Decibel and the Coot

The different parts:

by Karl Senn mail to Karl.Senn@intel.com

Intro
What is noise
What is sound
What creates sound
What conducts sound
Is sound reflected
Examples of sources of sound

Page
A
B
C
D
E
F

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1
2
3
3
4
5

Rivet heads and protruding screw-heads

Sprayrails
Sharp corners on fuselage and wing intersection
Sharp corners on canopies, seals and small gaps
Antennas and boat-fittings outside of hull
Air intakes and pylon
Pylon-cockpit connection
Water-rudder
Engine
Vortex generators on the pylon
Propeller
Spinner

F1
F2
F3
F4
F5
F6
F7
F8
F9
F 10
F 11
F 12

5
5
6
6
6
6
7
7
7
8
8
10

What offers do we have

11

Rivet heads and protruding screw-heads

Sprayrails
Sharp corners on fuselage and wing intersection
Sharp corners on canopies, seals and small gaps
Antennas and boat-fittings outside of hull
Pylon-cockpit connection
Water-rudder
Engine
Propeller
Spinner

G1
G2
G3
G4
G5
G7
G8
G9
G 11
G 12

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13
15
15
15
15
16
16
16
17

Last word

18

Links

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Intro: Late last year, or was it in the beginning of this one, Richard wrote about his experiment
by measuring the noise-level in his Coot on different occasions. I think this was quite a shock to
me. I knew that an airplane is not a concert hall, but as noisy as that? If not this mentioning by
Richard, I probably would have got a very bad surprise, but so I could start and ask questions
and prepare myself for it. The questioning of things, especially unpleasant ones and to find
answers to them is one of the most interesting adventures I may imagine for the academic part of
mine. So let me invite you to join in this journey of Decibel and the Coot to find out what we
homebuilders could do in relation to noise.
A; what is noise? This was the first question I had to answer. Well, everybody knows
instinctively what he calls noise, but is that really noise? I remember that my parents called the
Beatles noise,
friends of mine called Pachebel and Shostakovich noise, so what is it really?
In fact all where right. Noise is a subjectively negative weighted name for an impression created
in our mind by an individually different sort of sound. Everyone has a different spectrum of
sounds which he/she/it dislikes, that origin in the time when we had to react to our predators.
This spectrum is called noise and warned us in the old times from unhealthy events.
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So in fact noise is just sound which we do not like. The fishermen do for example not like Coots
because they make a special sound which chases away the good Catch, so they call this in our
ears very pleasant sound noise and start to fight it. Things like http://www.noisefree.org/
start to creep up in society, and more is to come like for ex:
http://pen.ci.santa-monica.ca.us/resource_mgmt/airport/
And so I got to my second question:
B; What is sound? Of course we all know what sound is: Its Bach at Christmas and Handels
Largo at our Marriage, for some it is even Metallica or Bon Jovy others call even the Bang of
guns a beautiful sound. But what is it in the technical world?
For to give you pictures about sound imagine a
quiet, undisturbed pool, throw a small stone into
it, quite into the centre. Now you see waves
circling from the centre out to the etch of the
pool. The moment the stone hits the water a
splash is heard and at the same time the waves
start. First outwards, then inwards and then
reflected outwards again. The energy of the stone
is bigger as the waters surface-tension (bondingenergy between the surface molecules of the
water) which it strokes, so to penetrate the watersurface, the stone has to pass over some of its
energy to break the surface tension and displace
the water. This loss of energy slows the stone down, displaces the water which itself creates the
first wave and creates the displacement of air which creates the unseen waves in the air which we
call sound. So sound is nothing else as a wave of air. Because air has another density than water,
the resulting wave-length is different, not
in the visible spectrum but now in the
audible spectrum. If our senses would be
more fine-tuned we could even detect
some heat wave and some vibrations. In
fact, the stone hitting the water creates a
three dimensional wave over a nearly
unlimited range of wavelengths. Only that
the energy contained in these waves is
very limited and therefore not disturbing
to us, but for the fish it is sufficient to
alarm him and chase him away, exactly as
us a few thousand years ago. Everything
moving creates waves of some kind of
length, the electron around the nucleus in
an atom as well as the piston in our engines or the blade of the propellers.
A wave has a region of higher pressure in front of it and a region of lesser pressure in the back of
it. The study of the behaviour of water particles in sea waves has shown that in fact a particle
aroused by a wave is moved a little bit forwards and then backwards again in small circles, in
fact looking just as if it bumps around without really being permanently displaced as long as not
a force is retaining it from bumping back, like the sand on the beach. What really wanders in a
wave is the energy displaced. As each particle needs a little bit of energy to overcome its inherent
laziness and accelerate from the standing to the moving state, the energy contained in a wave
becomes less and less till it is not enough to arouse the next particle.

