Bart.
A good rigged Ercoupe should give you not much trouble on landing and take off, even with a unfavorable cross wind. If your plane is not rigged right, you might experience problems in cross winds even with a proper tail height. The correct tail height is sorta part of the rigging, but there room for error, so to say. If your tail is a bit low, you simply use the help of aerodynamic forces to keep you on the runway. Just trim for cruise on take off. That keeps the nose down the faster you go. The more speed you have the more up forces will work on the tail. Your tail low will become a tail normal, the faster you go. When trimming for cruise, you are trimming for a nose down or tail up configuration. The forces pushing down the nose are enough for to keep the steering control over the plane. Hartmut To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Date: Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:18:15 +0000 Subject: [ercoupe-tech] Re: Gear Spacers Quote from ercoguru "installation of a 5" nose wheel and tire for the previous 4" nose > wheel and tire," What? We're supposed to have a 4" tire on the nose gear? After the spacers, my sill is very close to being level, but not quite, so maybe it is the 5" nosewheel tire? If so , I need to change it. Somebody let me know. Also, I used to get the Ercoupe JC maneuver while landing in a crosswind even though I touch down with the yoke full aft. (I have the 1320 STC installed so the speed is about 47 mph). I attributed part of the weathervane swerve to the effect of the "down aileron", as you are trying to keep the airplane from weathervaning, increasing the lift of the upwind wing enough to allow it to start rising. To stop the wing rise, the reaction is to lower the wing by rolling into the crosswind but all that does is magnify the weathervaning tendency. Also, just finished the annual and found a couple of interesting things. First, I have been fighting a "generator" problem since last year. Generator was not charging the battery. At Sun-n-Fun, I installed a new voltage regulator and found a working generator at the Fly Market and installed it. Neither fixed it. And then, the rest of the story. My intrepid IA pulled the voltage regulator and found the RCR points remained open all the time. I believe the points are supposed to close when the generator is powering the battery and open when the battery tries to power the generator. Hooked up some test wires, held the RCR relay closed manually and viola' - generator begins charging the battery. (Old voltage regulator that was replaced had RCR points burned so bad the were gone, like in the wind). New voltage regulator on order. Also, I had didn't have suction guage or a functioning attitude indicator since I bought the airplane. Intrepid IA pulls the vacuum regulator and finds: a. The filter screen is clogged with years of wheat/corn/milo harvest debris. b. On disassembly, the spring is out of position and the interior valve is sitting somewhat crosswise. Smoothed up valve, cleaned filter, reinserted spring and yippe! 4-5 inches of suction at 100 mph. Fun to watch the attitude indicator start working again. Also found the fuel pump leaking slightly, (or I should say Lynn Nelson did at a fly-in a few weeks ago) and couldn't fix it by tightening up fuel lines, so new fuel pump is on order. This is going to be one hell of a plane when I get through with it. And, oh yes I must tell Lynn I am cleaning the oil off the bottom of the plane that blew out of the cowling from the botched oil change I did. Ahem. Ah. Too much information. I gotta quit. Bart _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ SkyDrive: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_skydrive_032009
