Snort

This site was last updated on February 15, 2008.

The Snort was designed and built by Howard Rush for the 1990 World Championships. The name is due to Rich Lopez. He reasoned: It's expensive, you get a Rush for a little while, then it's gone.

Notice the high aspect ratio. The wingspan is about 49", more than most Fast planes. The prototype (Mother of Snort?) was covered with 1/2-mil, anisotropic, "tensilized" Mylar, donated by Martyn Cowley (where anisotropic means that it shrinks more in one direction (spanwise) than the other (chordwise)). The production planes were covered with Solarfilm.

The engine is a Nelson .15, with rear intake and rear exhaust. Remember that this was from the days of unmuffled exhausts.

The inlet in the cowl is to get some air to the venturi.

Tom Fluker suggested the minipipe. Made out of a high-temperature epoxy and carbon fiber, it's quite light and typically survived for 3 or 4 flights before deteriorating. Definitely not a muffler, as it added a few hundred RPM and amplified the noise.

The mold parts were built by Norm McFadden. The outlet mold was used in later years to meet the new exhaust restrictions.

Here's an aft view of the bladder installation. Notice that the bladder compartment is elliptical. Carbon fiber and epoxy.

Here's the bellcrank installation, on the CG, slightly inboard of the centerline. Notice the ribs. Each is a composite part, with carbon sandwiched around Rohacell foam. They were made in a slab, then sliced into individual parts.

The shear web connecting the spars is Rohacell. The spars are carbon fiber around a honeycomb. As with the ribs, the spars are layed up in a slab.

Above is an aft view of the spar and leading edge. Below is a side view of the leading edge. Again, the leading edge is composite, this time with Kevlar sandwiched around Foamular extruded-polystyrene foam. (Some Snorts had leading edges covered with carbon mat.) The molded leading edge combines with the spar structure to yield a D-tube.

The leading edge was layed up in a large 2-part mold (the female part is shown below). Machined from aluminum by Len Bedford using an numerically controlled mill.

Some details of the leading edge, near the engine.

The built-up stab. Note the composite spar, below. Carbon fiber sandwiched around Rohacell foam.

Howard notes: The project was silly and would have been more amusing had I done it myself, but I had to enlist an army of volunteers to help because of my poor planning.