Waves that we see are called light, the ones we hear are sound, the ones we feel are vibrations
and heat. Some which we do not so easily detect cure cancer, other create stress and so on.
Inherent to all waves is that our body exposed to them reacts to them, if we like it or not, thats
human nature and part of our communication with our surrounding.
Well, after I found out what sound is; a change in pressure in a special ambient, I asked myself:
C; What creates sound:
Well, I first thought that this would be an easy question, in the end
we all know that an engine creates sound, or a hammer on a sheet of metal, or,or...
But after some thoughts I found out that sound starts with a discharge of energy as for example
an explosion, an impact or a vibration. Hereby is the impact the singular event and vibration in
fact a multitude of impacts. Everything which creates a sound needs to set the surrounding air
into vibration, hereby creating the waves or pictures of waves in the air as we have seen them
origin by the stone falling into the water. How loud a sound is depends on the distance of the
source to the listener and the angle of the listener to the source. This gives reason to a multitude
of arguments about how and where to measure. What concerns me this is simple, I would like to
sit in the cockpit and therefore the position of the pilots head is the one which I am interested in.
Now lets have a look what really creates the sound, what really lets the air start to vibrate:
Well, there is a lot of work gone into that and a few sources will be named, but before I show all
the funny pictures here I would like that you remember a few things:
If you whistle, air is sent out of your mouth in a way that it vibrates in a certain way, the same is
by blowing over a bottle, the air in the bottle starts to vibrate and you hear the distinctive sound;
Huuuuh.
D; What conducts sound:
Every solid mass, may it be a piston, a
screw, a bolt or a piece of sheetmetal
conducts and in some cases propagates
vibrations, the bigger the surface of the
solid material, the bigger the sound
conduction. Think at a Gong: The
impact of a small, quite light
instrument, the bull-eye, creates quite a
bit of sound by setting the brass-plate
into vibrations.
An ambos is
another
example, quite
the opposite of
the gong.
And then I had to ask: If sound behaves like a wave, is originated and
conducted by other materials, will it even be reflected?

E; Is sound reflected?
And then, after a few moments the echo came to my mind. So, if an echo is a reflected soundwave, what happens then? What happens on an object?
Well lets see:
1. A (to make it simple a single) sound wave impacts with a
sheet of material, lets say aluminium,
2. part of the wave is reflected on the surface
3. a smaller part goes through the material
4. and part of this penetrating wave is reflected on the
backside of the sheet, but
5. the impact of wave 1 and the penetration as well as the
reflection of the part at 4 passes some energy of the
wave over to the sheet which under load stresses
itself and expands 6.
7. as the sheet is expanded to the equal of its own absorbed
energy to the impacting energy less the reflection
and the intruding energy it starts to bump back,
8. at the end of its bump, less in distance than at 5, it gives
another part of the energy away as another wave, thus
creating another smaller pressure wave which is, if strong enough, heard as sound or echo.
If the form and the material are adequate the energy at 2 is the echo, the one at 4 is so small that
its echo is bouncing inside the material till it is passed away or strong enough to bring the
material to its own resonance (music instruments, vibration) together with the energy in 5. The
pseudo echo created in 9 is a false echo and normally collides with the next sound wave,
changing their amplitude.
Well, and where is this echo really used, beside the monsters of the
past in some valleys?
One for example is the fish finder:
Another use is medicine:

