has a wood fuselage while the RS-80 sports a steel tube frame. I'm building the R-80. I have found three other R-80's that are currently flying. The builders are Dennis Robinson, Ron Shuler and....

Ken Flaglor. Ken's plane, seen here, was featured on the cover of January 1999's Experimenter magazine. Ken is running with a Subaru EA-81 with an RFI re-drive.

Ron has a camafluage scheme similar to the factory RS-80 and is powered by a C-85, while Dennis's plane sports a red fuselage with silver wings (like the factory R-80). Dennis chose to power his plane with a Geo Metro 1.3 liter and a Raven re-drive.

This is a shot of Dennis' rear cockpit.

I have talked with three other builders, besides myself, who are at various stages of construction. While other kits have been sold, I haven't been in touch with them and they haven't popped up on the "Fishnet". The Fishnet is a on-line builders group which specializes in FFP designs. Laird Lind runs the group and has a nice webpage. Check it out at www.lairdlind.com/fishnet.htm

WING CONSTRUCTION

The kit arrived in July and I began to work on building wing ribs. After only TWO MONTHS, I had the 52 ribs and 48 false ribs built. As I lined up this stack of ribs as shown here, I was only a little nervous when I had to trim the tails on my neighbors radial arm saw.

After completing the ribs, I started on the spar construction. This basically involved building an "I" beam for the main spar while constructing a much lighter rear spar. This picture shows the full size blueprints while I finished up the first spar. Note the crate in which the wing kit arrived mounted on the wall on the right side which used to keep all of the ribs in alignment after I finish getting them in place.

The ribs are slid onto the spar. Note the angle iron.

After the ribs are installed the geodetic strips are glued into place. Its during this process when the words "You can't have enough clamps....or troops in Madigascar" begin to make a lot of sense. In this photo you can see the brackets for the interplane struts and the flying wires. The nose pieces are glued into place and the leading edge plywood is added, then scallopped. The aileron is then cut out and its leading edge is added.

By the end of 2000, I had the two bottom wings finished,  two more to go!

I finished the last two top wings, each taking about a month. The learning curb really goes up quickly with this type of construction. Total time on the four wings, about 325 hrs.

Starting in March 2001, I began the centersection. This required its own special oversized ribs. The auxilery fuel tank fits inside of this.

I then constructed the elevator, horizontal stabilizer and rudder. Like the wingtip bows, these required me to laminate many pieces of wood together. I would usually start by making a copy of the plan (so I can still read the original) and laying it out on the workbench. Cover the blueprint with plastic, drive nails around the perimeter and start slopping T-88 everywhere. After using every clamp in sight, the part would start to take shape and its off to the next step. Construction time for the tail feathers, two months.

FUSELAGE

The fuselage kit arrived in late March as I was working on the rudder. I started to construct the fuselage sides after I lengthened my work bench from 12' to 16' (by 4'). The sides went together very quickly and in a matter of a couple of weeks I had the basic shape come together. The fuselage is constructed, as I've come to expect, on the full size plans. There is a builders manual which give a step by step guide. For the most part, if you read it a few times, things will make sense. If I'm still stumped, or have some stupid question, I'll call FFP and talk with Gene or Chuck. I would call once a week on average and never did I get anything but great service.

You can see the wings in the rafters and some of the tail surfaces on the wall.

After the basic box structure is constructed, the tail is pulled together and crossmembers are added. Then load of gussets are installed along with cornerblocks. This seem to take forever. But not to much later it was time to install the panel, turtledeck and baggage compartment. My only change to the plans has been to lengthen the baggage compartment by one former as suggested by Dennis Robinson. If will be nice to have a place to stuff a jacket or two. The gear was fun and fairly straight forward. Then it was time for initial taxi tests with the family!

I then proceeded to coat the fuselage with Systems Three Epoxy. It is completely compatible with there T-88 structural adhesive and doesn't require multiple coats of the stuff to do the job. The control sticks and rudder pedal where then bolted in place.

ENGINE

I've been thinking about what engine to use for my Tiger Moth since I first purchased the wing kit. Because of the narrow cowl on the Tiger Moth, I'd like to stay with an in-line 4 cylinder powerplant. If I had gone with the RS-80 (steel tube fuselage) model I would have chosen the LOM, www.moraviation.com in-line, 120 hp, engine. The LOM is too heavy for the wood fuselage and the Walter Mikron 75 hp doesn't have the power I'd live to have. An auto engine with a re-drive began to sound like the way to go. I talked with Dennis Robinson, who was using a Geo Metro 1.3 liter engine with a Raven Re-drive on his R-80. He had been very impressed with the engine set up and the folks at Raven www.raven-rotors.com. I ordered by re-drive in October and purchased a used engine which came from a 2001 Geo Metro with only 2000 miles on it. I also ordered an engine mount from FFP.

Here is a Geo Engine with the Raven Re-drive installed:

LATEST PHOTOS

PHOTOS BY PAT MAY NOV 10,2001

Feel free to E-mail me with any questions you might have.

Dave Flohr

Tigermoth2@netzero.com