Drew Swenson

http://www.ez.org/smf/index.php?topic=1077.0

Joe---Do you have any more info on the TACA-110 airplane? What kind of stuff had to be done with it---where is it now---etc?

<quote>You might say that any pilot trained in that aircraft could've done the same thing...but there haven't been many airliners ditched in the water with the same result. Most have experienced 'catastrophic structural failure' upon impact. Circumstances conspired...and this guy pulled it off. He deserves an atta boy.<quote> Find me the data that shows airliners intentionally setting up for a water landing with catestrophic results. From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing I make the same distinction that wikipedia makes. There is a difference between a controlled landing in the water and crashing a plane. Pretty sure the media and the general public do not know the difference. Since goatherder does not think he can pull it off---I'm not flying with him amendment: To see what it looks like when you don't keep the wings level, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961 In this case the pilot was actually fending off hijackers while attempting this landing---so this one does not count. Here is another---but this time a 737 landing on grass (AFAIK---the only grass landing for this type of plane): 24 May 1988; TACA 737-300; near New Orleans, LA: The aircraft was approaching the New Orleans airport when it encountered heavy precipitation, including hail up to 1.25 inches (32 mm) in diameter. The aircraft experienced a dual engine flameout at about 16,200ft due to water ingestion, and the flight crew were able to establish emergency electrical power at about of 10,500ft. The crew was unsuccessful in their attempts to restart the engines, and had to execute an emergency landing on a grass strip on a levee on the Intercoastal Waterway (after initially planning to ditch the aircraft on the waterway). The flight crew successfully made an unpowered landing and none of the 45 occupants were injured. The aircraft was repaired and flown off the levee. NTSB report here: http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20001213X25693&key=1: picture here: http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/taca-msy/photo.shtml

I think he deserves his 15 minutes of fame. But I think there is too much emphasis on his skill at landing the plane and not nearly enough on the decision making leading up to that point. Any pilot trained in that aircraft could have performed that landing on the water with equally as good results. That is what they are trained to do. I hear statements about keeping the wings level. Is there a pilot out there that does not think he can keep the wings level during a landing? The great thing about Sully was his superior decision making which lead to the eventual landing in the water. He had Teterboro in his sights and immediately dismissed it. How many would have tried to go for it? He was nearly at 3000 ft with LaGuardia right behind him. How many other pilots have made the mistake of turning around to stretch it back to the airport (hey---3K in my Long or Cozy----I'd go for it!---but not in the airbus)? How many people do we know who did not accept their fate of either an off road landing/water landing? It APPEARS that John Denver fought his airplane the entire way trying to restart the engine---instead of making a nice landing on the water. Finally, if I tell any Airbus pilot (or any pilot for that matter) to make a water landing----and do your best job (what else would they do at this point?), don't you think that they would all make the same landing? I sure do----that's just what we do. Hats off to Sully for superior judgement and decision making----and thankfully you can fly a plane like all the rest of your bubbas. Remember the cocked nose gear landing in LA? All the reporters were saying---ok, this time, this superior pilot is going to have to do a great job landing the plane---this time on the back wheels-----wow---I guess that is different. DC-10 is Souix City with center engine dead and all flight controls gone. Flew and landed the plane using differential engine thrust only---with a plane that would only turn right (or was it left?). That one I am going to have to bow down to the superior piloting skills. Most pilots don't really know what a phugoid is---that particular pilot might have heard of one somewhere in his career----but now he has a really good feel for what it is. For those who want to argue that piloting skill is what is in your head and the monkey skills that go with it----yep---I agree. But don't fool yourself into believing that the monkey skills in this case were super human. Evidently he had a well trained brain that threw out all the things that did not matter anymore (LaGuardia, Teterboro, etc) and concentrated on executing a perfect water landing.