And after all we have the sonar,

which is equal to the fish finder.
In all this applications we use the reflected, real echo, but in some
cases we use the absorbed energy, for example in ultrasound-welding,
used in the solar-high-tech industry as well as in the production of microchips.
And the bats use it for their orientation: http://science.howstuffworks.com/bat2.htm .
Then there is the medical use of this, but here I rather pass the word to Richard who could tell
you far more about this than I am able to imagine.
And what has that all to do with our Coot? Thats for sure your question now, well, in fact a lot:
It is the origin of Richards 114 dB measured in the Cabin of his Coot, sound transported through
the structure and bouncing of and back in all directions, some equalling itself out but mostly
reinforcing themselves with the energy of the next sound wave coming on, created by the next
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vortex or the next explosion in the engine. So for some application it may be good, for others it is
baaaad!
I just see you getting bored by now, you ask yourself what this all has to do with our Coot, well,
lets have a look at some pictures I had the chance to make or copy from the Net.
On this occasion I would like to thank to all off you sending me some really interesting photos
and as well as that to say to all off you:
There is no critic on anything I show, I would be proud to show you this pictures of my own
Coot, but this one is still not born. I have a lot of respect to all of you who are flying, building or
even dreaming of a Coot; its neither the most simple nor the quickest Airplane to be built.
Please accept my highest regards for all of you.
F ; Examples of sources of sound:

So lets start with

F 1: rivet heads and protruding screw-heads: Wind blowing over
something standing out of a clean surface creates vortices, similar to you
blowing over the bottle, only that the resonance body is your plane
instead of the bottle. See the following naca report:
The effect of rivet heads on the characteristics of a 6 by 36 foot Clark Y metal airfoil

F 2: sprayrails: The same as for rivets stands for sprayrails,

only here the impact is even bigger and a lot of research has
gone into the shape, angle and size of them. The best in terms of
vortices is to have none, so the building of auxiliary sponsons is
the much better way. The sprayrails create a vortex along the fuselage
which impacts the efficiency of the horizontal and vertical control surfaces
in a very negative way, beside that the vortices create an effect on the side
of the hull like a drummer on his drum, continuously banging against it.
F 3: sharp corners on fuselage to wing intersection: Naca reports have
shown that a sharp corner along the intersection of the fuselage with the wing
5

creates large vortices, creates a lot of additional drag and minimises the active wing surface as
well as that the vortices created are the origin of tail-buffeting. Concerning noise we are mostly
interested in the vortices.

http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1935/naca-tm-764/naca-tm-764.pdf
And further we have an abrupt change from fuselage height to wing-chord where above NACA
report from 1935 states:

