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woxofswa

Well Known Member
I recently glanced at the latest issue and something jumped out at me from a pix on the cover.

Am I nuts or does the picture on the cover of Rob Hickman's exceptional RV-10 show his nose wheel and fairing cocked slightly out of pointing directly into the airstream?

IT could just be an optical illusion or a photo/print anomaly, but it got me wondering if there was a possibility that for whatever reason the nose gear could sometimes slew itself to the side in flight.
 
This has been discussed in the past, as I recall folks were attributing it to the spiraling prop wash.
 
All I can tell you is that we didn't manipulate the picture in any way (at Kitplanes), so what you see is what was there. Perhaps it was reacting to the prop slipstream as Mike says, and there were rapid power changes in involved to stay in formation.

That is a stock photo from our archives BTW - not something recently taken.
 
Interesting. For grins I searched the interwebs for every photo of a flying RV10 I could find and I found 8 that appeared dead straight and one that looked just like the cover shot.

My guess so far is that it is temporary phenomena that happens in certain situations and that shot just happened to catch it.
 
Yes, they do that

I remember being in my RV-10 with Van himself doing the flying, and we were in formation with the factory RV-10 and Van mentioned that the nosewheels sometimes **** off to a side.

Vic
 
I have experienced this in my 7A in heavy crosswinds. You can feel the nose gear "snap" back to centre as it touches the runway.

There is a lot of keel surface on the back and it is free to caster, so not really surprising. It will follow the relative airflow.
 
I'm thinkin' that unless you put in a crosswind correction, i.e. a "Slip", a crosswind would make no difference.

Once you are airborne, and the ball is in the middle, the aircraft doesn't "feel" a crosswind.

However, and intentional cross-control for a photo sounds more like it. ;)
 
rwtalbot said:
There is a lot of keel surface on the back and it is free to caster, so not really surprising. It will follow the relative airflow.
Click to expand...

So is the relative flow at that location flowing from left to right? think about the prop direction of rotation.

BTW it does the same on all of the -10 airplanes that I have flown if the caster nut is loose.
 
I have found that if your tension on the nose wheel caster is to low it will trail
funny based on the prop wash x-wind Etc. That is usually the problem.

Geoff
 
Flew in formation with a Diamond DA-40 and noted his nose wheel fairing was canted about 20 degrees off to the left side, pretty funny looking. Owner said this was normal & didn't affect trim. I had him wag his rudder & the nose fairing swiveled in time with the tail wag. He later mentioned that Diamond calls for the swivel nut be tightened with very little pre-load. Much different than our RVs for sure!
 
There is a guy at my airport with a fixed gear Velocity that had the same issue. Since it is a pusher you can't blame it on propeller slipstream. I know they were working on a solution but I don't remember hearing if a fix was discovered.
 
I guess I now count myself in the Canted Caster Club.

I recently changed my oil filter and a tiny bit got away from me, drizzled down onto the nose leg inside the fairing, and has been oozing bit by bit at the bottom of the fairing onto my pant. After my last flight, I noticed that the resulting residue streak was canted such to indicate that my nose pant cruises slightly to the left just like the magazine cover.
 
xblueh2o said:
There is a guy at my airport with a fixed gear Velocity that had the same issue. Since it is a pusher you can't blame it on propeller slipstream. I know they were working on a solution but I don't remember hearing if a fix was discovered.
Click to expand...

Propeller 'slipstream' has effects upstream, as well as downstream....
 
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