H5606

This international PT-19 day thread elsewhere motivated me and I finally flew the airplane yesterday - not where I originally intended to fly it - but at a C/L club's field. The airplane was flown stock and I only taped up the wheels, added shrink tubing to the axles and CyA'd a hardwood piece to the tail skid in an effort to keep it as close to pristine as possible. A careful three-tankful break-in through the helpful experience of one of the members at this club preceded a successful flight with a less than graceful landing. Since the red rubber spinner point was turning as a 1/4" out of round blur, we opted to fly without it.

I used the handle equipped with the plane, and decided to use the inner hole on the stabilator horn to get the max control option - it wasn't clear in the picture on my previous post. The blue handle sitting on top of the older, green handle is the one I used, so there was no option at that end. I took off on a hard surface and flew over grass. I used full up before going off the end of the hard surface. Reaction to control input was sluggish but I liked the "heaviness" at the end of the lines. Before the engine quit, I was pretty sure landing would be less than graceful and considered whipping to get back over the runway. I decided to land on the grass and as suspected, could not slow the airplane with that amount of elevator travel. As soon as the airplane's wheels touched the grass, it was all over in an instant - Praise the Holy Name! Amen! No damage! Perhaps its no big deal but I still wonder if the older designs had more travel. Contrary to the videos I've seen of the PT-19 doing loops, I don't think this one would do it stock as is.

In-flight picture courtesy of one of the members of the club sent to me via email...