F 4: sharp corners on canopies, seals and small gaps: Small

openings and gaps create small, quick rotating vortices which create
high vibrations. These vibrations overlap easily the ones in the lower
frequency range, multiplying their effect and enlarging the soundrange. In fact, as they are created nearest to our head, they are the worst
for us and may easily be avoided. A very good example is a cockpit like
Kens, just right beside:
Gaps are highways for noise without anything hindering outside noise and overlapping it with
the vortex noise, thus amplifying it.
F 5: Antennas and boat-fittings outside of the hull: An antenna consists mostly of some kind
of aerodynamic formed base and a long, round kind of wire protruding far out
of the fuselage. The round form is the cheapest to manufacture but in the
same time creates a really unnecessary source of vortices far ahead of
anything else. The disturbed air-stream then reaches the canopy and the
vortices drum onto the plexi. A simple way of doing away with that would be
the mounting of the antenna either inside or as far back as possible on the
fuselage.
(A side hint is here given to sealed gaps on controllsurfaces, these are
described by NACA-wr-l74 concerning sealed internal balanced
control surfaces 1945, this issue is also mentioned in earlier Cootnewsletters.)
F 6: Air-intakes and pylon: A pusher type aircraft like the Coot has the
unfortunate need for an engine support high above the hull. This creates an
obstacle for the airflow to the propeller. The influence of the disturbed airflow
on to the propeller will be looked at later. But here we have the creation of
vortices direct above our head. While the effect of the vortices is mostly felt on
the backside of the canopy and in the propeller flow, they drum against the
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pylon, which itself has a nice sheet-metal cover reacting in the worst case like a Gong or in the
better one like a drum. To make things worse this cover is a straight and solid connection into
our cockpit and acts like a speaker-tube on one of the old steamboats. A bang outside makes you
close your ears inside of the cockpit.
F 7: pylon-cockpit connection: While most builders do a fine job to seal
the space between the pylon and the cockpit-backside, here
would be the place to leave a small gap, about 5 mm wide
and seal it with just a thin bit
of very flexible silicon.
The gap has of course to be
gone straight around the whole pylon and the
back wall of the cockpit be built around the
pylon. In the case of a tube construction like
the one Pierre Husson builds the bridging
effect of the vibrations lead into the cockpit
from outside on could be very easily
dampened by covering the tubes with watertube heat-insulation, a lightweight flexible
foam tube used to dampen the heat loss of
warm water tubes in the home. Of course the
connection to the rest still exists and has to
be looked at, but it looks better than the design with the massive sheetmetal-bridge, even the
later is easier to close out by building the cockpit with a separate wall around it, leaving the air
gap intact and therefore breaking the resonance-bridge.
F 8: water-rudder: Well, you may think that this is far back from our
head, yes you are right, if there would not be the very
massive and straight aluminium tail-tube.
This one really acts like a telephon line bringing the
vibrations of the smallest sound created by all this vortices
from the first half of the hull and the prop straight to the
back of our small compartment. Whatever vortices drums onto the cover of
the tail or the vertical and horizontal tail surfaces is conducted through this
massive resonance tube straight to us. Beside its weight this is for sure
something which should be improved. And vortices there are as the waterrudder even acts while flying, creating drag and sound.
F 9: engine: There is a very good essay written and posted by Cord, please see there what to do
with the noise created by the engine, a
muffler could for example
be hidden in the pylon. But
what we will look at is the
cowling. While it is quite
clear that the engine itself
is connected to the support
with rubber-vibration-dampers (M1) the
cowling itself is mostly very stiff fixed to the
rest of the structure. There is no reason why
this could not be done in the same way via
some rubber-metal supports. They come in
even very small sizes of just a few mm. And
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then we could dampen the resonance of the cowling by gluing inside of it a thin layer of
rockwool or Glasfibre matt. Nothing expensive, nothing very thick, just about 10mm, the best is
stepped (M2). This makes the cover take on a different frequency than the engine, dampening
against outside and reflecting against inside, cancelling a few waves out.
Picture from a tractor-mount
F 10: vortex-generators on the pylon: Somebody somewhere wrote that they would make the
plane more silent. I hope this would be right, but theory speaks against it. They do their destined
job well by create more vortices going into the propeller. That is something we really do not
want to. It may be that we have already such a turbulent flow against the propeller-disk that it
doesnt anymore matter. But to add even more doesnt help at all.
F 11: propeller: Let me repeat the first line of NACA Report No 526: The two-blade propeller,
one of the most powerful sources of sound known, has been studied with the view of obtaining
fundamental information concerning the noise emission.
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1936/naca-report-526/
Propellers are nothing else than wings in a different position. They act like wings and they have
all the problems of wings and one very large one more: They do not have the same airspeed
over the full span of them. While on the blade-root the speed may be just a few hundred km/h,
the tip may reach sonic speeds. While the centre of the blade may have laminar flow, the tip has
the normal vortex which takes quite a lot away of its span, exactly like the vortex at the end of
the wing reduces wing-span. But as this vortex is generated with high speed and due to structural
problems in propeller-blade construction a mostly not so ideal tip-form to reduce the tip-vortex is
chosen. The pressure-waves created by it are enormous and similar to what happens in a
combustion-chamber, only this time not contained and continuously. This wave is beautifully
shown on this very rare photo of a corsair:
A Fleet Air Arm Corsair III in 1944 with some beautiful, if unintended, visualization of the
propeller wake.
Newest German technology is able to visualise noise.
While I could not obtain a picture of an aircraft-propeller
visualisation, the one of a windmill shows the same
effect. Due to the large diameter only one tip could be
visualized at a time.
More about this see at
http://www.acoustic-camera.com/.
For us, not propeller builders the following two rules are
important:
The bigger the propeller the higher the tip-speed,
the more rpms the bigger the noise. So, for to create the
biggest noise we need a quick turning large 2 blade propeller.
Much the better solution is a small propeller with multiple
blades turning very slowly. A very good example is the one
of Kens Coot: The only negative points are the loss due to
multiple tips and the higher costs.
The less noisy ones are the composite propellers due to the
inherent flexibility of the composite material and structure
where Kevlar is better than Carbon and this than Glass.