The CozyMKIV longeron/strake geometry is somewhat different than the Longez's. Not sure what it is----but in the longez, it was very comfortable to just slip your elbow into the strake. Definately, the longeron is closer to the shoulder in the Cozy (and maybe lower?). End result is that your elbow does not really fit comfortably in the strake---can't bend all that well from the shoulders to fit in there. I remember the Longez being no problem---and would quite frequently fly with both elbows in the strakes (and not touching the stick all that much). Also as already pointed out---in the Cozy, your feet/legs are kind of squished together. In the longez, your legs are comfortably spread on either side of the nose gear wheel. Someone made a comment about the seating arrangement being a preference---I agree-----my original comments on this matter really had to do with the comment on big guys going to a Cozy to get more room. I believe that a Longez is more spacious on the inside for pilot sitting comfort. I traded out for the Cozy for the extra seats (expanding family).

Bottom line is that you need to try on a Longez and Cozy for size prior to building. Surprisingly, I find the frontseat of the Longeze to be more roomy than the front seat of a Cozy MKIV. The more roominess factor of the Long has to do with a combination of: --strake to fuselage intersection. In the Long, you really have a lot of access to this space to put your elbows. Which gives you a feeling of a pretty wide craft already. In the Cozy, the strake is not exactly elbow friendly and your right elbow has a passenger sitting there. --Longeron placement. It touches my shoulder in Cozy (which I don't like). In the Longez, I never noticed it. --Canopy. You bump your head a lot more under the Cozy canopy. If anything, you tilt your head slightly inward to avoid hitting the canopy. Wayne has a mod on the canopy which eliminates/reduces this problem. No problems in the Cozy. Bottom line, the Longez is already a roomy airplane in the font seat. You would have to have really big shoulders or a really big butt not to fit. You need to actually sit in the plane to determine if a parameter is not working for you. The Cozy MKIV has a longer wingspan, beefier landing gear, and a bigger motor. Also the G limits also depend upon the weight.

The nose gear hand crank gearing mechanism was only meant to see the loads of actually lowering or raising the gear---not the weight of the aircraft. With the original system, if you need the additional stopping power of skidding on your nose, you can attempt to raise the gear which will shear the teeth---and the nose will be skidding. This all happens rather quickly. If you have electric gear, then the time to get the nose on the ground will be 10 or so second. One good thing with the electric gear is that in the event of losing one brake, yo can "burp" the gear up for about a second which will straighten the nose wheel. If you were aligned with the runway, that is good news---if you were already heading off the side, then you just may get there quicker:) For a longez, I'd rather put money elsewhere than in the nose gear. For a Cozy, I'll take the electric gear.

Does this help any? http://www.vansaircraft.com/pdf/hp_limts.pdf

internal sumps electronic ignition fuel injection wayne canopy (for a CozyMIV)

<snip> A year of protracted frustrating instrument training which I will now have to repeat or find a good finishing class (like Marc Z did). Will be joining a flying club out of KHPN to keep skills sharp.<snip> If you understand the concepts, and have freshly completed your inst exam, and need more stick monkey skills---consider taking one of the 10 day emmersion inst courses (simulators and flying everyday for 10 days, baby!). I am south of you in Monmouth, NJ.

If my KE was low to begin with----then the delta V part just does not matter:)

Actually---it is the KE---and it is the items that you pointed out. But lets freeze some variables to get a little bit of understanding. All airplanes have a landing speed that for the most part does not change (unless you have a configuration problem/damage, that necessitates excess speed). On EZs in particular, you can lower that speed somewhat by adding trailing edge fences. Now pick your landing area (forrest, cornfield, grass, highway, etc) then speculate on performance of "absorbing" the KE with various aircraft (paraglider, parachute, ultralight, EZ, 747, etc). Where your thinking really comes into play is that you are already flying a very specific airplane with a very specific landing speed. You are now engine out, and only have a limited set of options. Now those variables are set. No more time to talk about design landing speed. No more time to talk about crumple zones. Those were set when you built the plane. Now it is all about absorbing the KE as you pointed out. -nice flat road--but lots of wires going across it that are hard to see (If I miss the wires, I can absorb all the KE in the brakes and still have an aircraft to fly. If I hit the wires, KE may be absorbed very quickly and I may not live or might lose my legs -Forest off to the side of the road. KE absorbtion will be very fast and hurt/kill -River next to the forest. No EZ pilot has ever died intentionally landing on the water but the aircraft is a total loss. -grass field. Unless on a hardpack grass surface, most of these airplanes do not survive the landing. Pilot survivability is mixed

