Locally there are a couple of interesting aircrafts aircrafts, since I am no fan of hanger-shots it usually takes a while before I get the chance to photo them, but the other day two of them was out in the open: One of the few remaining Stieglitz 44’s and a Piaggio 149. The later is way bigger then the photo gives the impression of. For some reason I don’t really know I really like the appearence of this aircraft.

Just a post of a pic of my ‘home’, the farmstrip that is said to be 90feet wide according to the documents. Last time I measured it was 40… Everytime the lease has increased to deal with the farmer that owns the land has been to decrease the size of the field instead of increasing the price. So the field gets smaller and smaller every year!

Actual strip at the bottom, hangar is the red building in the middle. Situated within the CTZ of ESMS.

Just a few Glastar pics rescued from the previous blog.

I really like the Glastar STOL performance. My brother in law bought a small house that previously had an owner with a Tiger Moth. Of course the previous owner mowed a strip in his lawn. So; Where a Tiger Moth can go the Glastar can too The mowed strip is only 20-30 feet wide and so short that I limit the usage to northern winds only since at the south end there are 50feet trees.



Getting over thoose treese at minimum speed to be able to decend quickly enough without picking up to much speed is interesting to say the least. It really develops your skills.

(Moved from the old blog)

Well, some things/people have a biggherimpact on me then others. One guy who had a huge influence on me the last couple of years is Randy Lervold running the RV-8 site. I never talked to the guy in real life but his very detailed site with some personal reflections on his RV-8 build project has always been an interesting read. Personally I historically didn’t care much about taildragger or trigear I thought I could live with both. For looks I would go with a RV-8 at once but for safety I would go with a RV-8A, but I didn’t consider it as a major dealbreaking issue. But after Randy’s landing mishap I was really wondering if a taildragger was a good idea. He posted some info about it on the RV-8 mailing list and I’m sure it will turn up at his website but I’m gonna including it here anyhow:

***
Guys,

Many of you have seen the notice of an “incident” on Saturday 1/31 in
Vancouver, WA on the FAA web site involving N558RL. And many of you have
sent messages of query and/or condolence to me. I am truly touched, I
genuinely appreciate the concern, thanks so much. Here’s the notice in case
you’re interested…

http://www1.faa.gov/avr/aai/M_0202_N.txt

Now, what happened? This is a story you won’t believe. As most of you know I
had put the plane up for sale. I had immediate interest and had buyers
wanting to send me deposits without seeing the plane in person. I refused
the deposits but made arrangements for the first party who contacted me to
come up this past weekend from Florida and asked the other guys to call back
after Saturday. He flew up on Friday evening. Saturday we spent the day
flying around, or should I say scud running, to local airports in the nasty
NW weather. He turned out to be really good guy, absolutely loved the plane,
and had decided to buy it. We were heading back to Pearson to sit down with
the purchase contract my attorney had drawn up and exchange the check
($100k).