Now lets have a look at the pressure-wave created

by a propeller as we see it on the picture of the
corsaire:
When we normally look at a wave we always look
at it in two dimensions, but in reality it is a three
dimensional creation. Its pressure goes in all
directions, but for us here three of them will be
sufficient to be looked at:
P1 going in direction against the canopy,
P2 going in radial direction and
P3 creating trust and going in direction of the tail.
We are not able to change the propellers other than to buy
another one, so what we have to do is to change the surrounding
of the propeller: The location and the form of the hull. While
above a lot is written about structures in front of the propellercircle, we also have to look at what the propeller needs for get its
highest-possible efficiency:
The most important thing would be to have an
undisturbed airflow coming into it. This is
why a tractor-plane has a far higher efficiency
and the pusher configuration really looses
out, but the Coot is a pusher and so will it be.
So one thing besides cleaning up all the
already mentioned details is to avoid by any
means the exhaust going straight into the
propeller-circle.
The problems created are:

Heat on the blades (especially negative by composite blades),

Loss of thrust due to strong turbulence and

pulsing (2-3%) and

creation of noise (+20 dB and more).
Another issue is the distance of the propeller to the hull-surface. There
where the plans ask for a beautiful aluminium sheet-metal cover. I call this
part the drum of the Coot. Imagine the propeller turning, each tip nearing
and parting from the hull as near as x in the picture beside. Each time the

pressure building up
and changing back
to near vacuum after the blade has passed, exactly like somebody playing Ravels Bolero, only
that this time the staccato starts at the begin of the flight and ends far after landing.
I couldnt imagine a better way to make flying a very unpleasant hobby. But there is hope as we
will see later. So lets have a short look at the last number on the picture:
F 12: spinner:The spinner is by many looked at as a pure visual improvement, but
besides looking good most things in live have an active role, ...

The role of the spinner is to fill the place where otherwise a vacuum behind the pusher-propellercentre would build up. And pressure-differences tend to equal themselves out and so create
uncontrolled airflows which lead to turbulences; i.e. vortices.
As the fin of our Coot is made of sheet-metal, the vortices drumming on this
have a very good resonance body, Stradivarius wouldnt have been able to
provide a stronger one, only our one makes noise while violins mostly create
sound (at least in my ears). And as weve seen in 8. the tailpipe acts as the
voice-tube to our ear. Really great, isnt it?
After I found all this I had to ask myself:

G; What offers do we have? So far as I am able to see we have at least 5 different ways to
react to the above mentioned findings, all are very much dependant on the personality of the
Coot owner or Coot dreamer:
1. We could think this is all rubbish and as there are so many Coots flying the whole thing
by far exaggerated!
2. We could resign and do nothing, with time not even be able to hear the Com in when
we go for our next medical!
3. We could wear headsets and delay the above moment for quite some time, only to get in
frenzy when the canopy flies open because we are overwhelmed by noise and stress to
react properly!
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4. We could choose the best possible counteractions to noise or

5. We could redesign part of the Coot, reengineer them and improve the Coot to give him a
next live, not only in America but even in Europe with its rigorous limits on everything
concerning environment and noise in special.
Which option you choose is up to you, its your personal choice, but if you compare the hours
flown by the amount of built Coots then there must be a reason behind it which a proud owner
never in his darkest dreams would even mutter to himself, if he realises them is another story.
The points 3 and 4 are concerned with active noise control, something which is a result of
acoustics coupled with Information Technology. It is based on the fact that two waves of similar
length and intensity cancel themselves out.
The trick is to have a
microphone installed
which reads the
noise, sends the result
to a computer which in
turn calculates the
time, intensity and
wavelength and
creates a new impulse
of opposite polarity,
send it back to a
loudspeaker and emits
it. As long as the result
is 0 the noise is
cancelled out of the
space where the
loudspeaker reaches
into. For example a
headset or a cabin.
For further
information see the following link: http://users.erols.com/ruckman/General.htm or go to the links
mentioned at the end of this essay.
The thing behind this is that it becomes quite expensive and heavy and I dont really see, beside
the noise cancelled headsets, a way to get that into a Coot.
After all, one of the most important principles of reengineering in Aircraft, especially in
homebuilt is to keep the weight limits. It is very simple to understand:
Whatever weight you build in an Aircraft, additional to its initial layout, you have to take
out somewhere else, if not while building then by loading!
Till now there is no such thing as an engine without fuel and weight! All has its limits!
And beside, even Molt Taylor mentioned this principle, only for not to adhere to it himself!
Let me give you a little example of improvement (Ken, please dont get angry, its really a
good example and easy to understand):

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Somebodys Coot has become quite strong, spacey, secure and heavy up to the point that the
original tail-volume was not anymore sufficient. So what do we do? We
enlarge the tail surface by adding a few inches on the back of it. What
happens? We get a little bit more weight (but many little bits give a big
bit) at the outermost part of our plane, the one furthest away from our
Centre of Gravity, thus changing its location a little bit aft, thus
changing its location to the Centre of Lift, thus....
Another thing would have been the way Chris Heintz has gone with his
701: He looked at his tail volume problem and asked himself: Where
could the movable surface be enlarged without adding some weight to the total plane and change
its characteristics? Thus he came up with the full moving horizontal rudder.
In the case of a Coot the two solutions look about like that:

Keep in mind, weight is the first and most important critical limit we have to watch for
while changing anything on an existing design!