<snip>E = 1/2 m (V squared) He says that kinetic energy equals one-half the mass times the velocity squared........so I guess that means that one should build a light airplane since energy is directly proportional to the weight and go extra slow since the energy is the square of the velocity. So I am going to start flying ultralights ! However, my Varieze is not too heavy (approx 700 lbs empty) and sets down regularly below 70 mph. <snip> Because of the square term on velocity----small reductions in design landing speed (even with VGs) dramatically lower the landing kinetic energy (reducing 10 lbs only gets the KE down my 10 units-----reducing 10 kts gets the KE down by 100 units. It is the KE that you must dissipate in a crash. Another way to look at it (same airplane mass---only look at the V term) 30kt landing ultralite---KE~900 80kt landing EZ-------KE~6400 The EZ has to dissipate over 7 times the energy no matter where it lands. If it turns out to be a nice road with no powerlines, obstructions, and traffic, you will be able to dissipate all this energy into the brakes as heat. If you need to come to a sudden stop, that is a different matter.

There is no way that you throw away a riveted anchor nut (ms21075/m221047(k1000)/ms21059/etc). What would be the purpose? If you want to argue about even using them or not---that is another issue. I think safzoom is confused with ms21042's which you get rid of after each use.

Yes---you use extra cusion to move up---no extra cusion behind the back. My point was---if you are tall---or at least torso tall, your butt does in fact sit deep within the seat with your thighs and knees coming above the level of your butt. If torso short (like me), you need extra cusion----which in fact fills that "bucket seat" and your thighs and knees are no longer above butt level----but (hehe) at butt level.

If you are short like me (5'9), you will find your butt, thighs, and knees quite level just to get up to where I can see.

And the StaggerEz is a three seater with baggage

Sorry---I was answering the below question and not saying that they were fatal----should have quoted it so that it was not confusing: <snip>There were also an alarming number of unexplained accidents where the plane veered off to one side for no apparent reason, then crashed the ground whilst on its side or inverted.<snip> <snip>Therefore, the stats may say nothing about the plane; rather they indicate something about the typical pilot of that plane. If you are one of those safe pilots then flying a Long-Ez or any other aircraft doesn’t have to be any more risky than flying a Cozy. <snip> It is not that difficult (but somewhat time consuming since you have to actually read the account in the database) to determine if you have a pilot or aircraft problem. For instance, things like running out of gas, hotdogging over someone's house, or inadvertant IMC definately fall into the pilot category. Electrical and fuel systems failures probably fall into the builder or maintainer category. Structural failures may fall under the aircraft---but most likely into the builder category (were plies left out?). Offroad landing characteristics most likely fall under the aircraft. If you actually do the work to study it (Longez and Cozy in particular), I think you will find lots of pilot errors. When there are not pilot errors, you will find lots of system problems which were most likely builder or maintainer induced. You will find some problems due to "quirkiness" of the design----high speed landings and "tippy" behavior. I believe that you will find no structural problems due to a properly built Longez/Cozy(or Varieze). You have the one wingbolt failure in a Varieze where the guy did not use the right bolts. There was a Longez winglet failure where the builder only had half the plies. There was the Varieze canard flutter failure where they still had overweight elevators (the old "elevator within an elevator" mod that Rutan disallowed).

Most likely there will be a strong correlation between landing speed and fatalities. It is the old kinetic energy equation KE=1/2mv^2 where in a controlled landing/crash, the v square term can kick your butt with faster landing speed aircraft. The ultralites that fly around with extremely low landing speeds suffer little consequences with an engine out landing. Beyond the KE of landing, our EZ aircraft have a tendency to tip over offroad. There are several (many?) instances of Ezs having a brake or tire problem that dragges them off to one side of the runway---usually either destroying the landing gear and/or tipping over.

