Ground handling on skis; tight turns

mvivion said:

As the others implied, full left rudder, stick forward and BLASTS of power. Of course if you hold that power in, your skis may dig in. So quick blasts of power. It sounds rude. I once asked a Lycoming tech rep whether he thought this was abusing the engine. He asked two questions:

1. Is the engine warm? I answered yes
2. What’s the alternative? I answered “Lots of digging, shoving etc

His response: blast away.

But turning with the tail wheel or ski on the surface: Better have lots of room.

MTV

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How well did your 170 turn?

mit greb said:

How well did your 170 turn?

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It turned well, Tim, mostly because of lots of power and a pretty light tail. The AWB 2500 skis were pretty heavy and didn’t float real well, but....

MTV

I've tried to play giant size tic tac toe in the snow with the plane, (without joining up the lines, like you'd draw it) but man it is harder then one would think. I never got to the point of winning or losing, it is really an exercise in precision flying, and probably why I couldn't do it. Nice cartoon cubflier!

Cubflier - Can you post the take off after landing on that mountain top? Nice video of the landing.

mvivion said:

It turned well, Tim, mostly because of lots of power and a pretty light tail. The AWB 2500 skis were pretty heavy and didn’t float real well, but....

MTV

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Tim,

I should probably add that we made a couple basic mods to the steering which improved same. One simple (but not cheap) one is to get rid of the “standard” steering arm on the 3200 tailwheel, and install a 3214T steering arm. Airframes calls it a “bent” steering arm. That moves the steering geometry up, and improves steering authority. An easy fix, and you’d REALLY have to hit something BIG to bend one of those steering arms, whereas a LOT of the older style arms are bent.

MTV

We are getting the dump of the year right now, and it's about time. Walking my ski strip yesterday it was nearly 50/50 exposed grass, with some snow. This may explain why my last couple of takeoffs were somewhat "leisurely".

We are getting the dump of the year right now, and about time as just yesterday I was walking my strip and it was about 40% grass and the rest snow, that explains no doubt why my last few takeoffs were a bit leisurely. This site is just dry farm high ground, but it offers numerous different angles and slopes to play on. Once again I fail to see any signs I was on my tail ski, but this turnaround isn't very tight anyway. I am looking forward to see if my so called theory that I can turn tighter, tail down, is just something I dreamed or maybe heard somewhere else, but my own picture library sure doesn't back me up.