So this was the way I tried to find ideas to solve (or generate different) problems mentioned
before in relation to noise. Here is to say that the chances to do something after the Coot is built
are quite limited, but not impossible. So for this I will always mention the two ways and what
could be done, the one after and the one before building, then while building is a no go! The
while building is a very difficult way as it involves a change of direction, and this creates always
an important loss of time and money and is mostly paid for with additional weight and therefore
loss of range.
G 1: rivet heads and protruding screw-heads:
Before: Chose the way you fasten things very carefully and take flush rivets, even they use more
time or flush sunken in screws with a flat head. Fill the screw-head afterwards with micro-filler
so that it is absolutely flush with its surrounding.
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1933/naca-tn-461/naca-tn-461.pdf

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http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1943/naca-wr-l-495/naca-wr-l-495.pdf
After: Either replace or at least cover with Micro-filler.
G 2: sprayrails:
Before: Build auxiliary sponsons, see official Coot web-page
for this or at least incorporate the sprayrails into the hull avoid
when fixing it to the hull anything standing over the original
surface and adhere to the angles mentioned in the Naca
reports: for ex:
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1935/naca-report-482/nacareport-482.pdf
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1945/naca-wr-l-545/naca-wr-l-545.pdf

13

After: Either fair the steps into the hull or follow the angle
mentioned in the reports:

14

G 3: sharp corners on fuselage to wing intersection:

Before: Fair the hull-deck along the canopy down to
the wing-profile a, fairing the canopy into the wing and
lowering the deck after the canopy b down to the wing
so to create a continuous wing section over the full tail,
thus avoiding all steps and increasing the distance
propeller-hull as well as enlarging the active wing
section and avoiding the vortices created by this steps,
thus limiting the tail-buffeting and last but not least:
Lowering the noise.
See as well F11.
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1935/naca-report482/naca-report-482.pdf
After: Fill the corners with light foam and Micro-fill and avoid any screw- and rivet heads.
G 4: sharp corners on canopies, seals and small gaps:
Before: Avoid anything which creates sharp corners, which is where the vortices will start and
where the noise comes from around the cockpit. Canopies in special should be made so that they
overlap a bit to allow for air seals so as not to create a split.
Read about canopies the following page, not really noise related but helpful to understand:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/sicherheitscockpit-e.html
Keep in mind that every gap is an unblocked highway for noise as well as a new source of it.
Close them, seal them, avoid them.
After: The only thing to do is to seal them with a rubber-lip, silicon or with some Micro-fill.
G 5: Antennas and boat-fittings outside of the hull:
Before: Antennas are able to be built in anywhere, some places may be better, some worse.
One of the sources is; http://www.rst-engr.com/rst/catalog/airplane_antenna.html
another with pictures of actual mounted antennas is:
http://www.aerocompinc.com/slideshow/10.htm
After: Find a way to get your antenna inside, or at least mount it somewhere on the tail, then at
least its turbulence does not disturb the aerodynamic of the plane and the noise is away from the
cockpit.
Boat fittings should be hidden under a cover, easily to open and use.
G 7: pylon-cockpit connection:
Either you do it right at the start or you leave it, there is no way to fix it afterwards, only noisedampening inside of the cockpit will help a little bit, but on the price of additional weight.
If you think at it before you start, do not create a direct connection between the pylon and the
cabin / cockpit. Leave a small gap which you seal against the outside with a flexible rubber seal.

