Gezzz....this ALL sounds pretty impressive, I have read all 5 pages w/ great interest!
My hats off to anyone who charges head-first into the FAA for their blessing, good jobs guys! The STC process isn't getting any easier with time.
I've been flying an ol' red & white cub for many years, through the years I've seen many "new fangled" idea's come and go. True some things are a real improvment to the best plane ever built, however the reality is that most of the mods for a Cub aren't what they're made out to be. With that said I'm skeptical, sure...I'd like this ALL to be true, but time will tell.
Reading through all 5 pages I've read things like "reduces ground roll by 30%". Well, lets talk about that. You take a good Cub, light weight and ready to go for a short field take off, put the whip to it (no wind, 1 guy full fuel, some weight), whe the tails comes up this is ALWAYS an indication the plane is ready to fly...this will happen in about 300', give or take. IF the take off roll is reduces by 30%, this would 90' less. In other words this same take off would be 210', instead of 300', sounds like a lot to me. Espesially because a Cub won't fly until the tail comes up, on big tires. Interestingly enough, the tail is the first thing you loose at low speed also. Can ANYONE stall a cub, on the ground, during a landing, and MAKE the main tires touch first? Of course not...the tail flys first, it also stalls first.
I have also read things like "while hanging on the edge....its quite a dance" WHAT??? What do you mean>? A Cub is THE most forgiving airplane in the world, it will always tell you when its' about to stall, and by the way...it is hard to make a Cub really "stall". You can take a Cub into a 500 fpm "mush", however they have to be loaded just right, and a fellow driving knwoing exacty what to do to "MAKE" them stall...I mean break-over and stall like a spam can. All this talk about "better" landing performance....what exactly is better??????????
Next in line from point of view is the trim. The trim on a Cub is a good indicator of how well you have your load within the CG limit of the machine. In other words, if you're trimmed all the way forward, and still pucshing forward on the stick, most likey you're loaded to far back, to heavy, or both. In this case, you'll want to fly it on, fast, with no flaps. Why...>? Because you'll loose the tail (stall) if you slow it down too much. Once again the tail is the indicator of whats going on.
So......if the thrust line is "improved" to be more inline with the plane, this could be compared to starting your short field take off with one notch of flaps. In other words if you set a notch of flaps at the begining of your roll you have induced "extra" drag that only hurts you. On the other hand, if you reach down and grap a "handfull of flap" when the tail comes up you'll pop-off and can easily hold it in ground effect till you get some speed. I can relate to this "improvement", however how much are we really talking about?
I'll stick my neck out some.....Is this the same as VG's?? ALL the performance gain you get from VG';s.???? I can fly cirlces around guys with all the doo-dads on thier wings, Take off and land shorter to. plus I'm willing to put my money where my proposal is too...
Maybe this will make a REAL improvement, at minimum a lot of guys put a lot of work into making our Cubs perform better and for this...we shoudl all buy them a cup of coffee every time we see them...
Good Flying...>Byron
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