Jon Tye flew G-ODTI (otherwise known as "Dotty" by the less reverent among us,
and was most impressed with the new found docility on the ground. He confirms my
impression, and Ivan's hopes, that this latest mod has almost certainly removed
the only real difficulty that inexperienced and non taildragger pilots are
likely to have with the Europa.
Dave Elliott and I were discussing the issue, Dave was trained on Austers, (
English built Taylorcraft for US people) but had opined that watching my antics
dancing on the pedals he didn't think his stiff ( smashed) ankles were up to
that sort of thing. He also observed that the whole problem was one of phase
relationhships. (He's an electronics wizard.) On the ground the Europa is very
fast reacting. A slightly slow pilot soon gets 180 degrees out of phase with the
aeroplane. Good analogy. I've been there.
The new tailwheel configuration damps out both pitch and yaw oscillations so
that you have a chance to catch up with the aeroplane.
BTW, talking about catching up, I was doing a couple of final test check flights
on G-DAYS, and managed to missjudge both approaches. Too high and too fast. I
converted both into smooth landings, only realising afterwards that these were
wheel landings. My 100 hours had tuned me in to the reaction speeds of the
aeroplane and also allowed me enough spare brain power to watch what was going
on instead of concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. In the early
stages of familiarisation with landing the Europa I definitely suffered from the
tunnel vision caused by the mental overload of a stressful situation.
Graham
|