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Dont try to integrate the pylon structure into your cockpit as this will automatically bridge the
vibrations inside the cockpit and react there as the membrane of a loudspeaker.
G 8: Water-rudder:
A water rudder is helpful while boating and taxiing, but in the flight it is a major disturbance.
Before: Make your rudder retractable, the weight-penalty is equalised with improved
aerodynamics and less noise. If you use modern composite then it will be at maximum the same
weight as the original construction.
After: Only the radical step taken by Ken would help; take the rudder away and steer the plane
with the wheels in the water. Not the thing for everybody and everywhere.
G 9: engine:
see mail from Cord Sandmann, dont forget the flexible mounting of the cowling and other
related parts, even the exhaust system isnt allowed to be undampened fixed to the fuselage.
G 11: propeller:
The most is said above, there is no kind of easy fix to
that. But there are two things which influence noise
the most in relation to the propeller:
- its diameter and
- the distance of the blade-tip to the hull-cover.
To reduce the diameter a multiblade propeller is the
option, this helps to enlarge the distance to the hull as
well as reducing the tip-speed. A new, quieter prop is
for example the Fiti-propeller:
http://www.air-contact.de/propeller.htm
Another way to reduce
diameter is adding
winglets or in some
places called P-tips to
the propeller,
somewhere in the states
are props for sale witch
have them and I was told
it to be quite a big improvement in quietness as well as trust.
http://www.tntlandinggear.com/store/shop/prince_aircraft.htm
http://www.princeaircraft.com/
And here a part of aircraftspruces comment to this props:
Composite P-Tip Props retain the same qualities of the wood P-TIP but are more efficient and durable. Prince uses the reliable time
proven wood core of hard maple, then completely encloses the blades in multiple layers of high tensile strength composites. The
hardwood core absorbs the dangerous harmonic vibrations and benefits your airframe by smoothing the engine power pulses, and
the composite wrapping allows the airfoils sections to be thinner, reducing drag while increasing durability and locks each blade into
operating at precise angles. The best working propeller is one that is rigid enough to allow all blades to move alike, thin at the cord
section to eliminate as much drag as possible, and strong enough to satisfy the large amounts of stress required during flight. Urea
Formaldehyde adhesive meets Military Specifications to insure reliable operation and trouble free flying for the life of the propeller.

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Propellers are finished in a metal prop gray color, this shade will match nearly every paint scheme, the Durability and Ultrahigh
Gloss finish is a two-part Urethane, machine buffed to achieve a propeller that reflects the quality of manufacturing like no other
propeller available.

Then the lowering of the hull as mentioned in G 3

will enlarge this distance further.
After that is all done, the next thing to do would be to
build the cover of the hull in a sandwitchhoneycombe structure. The honeycomb made of
Nomex and the cover on each side with Kevlar.
As for example used in the Silence; see
http://www.silence-aircraft.de/index-d.html
A nasa report about the acoustics is here:
http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/ltrs/PDF/2001/aiaa/NASA-aiaa-2001-1587.pdf
and a producers webpage is here: http://www.euro-composites.com/
With this technique the cover may be made light, very stable and if you use Kevlar and nomex as
materials it becomes the best noise-dampening systems in itself as Kevlar remains even in
compound structures flexible and the nomex honeycombs remain structural stable even they may
internally vibrate.
With the composite construction of the deck (hull-cover) the forming of it in a very aerodynamic
and noise sensible way will be greatly improved and helped by and as it is a non structural part
of the plane it can even be done in not so high-tech controlled environments as your garage.
Perhaps we all are lucky and Sean and Ron add another article in this series about Composite
construction of their new Coot.
G 12: spinner:
The spinner in itself is an add on, there is not much we can positively change on it then adding
one we get ready made. There is a bit to read on spinner shapes in the naca report
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1954/naca-rm-a53l29a/naca-rm-a53l29a.pdf
but not many of us will go as far as to construct our own spinner. If needed I will do some
research on that, please let me know.
For sure is that without it we will have an even more disturbed flow after the prop than with one.
If it is made out of light and stable material then the weight penalty is little against the win in a
more congruent aft propeller stream.

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Last word:
There are many motives to build a Coot, and there are so many ways to build one as there are
people. There is no right and no wrong way, beside that the little bird has to fly. And
sometimes the biggest penalty after all the work is not the drag or weight penalty but the one to
perfect a thing so long and so far as it will never becomes finished. Our frustration there will be
immeasurable. And of course, as true males we never admit to our own failure. There are 1000
other things wrong, but WE?
To make it short:
What concerns noise I may put here a word of Michael Gorbatschov:
He who lags behind, loses!
What concerns weight I say it with my own words:
Whatever you put into the Coot you have to take out somewhere else,
either while building or later while loading it.
So I hope you enjoyed to read this, its by far not complete and by far not in all details, but I think
that it could give some help on the way of finding new ways. If you found the links useful, then
there will be a few more on the end of this.
Thanks all for the pictures and you for reading.
Karl Senn
Horans Cottage
Burrishoole Abbey
NEWPORT Co Mayo
Ireland

