raron455

My Feedback: (38)

Yes, I had an upgraded merlin 160 in mine that was putting out 40 lbs and some change according to the turbine test stand, and I had NO problems getting the plane to slow down. To be honest I tried a couple different crow settings, at one point I had 3/4 of an inch,, That was too much, the plane stayed level and came in nose high, but that killed a ton of lift and would stall the airplane right before I am used to touching down. I ended up going back to 3/8 of an inch crow. I also ended up backing my main flaps off as well, initially I had them at almost 90 degrees, which was more than needed.
My landings were always the same, half flap gear pass, drop full flaps after completing the downleg turn a little under half stick, enter the final turn about treetop high at about 25% power, and after exiting turn pull stick to idle and float the plane it, letting it come down and then flare, Plane landed nice and slow with the nose up, perfect for me every time, would touch down on mains, and then carry the front wheel about 10-15 ft. I always have my throttle setups on Linear so half throttle is half power.
Another thing I will mention is this, played with the CG to get it where I like flying,, A buddy of mine with a T1 has the Xicoy scales and we put mine on it to see what my CG was compared to his,, My CG came out at 262, compared to his 240.
As far as what happened to mine, I had probably close to 60 flights on it during the time I had it, I was at my home field, and was doing a WOT pass, as the plane passed in front of us abouve the runway, my spotter(another T1 owner) , I and another member seen the canopy and/or hatch hatch lift up, the engine flamed out, I kept it straight and made my turn but bled off a little too much speed on my turn back, I could not make it back to the runway so I kept the gear up and set it down in the grass, it was nice and straight I did have a tail wind, but the plane had slowed down pretty good, right before touching I lifted the nose, hopping it would not dig in to the grass, we all thought the landing was fine, got to the plane, looked and and seen NO damage while sitting there, The hatch was popped up, and the canopy was was not in place, but not a scratch on it, but when I got the jet back to the pitts and looked at the underside the whole rear bottom of the thin fuse aft of the rear main former had cracked and split, the main rear former also cracked in 3 places where the cooling notches are, there is not a whole lot of wood there, and that former its pretty thin. Could not believe that much damage was done from that touchdown in the grass, must have been a little harder on the tail than it looked. I really like the way the T1 took off/flew/and landed and my paintjob was as close to Flawless as they can get., I admit I was pretty definitely hard on the plane, after an event in east Texas We had to PRY the wings off. But After the Flameout damage, I sold the plane to my buddy, he had lost his in AZ, So he fixed mine up an has been flying it for a little while now with no issues, he is very easy on the plane compared to the way I flew it.
I ended up getting another comp arf jet, a lightning, more my type of sports jet.