I was just reading another thread and went off just a little. So again, I figured I would add a little on this thread to help the Cub guys get a little used to things they may see. Just a little refresher food for thought.
The best I have been able to do in a cub as far as recovering from a spin is around 400 feet. When a cub/12 has extended wing tips without the ailerons being brought out to the tips, I see most of them go to what appears to be completely inverted. Most guys will floor it at that point which almost makes the problem worse. In the ensuing pull out, even after letting the aircraft settle into a 3-5 turn spin the aircraft will overspeed in the dive if your not pulling back on the stick a little. If the event is just a spin entry with opposite rudder, the normal guy whom is not used to it will floor it at the same time the wing is going over the top in a spin to the left, making the situation worse. This is with a relatively clean wing. It is not impressive to learn how to do a 5 turn spin. It is impressive to recognize when it is starting and cure it at that point. An airfoil works best when the airflow is attached to it. I was asked what should I do if I ever find myself in a spin. I said tell yourself your a moron for not recognizing and correcting it before it fully developed. Then die if your too low. Just kidding, I would never say that. But, stall/spin recognition is where it is at.
See, in the older days you had to perform spins. We all have heard that. Training in the old days was awesome because planes were cheap and you got to do all these cool things during training. Lots of emphasis was put into airplane stick and rudder. Now, it is extra money to get the same training. If you haven't practiced stalling an airplane in over a year, you should be ashamed of yourself. So, shame on you and go get someone who wants to stall your airplane from the rear seat. Cubs produce a pile of lift for what they weigh. So if one wing quits flying, the other one will gladly keep flying and wind you up like a top. You ought to see a Bird Dog spin. Wow. So, what should you do in the normal world? If you are going to start maneuvering, add flap at the flap screw. That is the screw at the bottom right of your airspeed indicator. It will reduce your stall speed. Give you a little stall protection. After all, why is that white line sooooo long. Why not just put on all the flaps in the last 10 mph before stall right? Use a notch of flaps when you are in the flap range and maneuvering. Remember what happens to the stall speed at a 60 degree bank. It goes up enough to hurt you. AGAIN, USE ONE NOTCH OF FLAPS IF YOU ARE IN THE FLAP RANGE CAPTAIN! Especially if you have that fat A!@ buddy in the back. Har!
Flaps. Use them please. Don't get into a hurry to take them off. Stop thinking just because you hit 500 fpm that it is time to dump them, (or above the trees ), when you know you are going to start a turn. I swear if I hear that one more time I am gonna barf. I have had three people a day for the last 25 years try and kill me by taking off the flaps too early whilst turning after take off. Leave them on until the darn thing is flying good. Geez. Quit taking them off so fast and quit yanking them on below flying speed for 3 notches. It is fun to practice taking off short but in the heat of the battle use a little more runway to make sure you are at flying speed. If that CUB starts jumping when you pull on to much flap during the flap yanking thing. Put it back on the ground and roll a little then try it again but above min. flying speed for that particular flap setting.
VG's... The thing about VG's is that everyone practices spins or all the wierd stuff usually solo and therefore it is hard to spin the aircraft because of forward c.g. Usually, it will be real hard to spin the airplane to the right because of the lack of airflow working on the airplane to help it spin right. Left easier than right. So, then dude jumps in his airplane with his 250 pound buddy and decides to play at low airspeeds. He doesn't add any flap at the flap screw (anyone know what that is?) and starts a right hand turn in his cub with V.G.'s. Now if your left eye dominant and right handed, chances are your going to turn left around whatever your looking at. If you start in a right hand turn and see that moose or bare chested hiker you will want to swing your airplane left and bam. You just found out you were too slow, climbing and just entered the turn leading with the left rudder and had a little rear c.g. You just created a stall spin with vg's to the left. If you were at pivitol altitude when it happened, chances are you started to pull the nose up and away from the ground. That did not help your cause.
Next, VG's problem. You were good at making consistent 400 footer full stall landing with your 41mph cub. Now, you just bought 700 dollars worth of stall lowering equipment. Now you have a 32 mph stalling cub. Add 35's, strakes, flap mods and all that other stuff and now your at 26mph. It is horrible that most of the wind in the fall and winter usually blows at 25 g 32 in Alaska. Are you good enough to land that airplane at one mile an hour of forward groundspeed. Are you practiced enough to know what that looks like? Maybe, maybe not. A 10 knot crosswind will act like a 40 knot crosswind in a regular airplane. The only fix for that is do more practicing I guess. Remember, all these mods make the airplane fly slower and react slower. It sounds safer but sometimes it takes a lot of skill to get the thing on the ground. I have no skill whatsoever and therefore I know I need to have extra wingtips in the shop if I owned a shop that it is.
Those 35 are nice and I want a set. Remember that as they get taller, you lose forward vision on the ground. I have never heard of anyone hitting the air hard enough to wrinkle a wing or a fuselage but I hear everything in front of the airplane you hit usually takes it pretty hard. If you stomp on the brakes with 1/2 tanks, the gas sloshing forward might just do you in. The 12's get so light in the tail with big motors and long mounts that most of my new student 12 owners I make fly with weight in the baggage.
Gas. Two pilots take off. Both had one hour in the left tank and had 1.3 hours of flying to do. One pilot opted to put gas from the old Ford-Ferguson in the right tank just in case. Guess who made it home. Nobody. Because one talked the other and they both decided they were both kind dumb. They opted to turn around and just get more gas.
GPS. Terrain avoidance is awesome. Highly recommended. But, geez, ya got to learn how to use it fer crying out loud. Do you know how to navigate on instruments with the thing? I always had a point in each large area I flew in. For instance, off the west side of runway 26 in Unalakleet I had a user waypoint. It was call FUK#. I used it in case I was following Tweeto. He could see through fog. I could not. So when I was following the shoreline and flew out over a point, I knew turning back to the shoreline would result in Cessna carnage all over the coast. So, I could just go to that way point, turn to the landing runway heading and keep the bearing/runway numbers the same. If I pulled the power off, most of the time I would end up on runway. These passes? Ptarmigan will hurt you, Tahetna will hurt you. They will all hurt you if you enter them knowing that you have a 90% chance of making it through. That means that 10% of the time in 100 tries you will die or come close to it. No GPS will get you out of anything. You have to get you out of it. That is a huge difference. Use your gps when it is nice out get real used to flying low. It is the only real way of learning the little hills and bumps so when you have to depend on you, maybe you will be able to yourself out of it. How's that for a ramble?
Anyhow, after a having 15 hours of total cub instructing time. I figured I would share a few things on this. What it all comes down to is practice makes a better cub pilot. If you are unsure get that instructor in there. Two hours is still cheap.
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