Flying Aces Inc. Newsletter vol.31 #11 November 2000
The Leading Edge
Safety Evaluation Board: 18:30 before General Meeting
General Meeting: Wednesday, November 8, 19:30 at San Jose Jet Center
Program: Aces Instructor Lindell Wilson
Board Meeting: Monday November 27, 18:00 at Pheley's
(carpool at Squadron 2 17:00)
October Meeting Summary:
The planned speaker failed to materialize! After pizza, Doug described
his recent Mediterranean sailing trip.
November Birthdays:
8-Nov:Mark Hernandez 9-Nov:Doug Groom & Jeff Tobin
13-Nov:Lindell Wilson 14-Nov:Terrance Slocum
15-Nov:Charles Victory 18-Nov:Christoph Bohmann
26-Nov:John Gould 28-Nov:Jerry Morgan & Venkata Karpuram
NOTAM: At the October Board Meeting, the maximum rate for Aces
flight instruction was raised to $40/hr. [This is still a bargain!-Ed.]
Please submit articles and notes for the newsletter to jtn@te-cats.com
Please send ideas or contacts for club activites to Kepfly@aol.com
Club President John Gould is at gould42@aol.com
Club Manager Doug Groom is at ali@cruzio.com
831 475-6868
see Doug's vacation at http://www.yacht-circe.com
Club Web page is at http://www.applelaneinn.com/flyingaces
(reprinted from the EAA 119 10/00 newsletter, with permission of the author)
Hitching a Ride in a Nosedragger:
While visiting Southern California, I was invited to view the Cozy IV project of Doug and
Patty Pitzer at their Corona hangar. After 5 years, the canard and
wings are finished, the
fuselage is almost done, and the engine and instruments have been acquired, but not installed.
Many of the fiberglass details were of great interest to me. Doug and another Cozy IV builder,
who came by to see how Doug had addressed certain issues, explained that the boring of the
wing attach bolts into the main spar presents some challenges.
Doug had a pleasant surprise for me, he had arranged for me to ride in a Cozy owned by Guy
Cadwell over at Chino. Guy's hangar is one in a whole row containing canard aircraft, of
various types, stages of completion, and damage histories. One rebuild in progress was the
result of the previous owner landing it in the ocean. It had the dubious distinction of having
retractable main gear, which the new owner said he had never seen to operate more than
twice in a row without developing a problem.
Guy pushd N32HL out of the hangar, extended the nose strut part way, and invited me to
climb in. Most decendants of the Varieze design are parked with the nose gear retracted; the
center of gravity is so close to the axis of the main gear, that some weight must be riding in the
front seats before extending the nose strut, or the aircraft could tip over backwards. Once I
managed to wriggle my legs through the opening in the instrument panel, sitting in a semi-
recumbent attitude, Guy climbed into the left seat, fully extended the nose gear, and taxied
out to the runup area.
With runup completed, we were anxious to get going, because a P-51 was stagger taxiing in
our direction, and also because once the bubble canopy was closed, it started to get very warm.
Chino is a tower airport with 2 parallel runways, and after just a couple minutes, we were off.
Departing south, Guy handed it over to me as we climbed through 3,000' doing 140 kt and
1,000 fpm. The sidestick required very little deflection and very little effort as I continued the
climb and turned to follow the route of the 15 freeway southeast. This is one of the less
crowded areas of the LA basin, but we still needed to stay away from gliders near Lake
Elsinore and Hemet, parachuting at Perris Valley and French Valley, and especially March
Air Force Base.
I eased the climb rate and then levelled off at 8,000'. Guy then idled the throttle and told me
to try and hold altitude. As we slowed to 80 kt, the stick had reached its full back position,
and as we continued slowing to 70 kt, the nose gently rotated to a pitch down. Guy told me to
try some aileron turns to left and right, and they didn't feel much different than before: no
sensation of "mushing along" at all. The canard is designed to stall before the main wing, so
that, in normal level flight, the nose will pitch down rather than allow the aircraft to stall.
This is important, because the main wings are tapered backward in a delta configuration, so
a main wing stall would cause the center of pressure to move forward, aggravating the stall,
which might well be unrecoverable.
We returned to normal cruise 150 kt at 7,500', and Guy told me to go ahead and do whatever
I wanted, "within reason". What felt like a standard rate turn left and right, followed by steep
turns, which seemed very smooth indeed. There is so little adverse yaw, that rudder inputs are
not required. Unlike a Cessna, the horizon does not intersect the top of the instrument panel
during a steep, level turn; with the engine in the rear, the nose slopes downward, affording
great forward visibility. On the other hand, that canopy was not very far from my face. Twice
I bumped my headset against it, and once, when I tried to point at something, my index finger
bounced off the inside of the bubble.
I then tried the rudders, and Guy said, for the third time, "You don't need any of that".
There are two rudders, resting in the center neutral position, and the pedals cause their
trailing edges to deflect outward. The pedals operate independently, so pressing both causes a
true forward slip, increasing drag while ailerons are held neutral. I then began a dutch roll
to see exactly how much rudder was required, and found that it was almost none at all. The
rudder pedals, when pressed further, actuate the main wheel brakes, which is the only steering
while taxiing at low speed, since the nose wheel is free castering.
Guy then asked if there was anything else that I wanted to do, and the thought that flashed
through my mind was, "Let's fly to Arizona!", but I suspected that this might go beyond the
bounds of hospitality and instead agreed that we should start back to Chino. He turned on the
wing leveller, and it had a very obvious effect on the roll stability; instead of requiring
attention every second or so, the stick was twitching, just slightly, and the ride was very
smooth. Guy went on to explain that the wing leveller and manual trim was sufficient to fly
hands-off on the long flights that he makes to El Paso. He then demonstrated the knob on the
wing leveller that sets the offset for left, right, or straight, and said, "When there are 3 LEDS
lit, that's a standard rate turn". I looked at the horizon and realized that when I had been
making what I thought were standard rate turns, that they had actually been much steeper.
Guy set the GPS to return toward Paradise VOR, and I found it very easy to use. The top
number, in large print, was the actual heading, slowly varying between 293 to 295, and the
number on the next line was steady on the desired heading of 294. The cabin got suddenly
warmer as we descended into the hazy smog layer at 4,000'. Guy took over as we turned over
the VOR, as he was calling Chino Tower. The approach seemed very shallow, and I noticed
that he did not use the speed brake until we were on short final. I wanted to see what the
visibilty was like in the landing attitude, but I was distracted by a dark green replica of a
British warbird who was swooping in to a landing on the parallel runway. As soon as we
crossed the hold line, Guy opened the canopy, which hinges right, and taxied to the fuel island.
I observed that the fuel sight gauges in the rear seat area are rather difficult to read, especially
the one that is on the same side as the observer.
This flight left a favorable impression with me. The Cozy achieves a high cruise speed, with an
engine power less than 200 hp, and low fuel consumption. The seating arrangement is tight,
but it is side by side. Although I did not execute a landing, the controls seemed comfortable
during climb, descent, and level flight.
- John Nogatch, Sep-00