Robert Bartunek asked: > The following quote from the article puzzles me. > "Pilots thought nothing of flying Ercoupes very slowly. When they > would, say during a forced landing fly from a headwind condition to a > no wind condition,the airplane would pitch nose down to try to > maintain airspeed." > How do you get the nose to "pitch down" in an Ercoupe? With full aft > elevator control input, mine (a CD) just mushes straight ahead with a > slightly positive deck angle at about 300 fpm at about 47 mph IAS. > Bart
Here's an example similar to the flying magazine scenario: Let's say you are flying near minimum flying speed, let's say 50 mph, in a 15 mph headwind. As you near the ground, the headwind drops to 5 mph, a common near-the-ground situation. Now, instead of having an airspeed of 50, your airspeed is 40 and the nose will "pitch down" to re-achieve its set flying speed of 50. Once the airspeed is back to 50, the nose will pitch up to the same angle it had before - as long as you haven't encountered the ground in the mean time. Ed Ed Burkhead http://edburkhead.com/Ercoupe/index.htm East Peoria, Illinois ed -at- edbur???khead.??com (remove the ? marks and change -at- to @)
