Chris,
With the Europa mono-wheel it's not a case of "if" but when you're going to
suffer
a ground-loop. This is much more likely on tar than on grass. I learned to
fly in the military and have almost 300 hours total in the Harvard/AT6. Because
they have differential brakes, crosswinds aren't much of a problem.
Later in life I built my Europa as a mono and flew it like that for over 600
hours,
sharing the joys of such a wonderful aircraft with a couple of friends. One
of them was the country's senior gliding instructor examiner at the time, plus
having experience of other tail-wheel aircraft. After flying my Europa for
more than 10 years and while landing on our tar runway, he suffered a
ground-loop
in light crosswind conditions. He couldn't account for this and my guess
is that there might have been a slight moment of inattention.
Perhaps the main difference between the mono Europa and gliders is the much
shorter
wings with far less inertia than gliders. I would describe the Europa mono
as "squirrelly" by comparison. You have to react instantaneously to any yaw
deviations, especially during landings.
Another one of my friends also suffered a ground-loop in almost nil wind
conditions
maybe for the same reason, so I eventually decided to get rid of my anxiety
each time friends took charge of the Europa and converted to tricycle
configuration.
This conversion is very much more difficult after the aircraft has already
been built as a mono.
In my experience the loss of speed in the cruise after the conversion was less
than 5 knots, but there was an increase in empty weight of 35 lbs.
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=467857#467857
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