PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Touch and goes in a small taildragger
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Old 2nd Oct 2010, 19:27
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Genghis the Engineer
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I've not flown the type, but quite a few other taildraggers both smaller and larger. Looking at a picture of the turbulent, my instinct is that this isn't entirely down to the size of the aircraft.

The back end of the turbulent is very high and slab slided, which implies quite high directional stability. At the same time, it's a very light aeroplane: I'm guessing that you were flying at a weight of around 270kg? That very low inertia gives it a very rapid response to perturbations.

So, I'm guessing that that combination of very high directional stability (causing the aeroplane to follow every little variation in the wind) with very low inertia is that you were experiencing - particularly the latter: this is probably under half the weight of anything else that you've listed flying.

The solution is probably only practice - but you could look around and see if any microlight schools are training on a Thruster T600N sprint, which is a 2-seater likely to be reasonably representative.

G
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