All,
My observation is the same as Bill Bayne's. Please re-read his most recent message very carefully. The nose wheel will almost certainly touch before the main gear is fully weighted. The nose wheel WILL TURN to line up with its direction of motion on the ground if you don't hold the yoke tight to prevent it. This will happen almost instantly and relieve any nose gear side loads. This happens even when the aircraft is still in a strong crab before the aircraft rotates and is HOW the aircraft rotates i.e. the main gear generates side loads and rotational force while the nose gear does not generate side loads and does not resist the aircraft's rotation. If you have a snubber, then perhaps you can hold the nose gear entirely off the pavement till after the rotation occurs but this is not necessary. Remember, the nose gear will TURN to line up with its motion across the ground. This happens with or without the snubber cable, before the nose gear becomes "weighted" (bearing the weight of the nose of the aircraft) while the strut is still compressing. What you lose with the snubber cable is a significant part of the shock absorbing ability of the nose gear strut. ________________________________ Here's a transcript section of my interview with Fred Weick, 1991: Ed: "The Ercoupe was designed so the nose strut would be all the way down and it wouldn't have the snubber cable holding it up high." Fred: "It wasn't designed so it shouldn't have a cable. The cable was never even thought of in the design. It's other people, later, have added that at their own whim." Ed: "So, with the thing all the way down, the one gentleman was saying that the airplane is supposed to touch all three wheels at the same time." Fred: "Not at all. I don't know who said that and that's an absolute untruth. You can fly it on if you have to. My own preference is to fly it so it touches down very close to minimum speed, just the way you would a tail-dragger. There's no reason in the world why you shouldn't make a nice soft, smooth landing at the lowest speed at which you can get. On the other hand, it isn't important that you do that. "If you land at a higher speed with a tail-dragger, then you have to make an entirely different landing where you make a wheel landing and deliberately hold the tail up till it's slow enough that you can drop it and not fly off again. Otherwise, if the tail goes down at the higher speed, you're off the ground and flying again. "The Ercoupe, when it's on the ground, rolling along, has the wing at a low angle of attack more like that in cruising, so you'd have to go very fast in order to bounce off again unless you pulled back on the wheel and pull it off." Ed: "When the main wheels touch, then the nose wheel should be up in the air as much as you can?" Fred: "I won't say how it should or shouldn't be - everyone to his own because some people can do it one way and get by with it. My own preference, certainly, is to land very close to minimum speed. __________________________ It's your choice, people. Ed
