Originally Posted by
Cat 1
How does it fly Bert? I see there was a Landing so there must have been a successful takeoff
Looks like it might of "ran out of elevator" just at the end of the landing sequence.. that wind sounded "challenging"
To be honest, stress made that I do not have a razorsharp memeory of how it flew. I faintly remember the aillerons being a bit vague, and the elevator fairly OK. At least, the wind indeed was challenging to say the least but altitude control was no real issue.
The take-off surprised me a bit, I expected to be able to notice it becoming light before taking off, but turned out one moment it was rolling and the next moment it was 5 feet up.
From there it felt a bit sluggish for a few seconds before it gained some speed and steadied up. I did not retract the gear, and I did not push WOT too much, so I have no clue at all if it is fast or not. Due to the stress and focus, I had no time to take a look at engine temperature or airspeed (and I forgot to activate the log functions).
But all in all, I have confidence that the plane itself will fly without issues if the landing gear allows it. My biggest fear is that the repair is not adequate, because the glue-spots were hard to reach.
Originally Posted by
Cat 1
On full size AC the trailing link landing gear is generally known for bing a "soft" gear but I don't think its use on a nose gear is very wide spread and probably or some of the reasons you are seeing. Nose strut length is very critical (for setting ground attitude) but it becomes less critical if a plane has more effective of elevator control. You rarely hear a Twin Otter pilot snag or complain about a nose gear strut as the pitch control is very powerful. Some other planes on the other hand are touchy and Incorrect strut height causes a variety of take off "weirdness". While I agree that the strut is causing issues it might be an issue of elevator effectiveness adding to the issue.
Biggest issue WRT pitch control is that the CoG is 14,5" before the elevon hinges (where the pitch controlling forces act on), and the main gears are 5" behind CoG, so there is only 8,5" leverage. The plane weighing 5 lbs, roughly, means that in order to lift the nose while rolling at an AoA of 0 degrees, a downforce of about 2,5 lbs would be needed from the elevons, and that is without taking the rolling resistance into account. Impossible task,
By how it landed (rewatched the vid over and over) my conclusion is that CoG is a bit forward, and although next flight (tomorrow) will be done with this CoG, subsequent flights I will take 10 grammes out of the nose every flight until I am satisfied with attitude control during landing That is, IF the nose gear survives tomorrow.
But if all goes well, our ClubStalker Rob (who also helped design this plane) will bring his FPV drone and hopefully he can produce some marvellous footage. And if so, of course I will upload and post that here. Fingers crossed!
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