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Links: in no way ordered, just one after the other

water waves http://www.exo.net/~pauld/activities/waves/waterwaves.html
pictures from resonance on water
http://www.flutetrends.ch/Lauterwasser.html
drop entering the watersurface:http://www.berlin-persian-cats.de/65683/74403.html
pictures made with an accustic camera: http://www.acoustic-camera.com/start.htm
chinese Gong: http://www.brandsonsale.com/chinese-gong.html
amboss: http://berufenet.arbeitsamt.de/bnet2/H/B2513100_bild_t.html
pics from engine mount: http://www.algonet.se/~lgk-alv/kfkxof.htm
active noise cancelling:
http://www.elliottaviation.com/sms/smsarticle5.asp
http://www.signalsystemscorp.com/ancFAQpart_i.htm
http://users.erols.com/ruckman/General.htm
effect of rivet heads on waterperformance: http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1938/naca-tn657/naca-tn-657.pdf
influence of gaps on controllsurfaces: http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1941/naca-report721/naca-report-721.pdf
hartzell propeller noise: http://www.hartzellprop.com/engineering/engineering_faqs.htm
Composite producer: http://www.spsystems.com/home_flash.php
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question124.htmWhat is a decibel, and what is the loudest
sound I can listen to before it hurts my ears?
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/muffler.htm How Muffler work, with a good example of sounddampening
http://www.signalsystemscorp.com/ancFAQpart_i.htm Active noise control
http://users.erols.com/ruckman/General.htm Good explanation of how active noise control
works and how active sound-dampening works with links to suppliers
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?
parent=muffler.htm&url=http://www.nsxprime.com/FAQ/Miscellaneous/exhausttheory.htm
Exhaust theory
http://pen.ci.santa-monica.ca.us/resource_mgmt/airport/commission/monthly
%20meetings/february%202003/02-24-03%20Jan-03%20Noise%20Report.pdf Santa Monica
Noise abatment program January 2003 Report
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/23/interviews/gorbachev/ The end of the
GDR in an interview between CNN and Michael Gorbatchov
http://www.lycoming.textron.com/main.jsp Pics of engine
http://www.sensenichprop.com/ Pics of propeller
http://www.coot-builders.com/ Pics of Coot
http://www.nonoise.org/ : http://www.nonoise.org/products/index.htmThe Noise Pollution
Clearinghouse is a national non-profit organization with extensive online noise related resources.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~rigolett/ENGELS/ Information on effects on noise on people
http://www.wolf-aviation.org/aircraft_noise.htm The Wolf aviation fund, aircraft noise
http://www.gaac.co.uk/planning/moreconsiderate.htm More considerate flying extract of PPF
http://www.gomolzig.de/englisch/entwicklung/quiet-e.htm Quiet flight, noise research today
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1938/naca-tn-679/ Noise from propellers with symmetrical
sections on zero blade angle
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1932/naca-report-395/ new principle of sound frequency
analysis
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1935/naca-tn-519/ Vortex noise from rotating cylindrical rods
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1936/naca-report-526/ Noise from two blade propellers
http://www.piteraq.dk/flight/muffler.html Swiss style mufflers
http://www.elliottaviation.com/sms/smsarticle5.asp
cabin noise cancelling equipment
http://www.noisefree.org/ Noise free America
http://www.netvista.net/~hpb/cal-reg.html; Regulation of Noisy Airports in California
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http://www.faa.gov/ARP/environmental/5054a/gap.cfm FAA and noise

http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1954/naca-rm-a53l29a/naca-rm-a53l29a.pdf Effects of two
spinner shapes on the pressure recovery behind a three blade propeller
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1944/naca-wr-e-169/naca-wr-e-169. Effects in flight of the
propeller cuffs and spinner on pressure recovery
http://www.algonet.se/~lgk-alv/kfkxof.htm Pics from engine mount
All sources used between 10.01.2004 and 20.04.2004, all links working on the 25th 03.2004
The sources are only used for informational and educational purposes and no claim to their
original material is made nor do I Karl Senn identify myself with any other information
displayed by this sources or linked from or to it and relay only to them as source of their parts
cited in my essay and used as base for it.

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