I monitored the ASOS for Pearson as we proceeded inbound which indicated a
10 knot wind 90 degrees to the runway. Upon rolling out on final I could
tell the wind was stronger than that and was gusting. I made an approach at
85 mph, +5 mph from my normal two-up speed and proceeded in. I was flighting
the gusts all the way down and with the extra speed just wasn’t comfortable
with the way it was settling, or not settling, down on the runway so I
gassed it and went around. On the next approach I went back down to 80 mph,
my normal two-up speed, hoping to avoid the prolonged float, and made a
solid approach. I held variable right stick and left rudder down through the
flare and got it on the ground solidly and dead straight — it was done
flying. Still holding full right stick and a bit of left rudder, we were
rolling out straight down the runway — thought I had nailed it. At
approximately 30 mph groundspeed (later corroborated by my backseater, a
2,000 hour jet-rated pilot and sailboat racer) a gust hit from the right and
the tail started moving left. Full left rudder just wouldn’t correct, we
were going too slowly, and by the time I thought about jabbing the throttle
for some additional rudder authority we were almost 90 degrees and sliding
sideways. The pavement was wet and we were sliding — I was thinking to
myself “sh**, this will damage my wheelpants and I’m gonna have to replace
‘em before I can sell it”. Then the left (lead) wheel started hopping, dug
into the pavement, pogoed the plane up a bit and collapsed down on the left
wing just as we moved off the pavement onto the grass. As I watched the wing
go down I could see it wrinkle and thought “ok, that wing won’t be flying
any more”. I was aware of exactly what was happening every nanosecond and
could feel everything. Still, I just couldn’t believe it. It was so slow and
benign feeling that I couldn’t believe the gear collapsed. We were jostled
around less than light turbulence while flying. After coming to a stop I
just started shutting the ship down normally in checklist sequence. There
was no tension or urgency at all. I smelled no fuel but my backseater said
“hey, we better get outa here. I pulled the canopy back and let him exit
while I finished my shut down and closed the fuel valve — no fuel smell
though. I exited normally and said to him “now EXACTLY what just happened?”.
Well, you know what happened, but I wanted his analysis of the situation to
immediately learn what I had done wrong. He agreed that I had flown a
beautiful approach, flare, and landing, but we simply got hit with a large
gust at precisely the wrong time. Could some combination of rudder, brake,
and throttle have saved it if I was a better pilot? I truly don’t know. Here
is the FAA weather metars listed in the above referenced report… WEATHER:
VUOA505 2153Z 17010G17KT 10SM -RA OVC030 7/3 A2993. I landed runway 08, so
the “17010G17KT” had the wind direction at exactly 90 degrees with the wind
at 10 gusting to 17. Hmm, could a 17 knot gust do that? Felt like more than
that to me and my pax both.

The left wing had significant wrinkling in it while it was laying on it,
presumably from dropping down it after the gear folded under. After we
propped it up some of it went away but there’s no way I’m flying that wing
again. The wing tip and aileron are crunched, the left landing gear
completely ripped clean by ripping the close tolerance mounting bolts in
tension, quite a sight. Nothing FWF touched the ground. We managed to get
the plane onto a crude trailer and back into my hangar without damaging it
further and prop the left side up on wing jacks (glad I had those!).

Just as we’re getting it into the hangar my cell phone starts ringing and I
make the mistake of answering it… it’s the FAA wanting to know what
happened. Great. So I proceeded to give them all the info. They asked me to
put all this in a statement and fax it to them, “Monday will be fine”. At
this point we had it back home and stabilized in the hangar and I just
wanted to get away from the whole thing and think about it. The prospective
buyer, Peter, and my wife and I went out to dinner than night but I just
felt awful and wanted to crawl up in fetal position in the corner — two
glasses of wine didn’t help. Sunday wasn’t much better but I forced myself
to do the FAA statement anyway. Today I had to work and am feeling a bit
better and have already spoken with both the insurance agent and adjuster. I
really don’t know what my options are at this point but will spend the next
week or so with inspections and adjusters getting it sorted out. I’ll try to
post something once I know what the final scenario is. Oh, he didn’t buy the
plane.

I need to inspect it further to accurately assess the damage both for myself
and for the insurance company. I’ll probably have someone from Van’s do this
and then attempt to settle up with the insurance company. I do have full
coverage insurance with $80k hull coverage. Hmm, less than market value but
certainly better than nothing.

Guys, be careful out there!!

Randy Lervold
RV-8, 367 hours and not flying any more for awhile.

ps. here are a couple of pics of the ugliness…
http://www.rv-8.com/Pictures/DSCN0007med.jpg
http://www.rv-8.com/Pictures/DSCN0011.JPG
***

Seen the Thatcher CX-4? One good looking, single seat, VW powered, all metal, experimental, build it yourself, for little money airplane…

Had a nice day with the regional club for old aircrafts. The chairman of the club owns a small ex farm where he normally has a 1000feet strip suitable for his Jodel and a Eurostar UL. But for this event he just borrowed the nearest field and marked up a 2000feet temporary strip. We had a marveleous luck with the weather so I think that everyone enjoyed their day and evening in good company (weather/friends/aircrafts etc)

With a non public event as this was the pilots sometimes brings the show a bit closer.. ‘Pilots do it in the air’

There was a very informal landing contest during the afternoon and boy did I mess that one up… I can land and bring the Glastar to a complete halt in a 300feet field normally. I managed to miss the _touch down_ spot with more then 300feet in this event! I think I was 1000feet down the runway before coming to an halt. I was so nervous that I totally forgot to keep track of my speed, I was way fast.