test flights

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Postby ozzie » Sun Apr 24, 2005 6:34 am

wow it was a big day for Ozzie. my carby rebuild kits arrived from Heeters in the USA so i fitted the kit to the stuborne one and spent a some time fussing with it. the engine has much higher time than the other and still woudn't run as hard as the newer on. But it was good enough to do two airborn runs down the strip. YAHOO!! i was pretty nervous as it has been just on twenty years since i flew a lazair and i own this one. this strip is far from the perfect place to do test runs as it is uphill and lined with trees. so at sunset i waddled off downhill turned around and planted the brakes ran the engines up reduced a bit of power to even up the thrust and released the flintstones and had my first experience with rudder pedals on a lazair (something else to think about) it got light so we flew a couple of hundred feet climbed to about 30ft and it seemed that it needed a fair bit of forward stick to level and then decend and then put it down. it feels a little tail heavy. the second was pretty much the same with a 's' turn thrown in. it was pretty hard to judge angles with the rise in ground. it seemed slower in pitch and a little tail heavy. slow pitch may be explained by the shorter tail and heaviness due to less lift by the tail. any thoughts on this, guys?
BLUE SKIES AND FULL TANKS
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Postby rayjb60 » Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:31 am

Shorter tail, how much shorter?
That certainly would result in less leverage and less control power,
I suppose it should feel more twitchy, if that was the problem.

The large amount of forward stick after liftoff is normal and is explained in the "Learning to fly Lazair" guide as a pecularity of the inverted V tail behavior, due to ground effect.

Ineffective tail control is normally due to, to small control surface or nose heavy.

Tail heavyness will result in a very sensitive pitch control, as it is more pitch divergent......which means it will be trying to change pitch on you constantly and would be hard to fly hands off level.

It sounds like you have the opposite problem, nose heavy and/or to small control surfaces.

A fairing/windshield that goes all the way to the wing, may also cause a similar problem, by creating turbulence for the tail at low speed.

Have you got a fairing? If so try it without the windshield portion.

Congrats on the first flight, it makes all the tinkering worth while, soon you will be up with the big birds, and Im sure we would all love to see pictures and movies......and an account of your adrenaline filled adventure into the sky.

Chris and I will be doing our first flight/hops next weekend most likely, at El Mirage in California.

I'd love to get all 11 of us Lazairs based there into the air at once, that would be an absolutely incredible event to behold.

Ray
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Postby Shannon » Mon Apr 25, 2005 2:16 pm

Congrats ! More than likely you just need to get the feel again. The shorter tail is actually an asset to your plane. Your lightweight plane would be a real performer with some P-tip equipped 185's.

S
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