So you didn’t take her up yesterday ?

Nope, it was yucky weather. Apparently there was some sort of storm on the pan handle and up through Georgia south of me.

Btw, I tried to call and see if you got hit...

BTW bounces are all about airspeed and attitude. If you 'grease' the landing, then no bounce as your flying attitude and ground attitude are the same (doesn't matter if a wheel landing, or three point, just that you don't "hit" the ground hard enough for momentum to carry the tail down (and you don't want to have it carry the nose down...)

Grass mainly differs from concrete in that it *can* be softer and draggier (increasing the risk of a higher speed wheeled landing causing a nose-over), but when cut short and not excessively soft there isn't much difference to asphalt or concrete.

You can fly the aircraft down to a three point attitude and then allow it to settle with no risk of bounce, but this can cause issues with lateral and directional control, and ability to safely apply power to abandon the landing if three point is at or beyond the incipient stall angle. Even with some margin over the three point attitude, a lower approach speed and a hold-off can result in less bounce. Finding the sweet point between control and ability to settle below a flying speed in the landing attitude is potentially tricky, so a modicum of bounce is better than bending things.

Dart, so you were that Birmingham call. You should have left a voicemail.

Didn’t even come close. Just a little rain and light wind. Had bad weather flying to Virginia Beach last Saturday. Week later I attended the Military Aviation Museum airshow. Really, really good. You would have liked it. This years theme was Biplanes and Brews. Several local breweries had their beer there.


https://militaryaviationmuseum.org/airshows/biplanes-and-brews/


It is one of the best aviation museums. Almost all of the planes there fly. Even the Russian stuff. I have a bunch of pictures if it wouldn’t bore you all.

Look forward to seeing them OG.

Sir, I'm wounded....your number is in my contact list so that if you call your name comes up.

And I'm just anonymous digits....



I rarely leave voice mails, as usually it's just pissing in the wind. Goodness knows I only check mine every week or so!

Ok, Ok, Ok. You are in my contacts list. After waiting over a year to be invited to come back for another visit, I figured I’d been dumped.

What did you think of that Military Aviation Museum ? Not only did they fly all those, it was more than the usual couple patterns and that was it. Nope, they flew these for about a half hour each. Fast flybys, slow flybys , touch and goes, etc. New aircraft would go up and they would do group flybys. One of the best shows I’ve been to.

Even the remote control stuff was good. These were big models; either 1/3 or 1/2 scale. The 1/2 scale were huge and when flying they could be mistaken for the real things.

LOL Dart,
You remind me of some that look for my motorcycle repair. I have a basic landline and a simple tape answering machine. I can not tell you how many times the only message left is "this is xx, call me back". if you call, leave a name, number, and time of call.

#%&*$# the Hun!

You are so imaginative. What music were you thinking of when you were doing your little “happy dance” ?

Nice landing.

I usually make up a little song when I do stuff like that.

There are few things more fun in flying than playing with little puffy clouds, flying around them and watching them go past. This is where a slow aircraft really pays off, as I can really enjoy them.

Like any maneuvers, though, one has to really check the sky for others. My head's on a swivel not for dramatic effect!

Good fun Dart.


Wheels

I enjoy the small clouds that you can see through so you can fly through them.

There was actually a donut of a cloud that was large enough for the airplane to fly through!

It didn't show up well enough on camera, though, to be worth anything.

I have to replace the valve cover gasket on the right side - it's leaking! But since I'm right about at valve adjustment time anyway, it was going to get thrown in the trash anyhow.

For some reason I can handle straight crosswinds from the left a lot better than from the right. Maybe it's a function of the way the prop spins,* but the other day I went up to find the wind shift to 90 degrees from the runway at about 5 mph.

Keeping the wind on the right it was kind of an ugly affair. I landed her okay, but it was just rough. So I took off again and went the other way, with the wind to my left. No problems at all.

The wind actually favored the other end slightly at the second landing, so I had the tiniest bit of tailwind.

* My VW rotates the prop in the opposite direction of certified ones.

This is strictly speculation but it seems reasonable to me that the plane would be easier to handle when the prop is turning in the opposite direction to the crosswind. It would seem to me that when the prop is turning with the crosswind you have to fight not just the crosswind but the torque of the prop which naturally wants to propel you in that direction so you are fighting both forces working together to keep the plane under control. When it is turning against the crosswind the prop torque is cancelling some if not all the crosswind forces out.


Wheels

Turns out a photographer caught my Bebe at the airshow, and it made the article about Greg Koontz's fly-in in Airshow News.

^That is so cool!

Dart, have you finished your 25 hours yet ?

Pretty darn cool Dart.
Did you send an email to the paper letting them know it belonged to you?


Wheels

It's 40 hours, as I have an experimental engine...and I'm a few hours short. Not that it matters a whole lot; while I'd like to fly down to Shelby County and maybe over my house, it's not a pressing matter.

@ CAVU: Yeah, I sent them a little blurb explaining the aircraft and telling them how nice the day was.