REFLECTOR: XLFG Flying side ways
KMis178813 at aol.com
KMis178813 at aol.com
Mon Mar 5 22:41:50 CST 2012
Ron
Been there!!! A story I wrote years ago:
Upon taking off at Sebastian, Florida, Runway 22 and going over crossing
runway the nose floated up then retouched one more time before going
airborne. At about 15 feet above runway the plane started a left bank; trying to
adjust for level flight, I found myself at full right aileron still while
making a hard left turn and climbing. At 400 ft and 100 degrees into the
turn, a mental check was done of construction. Every nut, bolt, and washer
and, oh yeah, look outside “are both wings still on”? I remember thinking “
newly installed front wheel pant” (not quite in those words). I lowered
the nose to pick up speed and it started to get a little better. At 140
knots I felt it change. Whew, it then flew just like it always had for the past
400 hours. Upon landing, nose wheel shimmy that no one should ever have.
No one hurt--equipment saved--now what? Well, we’re not coming back out
of the hangar until we’re sure this will never happen again. Thus, the
birth of the nose wheel lock. A long story for one of the scariest ten
seconds of my life.
What I think happened was that the nose wheel, upon retouching the runway,
turned about 25 degrees to the right. Acting like a big rudder, turning
the bottom of the plane right and the wings made a left turn. Speed helped
the ailerons become more effective and when fast enough, straighten up the
nose wheel pant slightly, but still shimmied on touch down.
In a message dated 3/5/2012 11:32:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
flykb at verizon.net writes:
Hi Ron,
I think you are right on the money.
I have an Elite FG LW and my nose wheel pant would kick to the side (not
as bad as yours) but it did cause the ball to be way off center.
We took the front wheel pant off and it flew straight as an arrow.
Something with the way my wheel pant was made (mine was way heavy in the aft end
of the pant.
I'm not flying with the nose wheel pant and plan to get one from velocity
and build one to see if I can get it to fly straight.
I even got it on a pic I'll attach. This was a series of pictures and you
could see that the nose pant aft is pointing at the lt main. We also picked
up some speed when we took the nose pant off.
Thanks,
Kevin Baker
N164PS
On 3/5/2012 9:42 PM, Ron Velocity XLFG wrote:
Today I did two flight in my plane the first flight was fine no issue to
discuss here.
but on my second flight right at take off the plane wanted to turn left
real hard.
By that I mean Full right deflection to keep the plane from rolling over.
I went around the pattern
with almost full right input and got the plane back on the ground. The
turning seemed to slightly
reduce as I went around the pattern . I had a similar issue on my last
test fight. The plane flew with a severe crab
all the way around the pattern . So this is the second issue I have had
since putting on my front wheel pants on .
My guess is the front wheel is kicking to the side right at lift off
causing the plane
to want to turn. I checked all of my rigging and nothing looks wrong. Has
any one
else had this happen? This make me real nervous to use my wheel pants or
just fly the plane
again. It could be a winglet getting stuck out I suppose ,I wish I had
look around more closely but
I was most concerned about getting on the ground first.
Ron
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