Marc Olson
GONE WEST
Seattle, WA
Saturday morning dawned calm with only a touch of fog. I left Paine Field for Harvey to meet Bill Ingerson, intrepid videographer, for a day of documenting landing characteristics of my PA-12 on a variety of surfaces and landing styles. The goal was to spend some time focusing on how my current gear behaves under sub-optimal landing conditions. You know the ones: too fast on short final, too high when you stall, bumps during rollout, rocks on the bars, etc. We hoped to catch this on film and then repeat the experiment after 64M emerges from annual (starts Monday) with the AOSS installed.
We hit five landing areas in the course of the morning and were joined by Chris Duros for the last part of the exercise where we explored a local river bar.
My landings ran the gamut from whisper smooth to 'oh shit, that was bad.' No animals or airplanes were damaged during this pre-product testing.
Behaviors that I hope report on are: porpoising during rollout due to uneven surfaces, the 'big bounce' when short final ends 12 inches above the runway, takeoff from rough surfaces (including needing to turn while on rock during the departure roll).
We'll have more video documentation once we do the 'after' tests, but for the 'before' tests we have some short videos that Chris shot.
Good landing on the Snohomish:
http://www.stuartisland.com/flying/touchdown.mov
Big splash:
http://www.stuartisland.com/flying/splash.mov
Big Bounce at KPAE:
http://www.stuartisland.com/flying/bounce.mov
I'm sure the folks in the tower got a chuckle out of that last one...
Stay tuned for part 2 in a couple of weeks once 64M is back in the air.
Marc
We hit five landing areas in the course of the morning and were joined by Chris Duros for the last part of the exercise where we explored a local river bar.
My landings ran the gamut from whisper smooth to 'oh shit, that was bad.' No animals or airplanes were damaged during this pre-product testing.
Behaviors that I hope report on are: porpoising during rollout due to uneven surfaces, the 'big bounce' when short final ends 12 inches above the runway, takeoff from rough surfaces (including needing to turn while on rock during the departure roll).
We'll have more video documentation once we do the 'after' tests, but for the 'before' tests we have some short videos that Chris shot.
Good landing on the Snohomish:
http://www.stuartisland.com/flying/touchdown.mov
Big splash:
http://www.stuartisland.com/flying/splash.mov
Big Bounce at KPAE:
http://www.stuartisland.com/flying/bounce.mov
I'm sure the folks in the tower got a chuckle out of that last one...
Stay tuned for part 2 in a couple of weeks once 64M is back in the air.
Marc