500 series weight & balance

[JimC]

My 500B seems to be pretty nose heavy. Unlike some others on this forum, I can easily come up with a reasonable loading that puts it out of W&B to the front. With 6 170lb adults I'm out of cg forward no matter what I put in the baggage compartment or gas tank. That means it's not a six-seat airplane. Is this normal?

I have the Shrike nose & Air Center AC. Everything else is pretty close to stock.

It seems like 50lbs attached all the way back at the 400" station would fix everything.

My EW is 4780 lbs at a c.g. of 168.5 inches. Does anyone else want to publish their empty weights & cgs?

[Bruce Byerly]

Re-weigh it. Empty the fuel. Then you will really know where it is and how much it weighs. They commonly won’t hold stated fuel capacity which is more important to me than being a little nose heavy. 

[JimC]

Re-weigh it. Empty the fuel. Then you will really know where it is and how much it weighs. They commonly won’t hold stated fuel capacity which is more important to me than being a little nose heavy.

It's part of my plan but it's probably a month out. I've reweighed the last 3 piston planes I've bought. Some people don't like to do it because they think their "paper weight" is low and they can "get away with" flying over gross. Well, the only time they'll know you're over gross is after you make a hole in the ground, and the easiest way not to do that is to know the real, true weight of your plane.

I'm hoping to get an idea if this nose-forward cg is normal or an aberration.

[Bruce Byerly]

It should have already had the weight in the tail done after the nose job. I’m sure it started out perfect then the huge fiberglass nose fairing was added …

Not shocking.

[JimC]

Has anyone ever *removed* a Shrike nose from a 500B?

32 lbs in the wrong place - I certainly wouldn't put one on a plane that doesn't have it.

[appleseed]

That is a great idea Jim. I always thought the 500s looked better with the original metal nose and wingtips anyway.

I’ll be interested to hear how practical it is to put the nose back.

[JimC]

It's 38 lbs, not 32...but never mind. I underestimated how big it is. That looks like some major surgery.

[JimC]

My goal is to get the cg back about 3 inches - that'll put me closer to the middle of the range. I'm taking off and landing with almost full nose up trim.

So far I found the easiest 1/2" ever - a math/rounding error from 2005. That doesn't affect the trim, but it does make me feel better about flying a little farther from the edge of the paper envelope. I have about 10 lbs of stuff in the nose that'll come out in the first panel upgrade - that'll be almost another 1/2".

Only 2.5 more inches to go!

[appleseed]

I had the factory front door off of the Shrike today to replace the rubber seals.

A good opportunity to weigh it since people often mention the weight penalty for the shrike mods.

It felt like 35 lbs while I was carrying it around, but only came in at 23lbs 6 oz. Of course the skin, stringers and window of the B models weighs something too. I’d bet with the added airframe structure around the door etc. it would cost you 20lbs too add a front door.

Along with the cosmetic gimmicks - eyebrow windows, shrike nose, “winglets” - there’s the additional weight of flush skin control surfaces with their associated mass balance, the door, some soundproofing, and probably myriad little marketing “improvements”. I note in another thread that Jim’s middle seats weight 26lbs, whereas my el cids with hydrolok recline weigh 39lbs.

Could anyone with some direct experience estimate the weight delta between a comparably equipped 60s B model, and a 70s S model?