A year or so ago, I bought a Condor 2 fork, lightweight wheel and absolutely bald tire from a guy on VAF. I had slapped it on the plane before moving it to the airport because the 6" tire gives more ground clearance back there ad I was worried about dragging belly antennas when it was being loaded on the truck.

I ordered a new tire which has been on the shelf for a while so while I was working on the rudder and tailwheel steering, it seemed like a good time to deal with that.

I broke down and changed the tire but used the same tube because it was in good shape. I was originally planning to go back to the hard rubber 5" tire that Vans supplies during flight test and maybe go back to this one when I get a bit more comfortable with the airplane. I may still do that, and in fact the smaller Vans tire will fit the same fork, so it would be easy to do.

But out of curiosity, I weighed them both and discovered that the 6" setup is actually 4oz lighter than the solid Vans tire/wheel combo. I didn't take the forks off the plane to weigh them, but I sort of think that the condor 2 is lighter than the vans fork as well. Even if it's not, 4oz is nothing to sneeze at. The lever arm is about 250" back there and combined with the lighter weight old white fairings I'm using, this tailwheel will take almost 1/2 a pound off of the tail of the plane.

I've got a big heavy engine up front, but I've also got a fancy lightweight prop, so I really don't know if I'm going to be tail heavy, nose heavy, or somewhere in between. But I do know that from a W&B perspective, 1/2 lb off the tail has the same net effect as deleting 1.5 lbs of gas on this airplane, so unless I need the weight in the tail to shift the c.g, I think I may just leave it like this for a while and see how I like it. The only downside I can see is that since it's an actual tire with a tube and not just rubber donut, I could get a flat back there.

I think I'll wait and see how the preliminary W&B comes out to make a decision about this.