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At 11:58 AM 10/27/00 -0700, Larry wrote: >----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any >advice in this forum.]---- >Anyway, 've had a hard time not flying it like all the other birds I've >flown, which is somewhat of an extended >final. The problem with a Coupe, is that you have to hold lots of power >if you have a long final. If >you don't, you sink like a rock. I think maybe the problem is that you're just too slow. It doesn't sink that bad if you keep it above 80, or even at 85 MPH all the way down. It sure feels better to me that way. Now, to do that, power off, while flying a somewhat-standard pattern (which you're sometimes forced into by other traffic), you're going to have hold extra altitude = power on downwind and base. My descent setting abeam the numbers is 1600-1700 RPM, depending upon load. 1200RPM on final is enough to make the difference between sinking and what feels like a 'normal' kind of Cessna glide. >Nowadays, I start thinking about turning base about >the time I pass the end of the runway while on down wind. It's taken me >about 30 hours of flight time >to get out of my old bad habits of thinking I could extend with elevator. Sometimes, if there is a 152/172 in front of me and a duffer is making a pattern that goes East to the Atlantic and North to Vermont, I'll just stay at pattern altitude until I turn final. I have to be longer on final than he is since he's going to dawdle down the glide-slope, and then piddle around on the runway (now I know how Duke pilots feel) in any case. Left to my own devices, I fly a pretty tight pattern, pretty much inside the airport boundaries, but that gets hard to dictate at times. If I chop the power abeam the numbers for a dead-stick, I can make a nice, constant-radius turn to the threshold and arrive there at 85-90MPH in good shape to bleed off the extra energy and land with a good safety margin. The turn literally ends AT the threshold, so if you're one of those guys who needs to go straight at a runway for 30 seconds to land on it, forget it. (You can land IN that turn and the Ercoupe gear takes care of you just fine.) Of course, at 85MPH, you've got a good distance to go in ground effect, and I suspect that you're better off holding 80-85 even though it looks like you'll be bit short, because assuming there's terrain to do it over, you're going to have several hundred feet of ground-effect glide to play with. Unless, like at N40, the runway sits up on a berm. I frequently find that Bonanza and Mooney drivers misjudge what an Ercoupe is going to do in the pattern. They tend to jump in front of us like they would an Aeronca or J3 (rude!). Or, they'll extend their down Greg __________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from this list please send mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
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