I couldn't decide to post this in my usual home of Event Photography or the Community Hall. I decided on the Community Hall because this relates to airplanes, airplane ownership, and little to photography.

Back in 2003 my father and I purchased a Lancair 360 MkII from a gentleman in Arizona. It's been quite the adventure since first flying it home. For those that like stories please read on, for those that like photos just look below.

During that flight home we encountered unexpected high winds near Roswell, NM. The winds were gusting to around 50 knots and steady at about 30 knots. We decided to extend out flight a bit further to avoid the winds and decided upon a place call Clovis, NM. The winds were nearly the same, but because it was our first cross country, we didn't know how accurate the fuel gauges were. We made an overflight to check out the windsock and it was blowing from one direction to another. We elected to try a normal approach and see what happens, unable to keep it down the center line we took it around and tried a different runway. This time we kept the flaps up and flew our approach at 95 knots. Everything went smoothly until we were about 5-8 feet above the runway when we were flaring. Right then a huge gust of wind caught us and brought us back up into the air. While trying to compensate the gust stopped and we dropped like a rock on to the runway. Thankfully we landed on all 3 points of our landing gear and damaged seem minimal. After refueling the aircraft, I did a walk around look for any damage. Sure enough we broke the yoke and shock on the nose gear and upon further examination we actually bent the engine mount.

We had to leave the plane in Clovis for repair. Roughly 2 months later we returned to finish the ferry flight to Oshkosh. To make a long story short we had 2 complete electrical failures, one which resulted in an emergency landing in Iowa. Upon getting it home we found out that the previous owner had known about cause of the electrical failure...a paper clip. When we got home and situated in our hanger we begun to make a plan on how to examine and refit the airplane. We replaced all mechanical components except the engine. We replaced the engine gauges with an EFIS and added a backup flight display to the right side. Anyone who is involved with aviation knows how much money has been spent at this point, so we gave it a rest for a couple years.

Our final project was to update the entire instrument panel with modern avionics. We used those 2 years to decide on what we exactly wanted and researched if it was what we needed. Now after waiting all summer for the install work to be completed we had our first flight with the new avionics early last month. We had a few glitches with the autopilot, but otherwise the test flights went according to plan. -When you would engage the A/P the aircraft would pitch either up or down about 30 degrees and then go into a left 45 degree bank. Now in a Cessna that happens very slowly. In the Lancair it happens in less then a second. In the Lancair you literally fly with your wrist, it's that sensitive.

Below are photos of the cockpit evolution. The first photo you see is what the cockpit looked like when we bought it. The second photo is after we replaced the mixture control, tank selector, and add the glass on the right side. The third photo is how it looks now. If anyone has questions on what we added or how it works feel free to ask. I am posting full resolution photos so you can see the tiniest of fine print.

Please have patience if you click the "Super Hi-Res" link. They are upwards of 8mb.


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EDIT: I figure some people might not have a clue what a Lancair 360 looks like..

Here is what it looks like now (I designed the graphics ):

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Beautiful airplane sir.

Gorgeous.

My wallet cried with sympathy pains, though.

Definitely a looker. I didn't know the canopy was forward hinging on a Lancair though. Your new "office" looks great!

Damn, do you ever get *bad* weather out there??

That's a chunk o' change y'all invested in that bird...very nice!

FC

Thank you for the comments! Glad you like the aircraft.

Gopher-

We have crappy weather all the time, but it comes in streaks. Wisconsin can have really beautiful days like that one, but the next day can be 90% humidity, 90 degrees, and a 101 degree heat index. We try and take advantage of all the nice days we can get. Right now the weather is finally switching to fall with day time highs in the 70s with no humidity. 100+ mile visibility is pretty common, but with nothing but flat terrain there isn't much to see off in the distance.

Also the canopy does indeed open forward. It's not the most reassuring way to have it open in case of an emergency. In fact one of our flying 'friends' crash last year (maybe year before) on New Years in Joliet, IL. They lost control on take off, went through the ditch, and then flipped over. They proceeded to catch on fire. I can only imagine they were still alive as the plane burned because once you are flipped like that there is no way out.

I forgot to add the interior will be redone with in the next couple of weeks. That's come along way too.

Neat plane.

How you usually compensate for gust factor during landing?

Nice plane!

Who makes that EFIS system? I've flown quite a bit with both Garmin G1000- and Avidyne Entegra-equipped planes. Love both of them, although the G1000 has the edge

That Lancair is a sweet bird..I flew a Columbia 400 to London in April. Great fun to have that kind of performance in a single-engined piston bird

Don't fly. As you can see we have an AoA indicator to the left. We fly a very flat and slightly nose high approach.

Stall speed is right around 60 knots or so for our airplane with full flaps. If we are dealing with unpredictable winds we'll fly across the numbers at 85 knots. Then we'll float above the runway in ground effect for a bit and let the plane touch the runway.

Last week I had an incident while landing with no wind and the controller asked me to stop before the crossing runway. No problem right? Well, the airplane just didn't want to land. So I pulled power and created some fiction with the runway. -BAD idea. I started porpoising, three times to be exact, but nevertheless got the plane stopped in time.

I am going to guess your fly your T-6 in a similar manner on approach. We fly our final with power, we don't pull power like so many other GA aircraft do. So when we flare is when we start back on the power. Then we just fly in ground effect until the airplane is ready to touch down, typically around 1000 feet or so worth of runway.

The hardest part of flying a Lancair is when you need to slow it down. We do not have speed brakes. When we approach an airport to land we start slowing down around 20 miles out. The goal is to get the airplane to around 120 knots to drop the gear at 5 miles. -That is our speed brake. When we enter the pattern we fly a wider and flatter pattern then most small GA aircraft. Needless to say the 360 is a tricky bugger to fly, but I have never had more fun flying. If you firewall the throttle the airplane will accelerate past 235 knots with is Vne. Vno is 182 knots which is our cruise speed most days with controls set at 24 squared.



EFIS is made by Advanced Flight Systems. Our model is the AF-4500 on the left. The EMS on the right is Advanced too. Then the small EFIS above the EMS is made by Dynon. -Which in my opinion is a piece of crap, but works fine as a back up. It's really hard to fly by the numbers with it as the tapes move so fast.

http://www.advanced-flight-systems.com/Products/AF-4500/af4500.html

We usually never used full flaps during landing in T-6 since it required almost 45% throttle to fly approach. Slowing down wasn't a problem since prop/gear and flaps provided ridiculous drag. Anyhow, regarding gust factor. In both airplanes (T-1/T-6) we used "Half of gust factor, no more than 10knots". So that gives some wiggle room. So if gust is 20 to 30, you fly approach speed +5knots.