Mower Power to the People

Last week Wasabi's airframe specialist Ken Baker got stranded for weather in Texas, as a result he had to leave his Piper Arrow behind and airline back to Mojave to make it to Scaled for work Monday.  Rescuing the stranded Baker was the perfect opportunity to get some more cross country data on the GT-400 and check out an aviation legend in the flesh.

The DA-11 has a cult following at Scaled Composites, and I have been trying to get to Texas to see it for a while.  Below are some of the pictures from the trip.  Such a freaking cool airplane.

A weekend at SZP

Got to spend the weekend with Andy and Klaus at Santa Paula.  What a cool airport with so much cool stuff going on.

Check out the ground fog south of Mojave, and the silver dollar that Darryl carried on his 3km run in the F-104, is that cool or what?

Elliot

#f104 #greenamyer #3km #worldspeedrecord

A photo posted by edseguin (@edseguin) on Dec 12, 2014 at 4:33pm PST

Groundfog? What the frank?

A photo posted by edseguin (@edseguin) on Dec 12, 2014 at 12:26pm PST

Hoey's BD-4 Taildragger

Elliot and Bob in the BD-4

Bob Hoey is a retired Airforce flight test engineer.  He has worked on so many awesome projects.  Bob did extensive work on the X-15 (Hoey X-15 Article), was a consultant for Scaled on Spaceshipone, and has done extensive work studying and modeling the flight of birds (RC Bird Video).  In the mid seventies Bob built a BD-4 for family trips to Oregon.  Jenn has been vocal about a sweet spot for this airplane for a long time, so a month ago Bob asked us if we would be interested in buying the airplane.  As a true slacker I was not able to buy Jenn the airplane, but I did get to fly it with Bob in late September. What a privilege

With two crew and ¾ tanks the airplane climbed at 1000 FPM and cruised (WOT) at 140 KTAS…so Grumman Tiger performance, it is prop limited in cruise so an engineer might enjoy fiddling with this aspect of the airplane.  It is docile with nice forces in all three axes.  Strong dihedral effect means that even though it has no lateral or directional trim you can boot it around with the rudder in cruise. 

This aircraft type was not initially designed as a taildragger and the tailwheel occupies the space that was an add-on ventral fin, as a result there is some hesitancy to spin the BD-4 tail draggers.  I stalled the airplane (60 MIAS clean 55 MIAS Full Flaps) and found the airplane lively directionally at these high alphas with a powerful rudder, therefore I would be confident getting uncoordinated and slow.

As a taildragger the airplane was honest but lively.  The short gear and good lateral visibility meant that the pilot could basically watch the wheel touch down (a rare privilege in taildraggers) and could see over the nose in three point.  The airplane has a steerable Scott Tailwheel, the springs for which were set up very well.  We used 100 MIAS for base to final turn with 85 MIAS over the numbers.  Raised the tail at 45MIAS, rotate at 70 MIAS.

Tim Adams

A photo Tim Adams took on a cloudy day at Reno 2014.

Thank you Tim!

Ferrying Miss Demeanor

On Saturday Justin Gillen and I had the opportunity to ferry an awesome airplane for a friend from Stead to Mojave.

Miss Demeanor is a long time racer.  The airplane currently is configured with a stock Cassutt vertical and horizontal and a Craig Catto tapered wing that was originally on outrageous.  The wing installation was well done and addressed a lot of the handling concerns of the Cassutt.  The limited throw of the aileron (5" at the stick, vs 12" in pitch) helped liven the roll axis, and balanced that axis against the high rates a Cassutt is historically known for in pitch.  This airplane also has a lot of stiction in the pitch axis which also helped to dampen that axis.  The airplane has no dihedral effect, and is even lighter than my stock cassutt was directionally, probably due to the longer wing.  With light rudder forces, no stick free directional stability, and little to no stick fixed directional stability the airplane had to be actively flown the whole time, which was fun.  There seemed to be some difference between the incidence of the vertical, the thrust line, or the rig of the rudder pedals as the rudder displacement required to center the ball varied greatly with airspeed and power setting even between 150 and 220 MIAS.

I really enjoyed the upright cockpit and great over the nose visibility of the airplane compared to my racer, it truly felt like a gentleman's airplane.  I landed the airplane by coming over the fence at 80 MIAS and touching down in a tail low wheelie.  Conveniently I found the tail only needed to drop another few inches before the tailwheel made contact and the hard part of the landing was effectively over, the airplane has a fixed non-steerable tailwheel.  A great airplane and a well behaved tail dragger.  What a great time!!


 

Arnold Ebneter Visit

Hey Guys,

Jenn and I were really fortunate in early February to finally meet Arnold Ebneter, who among other things holds the absolute distance and closed course distance records for C1-a in the airplane he designed and built for that task.  Below are some pictures of the airplane we took while we were there.  What a cool airplane!!

-Race 68