Texaco Lawn Darts
06-23-2005, 07:46 PM
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Texaco Lawn Darts
I'm not sure if this belongs here or in the Crash discussion forum, but since we've talked about 1/2A Texaco here, that's where I'll put it.
I went to an oldtimer contest last week and the wind was blowing between 15 and 25 MPH all day. It wasn't really good enough to fly anything, but since the contest was a 5 hour drive from home I decided to make an attempt at a 1/2 A Texaco flight. I waited for one of the 15 MPH periods to launch and got pretty good altitude and penetrated upwind well for most of the motor run. about 30 seconds before the engine quit the wind picked up and I started going backwards, and after shutoff I was headed towards Ohio, in reverse at a high rate of speed! I had to put the nose down about 45 degrees just to stay in one place! About 100 feet up a big gust kicked the tail up vertically and when I pulled out the wing snapped and my plane became a lawn dart.
Damage was pretty bad, rebuildable but I was ready for a new Playboy anyway. A lot of the damage was caused by the 4 oz. of lead I bolted into the airplane to bring it up to weight breaking loose.
So, what did I learn?
Well, it doesn't pay to fly a 15 MPH airplane in a 25 MPH wind.
There's no point in building a Texaco 4 oz underweight. If that lead had been wing spars I wouldn't be building a new one.
It's more fun to drive home 5 hours with all your airplanes intact than with one in a bag.
I went to an oldtimer contest last week and the wind was blowing between 15 and 25 MPH all day. It wasn't really good enough to fly anything, but since the contest was a 5 hour drive from home I decided to make an attempt at a 1/2 A Texaco flight. I waited for one of the 15 MPH periods to launch and got pretty good altitude and penetrated upwind well for most of the motor run. about 30 seconds before the engine quit the wind picked up and I started going backwards, and after shutoff I was headed towards Ohio, in reverse at a high rate of speed! I had to put the nose down about 45 degrees just to stay in one place! About 100 feet up a big gust kicked the tail up vertically and when I pulled out the wing snapped and my plane became a lawn dart.
Damage was pretty bad, rebuildable but I was ready for a new Playboy anyway. A lot of the damage was caused by the 4 oz. of lead I bolted into the airplane to bring it up to weight breaking loose.
So, what did I learn?
Well, it doesn't pay to fly a 15 MPH airplane in a 25 MPH wind.
There's no point in building a Texaco 4 oz underweight. If that lead had been wing spars I wouldn't be building a new one.
It's more fun to drive home 5 hours with all your airplanes intact than with one in a bag.