If anything, I need the extra weight in the nose (like electric nose gear) because I am also "skinny" and fly the plane solo a lot (or with wife and baby in back). This makes the nose real heavy---and thankfully, I do have electric nose gear. I read that Ken Miller did a mod on someones Cozy to move the battery from the spar to the nose using quick disconnects when switching from solo to having someone sit up front with you----that will keep you from carrying quite a bit of lead with you.

From what I read, you bang the crap out of a metal prop with all the dirty air coming off the fuselage----but there are many other kinds of pusher aircraft with metal props---so question mark here. But again, why go to a metal prop to begin with---unless you have a free one laying around? CS props are 5ish times the cost of a carbon fiber/wood core prop. Metal (non CS) props are 3ish times the cost of a CF/wood core prop. Metal props have a fatigue life, wood ones don't. No special skills to repair a CF/wood prop. CF/wood is much lighter. The only negative that I know of for a wood prop is it's ability to ride out the rain. Oh---one other slight negative is that you have to pay attention to prop bolt torque for changing conditions (temp/humidity/etc). I keep trying to figure out why people want to move to metal----I don't see it---but maybe I missed something. One more comment on wood props---make sure you seal the center hole. I use a wine cork. You don't want water to get in there. You could put a plate over it or use a spinner (even if I had a spinner, I would keep the cork). At airshows/fly-ins, everyone gets a kick out of seeing my wine cork.

Wayne, that was too simple---stop it.

I assume that this statement "When I fly the climb prop, I always have to add a few rpm on landing.. " meant that you had to add power over idle to maintain your descent rate for the given speed. I routinely flew out of 2000 ft strips with my 0320 Longez. With the O235, I was comfortable landing at a 2000 ft strip---but not taking off (needed to be somewhat light). The O32O got you off the ground pretty quick. I flew very tight patterns with the Long---but that was with the board down, back at idle and rudders (original) deployed all the way to just before touchdown. The extra installed wt and extra idle thrust should have a somewhat negative effect---but I did not measure it. The takeoff/climb effect is very noticable. More or less, airplanes want to land at a certain AOA for that airframe. More weight on the same frame gives you higher airspeed for the given AOA. For the most part on our small airplanes, our landing weight is not really moving around that much, so we can more or less lock in a "landing speed." When you are dealing with airplanes that can vary thousands of lbs on landing, you need to calculate your landing speed based on weight (or use the AOA). With this being said, your plane's landing speed should be the same with a different engine---unless you are installing an engine that significantly shifts your landing gross weight.

Underpowered (O235) Longeze's really suck. And of course, O235 Longeze drivers don't know this until they get a taste of the bigger engine. With that in mind, heavy Longez's are not as much fun to fly as light Longez's. My 0320 powered Longez was a much different airplane solo and with only an hour or two of fuel. Load up fuel, pax, bags, etc----now I have a very adequate truck----sports car comes back when I dumped everything back off. Unfortunately, you can't offload your engine and ballast---but you can at least make your ballast lighter my having a longer nose. In the end, it is all a compromise---which is what engineering is all about. Why do you think that you even need a CS prop? TO length too long? Cruise speed not high enough? And when you determine how much less runway that you want and how much excess cruise speed you want out of the prop-----is that worth the weight gain, complexity, cost, etc? CS metal props are about 5ish times the cost of carbon fiber composite props.

As stated---just sand them off (I use a dremel to do this). The peel ply is not intended to pull off the extra "hairs" like using a bikini wax:D ---but rather to give a transition zone if you will from the edge of one piece of glass to the layer you are bonding to. To see this yourself, try one with peel ply and one without. You will notice that on the one without, that you can't drag your fingers across the transition without sticking (or cutting) your fingers. The one with, leaves a nice transition zone by filling in the prickly edges with epoxy. You can also peelply the edges like on your seatback to give a nice bonding surface for when you bond the back to the fuselage wall. If you did not do this, you would just need to roughen up the bonding surface with a dremel. The peel ply is better since you won't remove any glass material by mistake.