Dear subscribers, dear Mike,
I really enjoyed meeting many of you in person since I was able to put a face to the email address that I already knew.
Thank you for the kind comments that I got from many of you on my airplane and as promised I post some pictures and details on the interior
Seats:
I bought them from Maxspeed-Motorsports.com – they come from somewhere in Asia and are a knock-off on the Porsche GT3 SEAT
Quality: was overall good but they had some minor flaws
Weight: about 15lbs each – I don’t know about the rail system
Price: approx 1300 $: search on ebay for Porsche carbon fiber seats or Porsche racing seat and you will get results
Mounting: I used their rail system but the aluminum side brackets (conection seat-rail) and the base plate (connection rail-airplane) are home made – I could provide prints if needed
If you look at the pics: there is a little aluminum block mounted to the base plate – don’t worry about this, I use this to back up the hand gear pump since I used a different mounting for the hand pump
Comfort: since it is a closed bucket seat there is no ventilation: other than that I like them
Dimensions: there is a sketch attached – the dimensions to it are as following (if you find that sketch online it should work because the seller is using now the sketch I made origninally)
A- 18 inches
B- 20 inches
C- 14.5 inches
D- 19 inches
E- 19 inches
F- 37 inches
G- 4 inches
H- 6 inches
I- 23 inches
J- 6 ¼ inches
K- 23 inches
L- 13 inches
Interior:
It’s made out of 2 bids (layers) of the Lancair carbon fiber
Some pics look kind of funny with the flash – in reality I think it looks better and the inconsistencies in the material are not an issue in my opinion
You get a big old glass window and roll out two layers of carbon – you should use plenty of resin and roll over it with a little paint roller in order to make the carbon look shiny after its dried
You make templates out of card board for the individual interior pieces (easy to work with and you can add on with tape)
You need to know that the cardboard and the carbon fiber can only be bent around one axis at the time – you therefore have to split the interior pieces accordingly around the ceiling to make it work
You take the cardboard template and cut the same shape out of the carbon fiber – you can use a big scissors for the rough and sand paper for the detail
You secure the carbon fiber pieces in the plane with the click bond studs
On some edges you might want to use some kind of edge lip from MC Master and on the back side of the panels I used stripes of self-adhesive foam from MC Master
For the arm rests you have to find someone that can make some leather pads and around the stick you have to be creative.
The whole interior including the seats can be made well under 2000$ - And may be making the cardboard templates is something your wife enjoys doing…
Good luck
Ralf