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Wayne Woolard wrote:
> I only flew My "D" model
for 6.5 hours before I smote the
> Earth with it. That is the one
phase of the emergency that
> I recollect very well, I could NOT
get the nose over to build
> up enough airspeed without power to
restrict the "sink-rate."
> I first touched the plowed field at
65 MPH. When it was
> rebuilt, it came back to life as a
"C."
I don’t understand that. All Coupe
models should have about the same elevator down travel. The 415-C, CD and D
all have 12° down travel. The split-elevator models all have 10° down travel.
With any of those, there’s plenty of
down elevator to get the nose down and get over 144 mph airspeed (unless the
ground it so close you don’t have time to get your speed up).
From your paragraph quoted above, it
sounds like you couldn’t get the yoke forward enough to get your airspeed
up to 75 or 80 to get a normal glide in the Coupe.
I’d note that on my second day of
flying my Coupe, I had engine failure. My three landings on the first day had
gone well and on the second day, I flew a cross country long enough to melt the
ice in the bottom of the tanks and for it to freeze in the metal fitting where
the fuel line goes through the firewall.
Gliding down with no power, I set the
airspeed right on 70 mph indicated, just like I read in all the sources I had,
manual and magazines. However, since the airspeed indicator was about 12-15 mph
off, I was really gliding at about 55-57 mph and there was no cushion for a
flare. When I tried to flare, I only got a fraction of an inch more travel and
it just leaned back a bit and hit with a thwack!
I was lucky. In spite of the plowed,
frozen field covered with a foot of packed snow, I rolled about 15-20 yards and
did not flip over like yours did in your plowed field. No damage for me –
just luck, compared to yours.
Could it be that you were gliding at a
specified airspeed and suffered the same problem I had? Or, were you just so
low there was no time to drop the nose and get the airspeed up to a good
gliding speed? Or, do you think there was a control system malfunction that
kept you from dropping the nose to get the airspeed up?
Maybe others can learn from our misfortune
and avoid the same problems.
Ed Burkhead
http://edburkhead.com
ed -at-
edburkhead???.com (change -at- to @ and remove "???")
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