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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