Conducted 3/23/2013 –
John’s flight report to the Cozy list is below:
“I awoke to more sunshine on Saturday, so back out to the airport we went. I reballasted the plane for the forward CG test at MGW, and again topped off the tanks. I set the pitch trim to 12 deg TE down (no load obviously), and poured on the coals. Now normally, the nose starts getting light and floats up around 60-70 kts, my cue to ease back on the stick and send her skyward. As I passed 70 kts she didn’t come up though. I started pulling back on the stick and I could tell it felt noticeably heavier. My increased pressure on the stick, combined with the plane accelerating to 80kts by this time, finally sent me up. I definitely ate up some runway on that take off. Nearly 3000’ of it.
It took a lot more up trim to get rid of the stick pressure, but there was plenty of authority to do so. The plane flew much as expected. Stall speeds were the highest I had seen so far, with straight ahead being 71Kts! Stability was as expected, though it almost seemed to take more time to return to the trimmed configuration, even though it still only took one oscillation to recover. Now, it’s been a few weeks since I conducted the last forward CG test (at a medium load), so perhaps my memory is just foggy. I never timed how long it took to return to trimmed config, only ever counted how many oscillations it took.
As I was making my approach back to the airport (I test about 6-8 miles away and 8-10k’), I remembered how heavy the controls felt at take off, so I again kept my speed up on final. The mains touched on nice and gentle, but the nose wheel bounced just a bit when it settled, and I got a little shimmy. The shimmy stopped when the speed dropped below 50 kts, so it didn’t last terribly long, but was a little unsettling none the less.
As I taxied back to the hangar I realized it was approaching 11am. The forecast had a broken layer at 3500’ scheduled for noon, but as I looked around there was no indication of anything coming or forming yet anyway. Could it be that mother nature was going to grant me my wish?”
