Tailwheel Envy

[Kahuna]

Originally Posted by Jamie

How's this for a rough landing?

I was riding with a friend of mine in his -6A, flying into the newly cleared/leveled grass strip of another friend of ours. You can see by the video that he demonstrates proper technique for a soft-field landing. Look closely at the ground when the aircraft stops. You can see that this isn't one of the aforementioned nice turf strips. Since then his grass as grown in and he's repacked it so it's a bit nicer.

I wouldn't recommend anyone attempt a landing like this...but it goes to show you that proper pilot technique is essential to landing the RV (tailwheel or nosewheel) on a rough strip.

Hey I recognize that airplane! Where are my royalities!
And Jamie is right, do not try that at home.
Kahuna

[rv8ch]

Originally Posted by Kahuna

Hey I recognize that airplane! Where are my royalities!
And Jamie is right, do not try that at home.

It seemed fine to me. What happened? What was strange about the landing? It looked like you got stopped pretty quickly, but otherwise...

[Kahuna]

Originally Posted by rv8ch

It seemed fine to me. What happened? What was strange about the landing? It looked like you got stopped pretty quickly, but otherwise...

I was joking. The landing was fine, into an 800' rough strip with a pax. I was joking about the royalities as this was my airplane he video'd and I was not aware of it and now was being used for training

Kahuna

[rodrv6]

Originally Posted by RVbySDI

It would be very interesting to know how much the FWF installation of the Eggenfellner 2.5 Subaru weight was and how much weight the nose gear was supporting when this accident happened.

Steve
RVBYSDI

The nose gear wouldn't be supporting any more or less weight than with a Lycoming or any other engine up front. If the Subaur installation was significantly heavier to the point of adding excessive weight to the nosewheel, then the fwd C of G would be too far forward and out of limits. The pilot reports a light fuel load, 80 lbs in the baggage compartment, and two reasonably sized people on board. Not exactly a forward C of G condition.

[Bob Axsom]

Never. The A is harder to build and if you lose a brake you lose ground steering capability, etc. etc. but once you have it flying, a flip-floppy landing gear attitude just doesn't enter the picture. You fly it to the best of your ability and try to grease it on everytime. It is a sweet flying and landing machine unless the breakout force is low then it will shake like a flat tire no matter how slow you get it before the nose gear settles on. Landing is such a small part of flying I'm surprised this keeps coming up.

Bob Axsom

[rvbuilder2002]

Originally Posted by rodrv6

The nose gear wouldn't be supporting any more or less weight than with a Lycoming or any other engine up front. If the Subaur installation was significantly heavier to the point of adding excessive weight to the nosewheel, then the fwd C of G would be too far forward and out of limits. The pilot reports a light fuel load, 80 lbs in the baggage compartment, and two reasonably sized people on board. Not exactly a forward C of G condition.

I don't think we can be so sure of that.
The empty C.G. could be outside the limit but the airplane wasn't empty.
An RV-7A with an empty weight of 1199 Lbs! This Subaru installation is advertised to be comparable in weight to an IO-360 Lycoming. The Lyc produces empty weights that are typically around 1135 lbs or so for an average on an RV-7A. This particular airplane was probably at least 50 lbs heavier than most RV-7A's.

Just because there was weight in the back doesn't mean it was light on the nose. It is possible that with all that weight the C.G. was somewhere near the mid point or even further fwd than that. I know of one Egg. Subaru equiped RV-9A that when weighed was about 100 lbs heavier than an average weight for an RV-9A with an O-320 Lyc. Pretty much the entire additional weight was on the nose wheel when positioned in a level flight attitude on the digital scales (which is worse case compared to sitting in a three point attitude on the ground, but still a lot of extra weight on the nose).

Scott