Old Material

[Squaretail]

Not to bring attention to "the other place" but was sort of hilarious to see a thread dug up and read my old material. I was a little bit more rabid back then, maybe more punchy. Good for a laugh.

http://www.avcanada.ca/forums2/viewtopi ... 9&start=40

I still hate ultralights, While I think old me could maybe dial it back a notch, I still agree with me. IF I had to interact with that crowd more often again, I might be a bit more boiled up. A good reminder of why I don't want to go back into the flight training world.

[Slick Goodlin]

I was sitting in a Lazair yesterday. I wanna fly it.

I guess I should add that I know what you mean, though. The thing is ULs often attract people who think there are no rules and just want a sky dirt bike: hop on and rip around. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than the guys who get their student permit and just roll with that for the next twenty five years.

My favourite UL story came from a guy who was the grass cutter, CFI, and head mechanic at a UL field who’s had more engine out landings than he could count. I’m talking multiple per year, year after year. One particular incident he was telling me about had him giving dual in a Challenger II when the engine died. They got down safely in a field just outside town and he called a cab for his student. Meanwhile, he gave the engine about an hour of rest before trying again and finding it ran. I guess it just needed a time out to think about things? So he tells me he was worried it would quit again on the flight home, “So I got up good and high, I was practically in outer space, man. I must have been close to two thousand feet!”

[RBK]

You should fly it Slick. I probably shouldn't admit this, but I learned to fly in a Lazair III in 1985. Back then, it was 5 hours of dual, write the TC exam, solo, and get your ultralight licence. Maybe I didn't learn on a tail wheel aircraft, but I did learn on a twin! I remember learning and experiencing the concept of a critical engine, plus mushing down for awhile in a full stall just using rudder to keep it level (I think this is called a a falling leaf, but was never told that. Note - I tried this when I was flying off the hours on my RV 6A but it didn't work out so so well. Found out quickly why Van's doesn't recommend spins in the 6. Recovery was straight forward but definitely was an attention grabber).

Back to the Lazair - it got me in the air on a limited budget but I soon got tired of flying over the same area of Surrey for 1/2 hour without being able to take passengers. After a couple of years I was finished university and decided to get my PPL and haven't flown an ultralight since. I Funny, the ultralight licence still shows up in my aviation booklet though. In any case, the ultralight experience helped me complete the PPL in the minimum hours. My instructor was quite surprised when we blew through the first several lessons in the first 1/2 hour of the first flight. Mainly just had to learn the 152 emergency procedures, radio work and dealing with a tower before going solo.

I don't regret the ultralight time, but am glad I moved on to the PPL and eventually building an RV (without a glass panel or autopilot). Yesterday a couple of use flew from the Okanagan down to Oregon and back. I even managed to squeeze in a couple of rolls on the way. Couldn't do any of that in the Lazair.

[Slick Goodlin]

Sounds like you got an awesome start RBK. I want to see this Lazair at my home field rack up a few dozen trouble-free hours before I jump in it but then if the opportunity comes up I’m on it!

I did my tailwheel checkout in an ultralight clipped wing Cub.

[Colonel]

I would fly a Lazair if you replaced the chainsaw motors with the turbojets they used on the Cri-Cri.

They would melt the wings, of course, but the first 60 seconds would be glorious. Having two jet engines is cool. Like a roots blower sticking through your hood.

PS RBK: I’m glad you learned the right things on the ultralight and it helped you on the PPL. Often that isn’t the case - like with sims, people learn all sorts of bad habits and you spend twice as long teaching them, because first they have to unlearn all the bad stuff they have taught themselves.

I spent far too many years giving tailwheel instruction to nosewheel pilots. The first thing I had to teach them was that their instincts and reflexes were wrong. They needed to use their feet to control yaw, not that steering wheel thing that generated buckets of adverse yaw at slow speed.

It would have been so much faster if they had never seen san airplane before, and learned on a taildragger.

I know, I know, learning to control yaw at slow speed is stupid. Got that. Only applicable to stupid old airplanes. Who needs to stay on the runway during landing? And not important in a twin. Vmc demo. Got that.

PPS The reason civilian flight training takes so long, isn’t because there is so much to learn, or that the students are dense.

No, civilian flight training is really, really bad. Unbelievably inefficient and lacking focus.

[Colonel]

Unusual attitude recovery is exactly the same.

You roll someone upside down, their frontal lobes shut off, their lizard brain (that little lump on the top of your brain stem) takes over, and people pull back on the column because they want to go up. Really badly. And it’s always worked for them before, right?

Well, probably not on final at 500 feet. You need to teach them new instincts- push the nose up and roll and top rudder and then pull, with full power.

Teaching someone news instincts is very slow and painful which is why we’d really like you to not teach yourself the wrong stuff before you show up,

[Slick Goodlin]

They would melt the wings, of course, but the first 60 seconds would be glorious.

If I was going to do something that was going to kill me quickly but in a way people would talk about forever, it would include more women and less safety gear.

[Colonel]

There’s actually no need for drama …

I suspect a sheet of titanuim slipped under the wing above the jet engines would help.

Don’t you remember people metallizing fabric airplanes like the Ercoupe and Chipmunk? People did that when I was a kid.

Another mod - not useful here - is to replace the fabric with thin plywood. Amazingly rigid but completely unserviceable. See the Ultimate and DR-107.