Weight and Balance

[Kevin Cassin]

Good afternoon, new member of the forum. The Meyers 200 has fast become the leading candidate for to put a retractable in my hangar but I’m having trouble with the weight and balance.

I’ve always been aware of the limited useful load but that doesn’t concern me much. Dean Siracusa has been very gracious and gave me a sample weight and balance as well as a factory sheet from another aircraft so I can see the methodology.

I think I have two questions/areas of interest for the group:

1. Have you all followed the factory methodology and weigh the aircraft drained of engine oil and account for that in your “daily” weight and balance? The provided samples don’t indicate the method in which it was weighed, where the factory sheet specifies the basic empty weight and CG are with oil drained. That’s a 23lb difference in a very forward station.

I’m curious to see how folks here are handling the narrow CG envelope at higher weights. I find myself having a hard time getting aft far enough to get into the envelope. I’m finding it difficult to do in a number of configurations. Even solo I find I require ballast to fit in envelope, it’s even worse if the sample weight and balance I have doesn’t have the oil included in the basic empty weight and CG.

Being a bit overweight never concerns me much, especially with me seeing the talk of the abandoned 3,400lb GW increase, but being out of envelope does.

Any experience with this would be very helpful, thanks.

[Ed Pulliam]

Kevin-welcome to the Meyers team! I do the vast majority of my flying solo. These are great 2 person plus a lot of luggage and full fuel airplanes. My useful load is about 900#. With fuel fuel, that leaves 420# for pilot and pax plus luggage. I weigh 170 and my wife 130 so we have 120# left to be legal. Alternatively, put 60 gallons of fuel and get another 120# of pax. 60 is basically 3 hours of flight time and an hour reserve. So at that level both my daughters can go and we are still legal.

Since most of my flying is just me, I carry a 50# bag of sand in the luggage compartment to get the CG more to the rear. It works great. I have never felt like I was running out of elevator authority, even without the bag of sand. I do NOT trim in the pattern. I have in the past but have found it is not necessary.

This is what I do; I am sure others can share their experience. I had my 200 weighed on the scales a few years ago but he did not drain the oil.

Best-

Ed

[Kevin Cassin]

Ed, thanks for the detailed reply. I think I’ll have to do the same and fly with ballast in the luggage compartment. I should probably also lost my quarantine weight, that might help as well. My wife and I average out to two FAA average adults, I should probably work on making myself an FAA average adult too.

Safe and happy flying.

[Ed Pulliam]

Pretty funny Kevin! I bet most of us have some quarantine lbs!

Good luck on the hunt. Dean is the go to here.

Best-

[Peter Jensen]

Kevin,

I just had my Meyers weighed. ~ 830 pounds useful load available. My standard fuel load is a light top of the Aux tanks ~ 36 gals total, and about 8 gals in each main. I take off and climb on one main tank, cruise off the Aux tanks, descend and land on the other main tank. it works well for me.

Best, Peter

[Kevin Cassin]

Peter,

Thanks for that. For some reason I hadn’t thought to have the “main” tanks act as the location for the lower amount of fuel. That makes loading much more workable for me in this type.

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