Conducted 11/21/2012 –
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving John was done early with work. Hoping to try for another 4 day flight testing weekend, but knowing that things weren’t looking good starting Thursday afternoon, John decided to try to get a flight in Wednesday afternoon. Our good friend and neighbor, Doug Lofgren, went with to act as ground crew. The flight went well and John’s report to the cozy list is below:
“Today I managed to get back up for some further stability and stall testing, this time with the CG at the forward limit. The only slight nervousness about this test, was the possibility of running out of elevator authority on landing. Given the planes performance to this point, and the fact that I’m testing at light weights, it wasn’t that big a concern.
The stability tests went fine. I found no difference in pitch stability even with the CG at the forward limit. For some reason I was expecting it to take an additional oscillation to return to the trimmed speed, but not so. Just one or two depending on the speed used.
The stall testing went as expected as well. Stall speed straight ahead was 64Kts at CG of 97.5/~1650lbs, vs. the 58Kts at CG of 99.5/~1575lbs.
After completing the tests, I descended back down to the airport. Although the CG was at the forward limit, the response from the plane during stall testing made me comfortable that the landing should go fine, and it did.”