Interesting airplanes you have flown.

[Colonel]

Oh yeah.

[img width=500 height=302][/img]

Glasair III.  Pocket rocket with high wing loading,
esp without the extended (fuel) wing tips.

Tiny cockpit, stick.  Gullwing doors let you join
the [url= comma club[/url].

High wing loading, fast. Interesting stall. 
Reminiscent of P-51.  Fly it like a jet, but with
no weight and instant thrust/drag from the prop
it's easy to control the airspeed (very un-jet-like).

Tiny tail.  Unstable in yaw on final, requires
the taildragger dance on the rudder pedals.

Poorly engineered, runs hot at WOT, needed
mod for oil cooler.  Not a fan of the hydraulic
gear.  You let it sit on the ground and the
gear collapses.  The one I flew had a phantom
draw on the battery with the master off the
completely killed the battery.  You know, typical
homebuilt.

Quite fond of it, though.  Plenty of character.

[Colonel]

Ragwing taildragger Pipers. 

[img width=500 height=245][/img]

You have to fly one off a quiet grass strip sometime,
to understand what the fuss is about, and why the
premium (which really pisses off Shiny) is paid.

Not a fan of the nosedragger ragwing Pipers
(Colt, Tripacer) which first of all have the
wheel at the wrong end, and don't have
enough wingspan, either.

[img width=500 height=271]http://www.bedrockaero.com/aero/wp-cont ... colt01.jpg[/img]

[Colonel]

I was referring to your affection towards the "cub tax"

[Colonel]

You must admit RV's are hilarious.

For decades we were told by the homebuilders
that composites and car engines were the
"[b]wave of the future[/b]".  High tech is better tech. 
Got that?  Decade after decade of EAA magazine
delivered to my doorstep taught me that.

After decades of wasting their time on dead
ends, homebuilders end up with 1950 technology!

The RV is an bent-aluminum and riveted airplane
with a direct-drive air-cooled Lycoming four-banger,
both of which were readily available in 1950. 

They could have built the RV in 1950!

It just took the homebuilders half a century of
mistakes to figure that out.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Speaking of neat airplanes one of my favourites is the Sea Bee,


I had my first airplane ride in a Sea Bee in 1947.


When I learned to fly in 1953 another student that was getting his PPL bought a Sea Bee and I made a deal with him to keep t clean and fuelled up etc. and I flew with him for four years out of the Toronto Island Airport, mostly to his cottage in Georgian Bay.


Great little airplane and built like a tank.

[Barneydhc82]

Like Chuck, my first ride was in a Sea Bee off the Detroit River in Windsor.  All of the nearly 90 different powered aircraft and half a dozen gliders were fun but for different easons.


The Aviat Husky for its great performance envelope, the Chipmunk for its delightful handling, the DH53 Hummingbird which did everything verrrrrry slooooooowly.  and the CF-104D for its incredible speed.


And my tiny Grumman AA1A for the great many pleasurable hours that it has given me over the past twenty years.


But like all good things this fascination with  things with wings must end.  I've had to let my pilots licence go and now the damned eyes have  caused me to loose my drivers license.


The Grumman is for sale.


Barney

[Slick Goodlin]

Barney, what did the Hummingbird fly like and what engine did it have?  I adore low-powered puddle jumpers.

[Barneydhc82]

The Hummingbird was heavy on the ailerons and sluggish on the rest.  This was a replica which had a 40 hp Lycoming ( the original had a 37 hp Henderson motor cycle engine(  This aircraft is in the Western Development transportation Museum in Moose Jaw.


Barney