Making seats?

[justin.schoeman]

I am busy making the seats for my Raven at the moment. On the third iteration, and not quite happy yet.

I have a nice comfortable foam backing and upholstered cushion, but forming the base is defeating me.

Zenith uses an aluminium sheet, but then the seat height is fixed, and you have to seal around the edges to stop things falling into the wing section.

Carl recommends filling the base with high density foam. I have made a set of foam bases, but foam dense enough not to sink significantly under G loading, weighs nearly 1kg for each seat.

Next I tried polystyrene. Much lighter, but crushes too much. With a bit of effort, I made some fiberglass 'spars' and covers. Ends up very light and rigid, but still a little fragile. Still not good enough.

As a next attempt, I was thinking of making a hammock type chair. Basically suspending a material base from the back of the chair and suspending it with dynamic rope so that it has some stretch for additional shock absorption.

Anybody know if this will work? Or have any other ideas?

Thanks,
Justin

[Stephan van Tonder]

The plane I just bought basically have hammoc style seats and they used a plastic garden chair seat part at the bottom. Seems to work fine.

[tauruck]

Justin, I know you posted a while back but if you still need help with your seat problem PM me.

[swiftprop]

Will be interesting to know what the other Raven owners have done?

[justin.schoeman]

At the moment, I have made the seat bases out of 4 layers of 25mm polystyrene, re-inforced with fibre glass. Can adjust the height by removing one or more layers.

They seem to work quite well, although I don't like sitting on flamable material (although there is a layer of fame retardent foam on top.

If I don't find anything better (or any serious problems), I will go with this for now.

Thanks!
Justin