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Old 01-07-2011 | 08:06 AM
  #25  
jwayne
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From: s.daytona, FL
Default RE: crooked takeoffs

Concerning wing incidence on the trike trainer, yes I have been fighting that one already by adding a 3" wheel on the front and 2.5" on the main gear. Also, I spreaded the main gear out to lower the tail. A month ago, a man showed up at the field with the same airplane and I put mine along side his and noticed that his tail was considerably lower than mine. So, I measured his and got my tail down to where his was. I think that his was approximately 4" off the ground. This resulted in my leading edge distinctly higher than the trailing edge. The man with the identical plane was more inexperienced than me and he badly crashed his plane during a takeoff and gave what was left of it to me for free. I rebuilt it into the tail dragger trainer that I now have and like it much more than the trike trainer. Then later, I bought the engine that he had used on the crashed plane and put it back on the rebuilt version. Now, it is a much better engine than I had planned for it.   Concerning use of the rudder, I crashed the tail dragger trainer shortly after rebuild due to a cross wind on landing. I  lined up the approach on aileron only and wound up coming down the runaway too close to where I was standing so at the second before touch down, I applied left aileron to move its path more to the middle of the runway. When I did, the wind caught the right wing and rolled the plane into the ground. Three days later, I had it repaired and ready to go again but I believe that was a time if I had used left rudder instead of aileron it would not have crashed. It's a great hobby because there is so much to learn......