So how many out there have truely "Experimented" opening their canopies in flight? Do those of you that fly tip-ups know that the canopy can be substituted for the elevator in the case of elevator control failure? It turns out that the canopy is a lifting surface. Opening it causes the nose to fall, which can be overcome with trim alone. Once trimmed, opening the canopy further will cause the nose to fall further. Closing it will cause the nose to rise (all at the same power level). Flaps MUST be left in the UP position or the canopy looses control. I have successfully tested landing the aircraft under these conditions (on a long runway) using ONLY canopy positional input and hands off the elevator.
I can say from experience that an unplanned open tip-up canopy should not result in a loss of control unless the pilot stopped flying the aircraft.
Not a planned "experiment" today, had my RV Tilt-up canopy pop open during flight today.
Spent the day washing/waxing the plane. At the end of the day it was so nice decided to go out for a flight. After 10+ hours was a little tired.
Cranked up, talked with ground, received taxi instructions and soon was in the air.
Headed out North, towards a friend's home on a remote lake. Descending from 2000ft to 1500 to get my airspeed up for a zoom climb, right at 200mph (mph on ASI) started to pull up. Before that happened, the roll bar latch holding the canopy down let go, that's right forgot to latch the side latch.
Big popping noise followed by medium wind noise in the cockpit. With headphones could still here the Kenai Tower talking with a Cessna.
Main thing was it wanted to do a nose tuck, almost full elevator before it stopped, was adding trim at the same time as pulling, what made the big difference was reaching up and pulling the canopy down, immediate elevator control. Just a couple of inches made a big difference.
Just like you mention, do believe you could control pitch with the canopy.
Once in a climb and slowing down was finally able to pull it down enough to rotate and close the roll bar latch again. Reduced airspeed back to Kenai.
Not my best day for reading/following my checklist....Skipped right past the line to check/verify the pilot side latch.
A wake up call for sure.
As far as controlling the plane, it was not responding like it normally does when moving the controls. A little was not working well, more force and about 2/3 nose up elevator leveled it, more initiated a climb. After level flight established reached up and grabbed the D handle and pulled down a couple of inches. Was riding about 6" open and took some force to pull down, at first I did try to close, but it would not, actually think it came down crooked, might have been able to close if I could have watched the rails to verify lined up right. So, just held and flew normally until the airspeed went below 140 mph: at that time was able to close the roll bar latch.
Best regards,
Mike Bauer