The importance of knowing your aircraft type
It's taken me a long time to pluck up the courage to make this post. I think I was scared of publicly admitting that I screwed up. But now my screw-up has been resolved, I feel like I can talk about it. We don't have time to make every mistake ourselves, we have to learn from other peoples' mistakes if we're going to stay safe. So I hope that someone out there learns from my mistake. Please bear with me - it's a long story, but there is a point to it.
Earlier this year, when I bought a share in my Europa, I had around 200 hours total time, around 100 hours of which was on tail-draggers. I got my initial tail-dragger check-out at my home club - it was quick and basic, but it got me flying. Shortly after that, I went to America, where I learnt to fly tail-draggers properly, with some of the best instructors in the world, IMHO. They taught me to fast-taxi and to do wheel-landings, they showed me that it's not necessary to fly a Super Cub like an airliner, that this type of aircraft actually likes you to use full aileron, and they corrected a couple of bad habits that I'd got into, the most noticeable one of which was keeping the tail on the ground too long during take-off, which resulted in the aircraft trying to get off the ground before it had enough airspeed. By the time I was signed off to solo the club's Super Cubs, I believed (and I still do believe) that I'd had the best training in tail-dragger flying that it's possible to get. I logged about another 80 hours of tail-dragger flying, 70 of which was in the Super Cub, before I came back to England and bought my Europa share.
Common sense and my insurance company required that I get some training on the Europa. The rest of my group recommended an instructor who had checked all of them out on the aircraft, and also did the initial test-flight of the aircraft after the building was complete. So, together with another new member of the group, we met our instructor at White Waltham early one morning. The other guy I was training with didn't have any tail-dragger experience, so our instructor gave us a detailed ground-school in the difference between tricycles and tail-draggers (mainly for the other guy's benefit), as well the differences between Europa mono-wheels and other tail-draggers, for both of our benefits, before we went flying.
The Europa is a little strange. The mono-wheel itself really isn't that much of a problem - it's a little more unstable on the ground than a Super Cub, but no big deal. However, describing the suspension as "basic" would be doing it too much justice - the design principle was to build a retractible gear system, and make it as light as possible, and that means there really isn't any suspension at all. Because of that, the Europa really notices any bumps at all when it's on the ground, even at a fairly slow taxi speed. During take-off and landing, bumps on the runway will throw the aircraft around, and there's nothing you can do about it. The other interesting thing is the lack of prop clearance, especially when you have a larger propellor fitted, as we have on ours. The combination of these two points means that, unlike the Super Cub, you need to keep the tail-wheel on the ground as much as possible in the Europa, to avoid letting the propellor get too close to the ground, and to provide a little extra stability over the bumps.
Still, with my tail-wheel experience, it only took an hour or two before the instructor was ready to sign me off for solo flight - which he was very pleased with, because it gave him more time to spend with the other guy I was training with. I was also pretty pleased with my fast progress, because it meant I was signed off in good time to go to the PPRuNe fly-in at Popham in June!
The fly-in came and went, and I flew on few other occassions as well. But the weather through most of June and the first part of July was pretty bad, and I always seemed to be busy on the days when the weather was good. Then came my ATPL exams, and I knew I had to fly before the exams if I was going to stay current. I hadn't flown for 5 weeks (the group has a currency rule of 6 weeks, but even so that was longer than I'd ever gone without flying since I started my PPL training), and I'd only logged 10 hours on type, which was pretty poor considering one of the reasons I bought a share was so I could log more time.
I booked the aircraft for a Saturday, and arranged to meet a friend at a small private airfield near Banbury. But, on the day, the weather wasn't really suitable to be flying cross-country. Besides which, some circuits would probably do me some good since I hadn't flown for so long.
I took off, and the aeroplane veered over to the left hand side of the runway. I was rusty, and it was showing. I flew a below-average circuit, but made it onto final, flared, and managed a pretty good landing. I was pleased with myself - I added power, and headed off again. Although my landings were generally good, my take-offs continued to be poor. But, over the course of an hour or so, I gradually improved, until eventually I was happy with my overall performance, and happy that I'd decided to do some circuits in order to work out the rust.
Circuits in any aircraft never get boring, but especially so in the Europa. But, after an hour, I was considering landing for some lunch, and to see if the weather was going to improve enough for me to get away from the airfield in the afternoon. Just one more circuit, I decided. So, after the next landing, I added power again, and the engine was buzzing away nicely (while most aircraft engines roar, Rotax engines only manage a feeble buzz). I lifted the tail. Then I hit a small bump. The engine note dropped momentarilly, and then I was off the ground. I set the correct attitude, pulled the power back to max continuous, retracted the gear, and then started wondering why the engine note had dropped. Then it hit me - I must have had a prop strike.
I flew a pretty nice circuit, lined up on final, and managed another good landing, then I taxied off the runway. There is no time for emotion when you're in the circuit, and it was only now that I was able to wonder about the possible prop strike. I half-hoped that I was wrong, that there was some other explaination, but I knew that wasn't possible. I parked the aircraft and stopped the engine, and immediately I could see a huge gash in the tip of one of the propellor blades. My heart sank. I was totally gutted. I couldn't find the energy to move for several minutes, while I got over the shock of what had happened.
Eventually, I got out of the aircraft, and inspected the damage. All 3 blades were damaged, one worse than the others. As I wondered back to the club house, I passed my old PPL instructor. She saw I didn't look happy, and asked me what the problem was. She was very sympathetic - "it could happen to anyone, it's not your fault, I've flown with you enough to know you're a good pilot so don't let it bother you." But the words didn't help, I still wanted to find a corner to curl up in and hide away from the world.
I phoned the coordinator of our group, who was also one of the two guys who built the aircraft, and he came down to inspect the aircraft. He gave me the same sympathetic lines, "it could have happened to any of us, runways here are bumpy and the Europa's no good on bumps, don't let it bother you." As he inspected the broken prop, he commented "Hmm, so the blades are made of carbon fibre, I never realised that!" A true engineer, I thought, and it made me smile!
I took me a day or two before I got over the shock. Even then, I was happy to let the other members of the group sort everything out. The propellor was removed and sent back to the factory in France. An engine specialist was called in to inspect the crankshaft and gearbox. The rest of the group were superb - not once did one of them complain or moan, at least not to my face, which was great, because they'd been inconvenienced as much as I had by the grounding of our 'plane. We took the opportunity to do a 50-hour inspection which was due in a couple of hours time anyway. And before the aircraft was serviceable again, the annual inspection and permit renewal became due. So, all in all, it was several weeks before everything was back in one piece and ready to be flown again.
Although none of the other group members even mentioned it, I knew that I wanted to fly with an instructor again. I'd never flown the Europa on a hard runway. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to book some dual time, and not only go to a hard runway, but also have the instructor check out my technique on a grass runway to check I wasn't doing anything wrong that could explain the prop strike. So I booked the instructor, and last week I went flying again.
Within the first couple of circuits, it was obvious to my instructor what the problem had been. I was flying the Europa like a Super Cub. Remember way back at the start of the story, I told you that I used to lift the tail on the Super Cub too late, and my instructors had taught me to lift the tail earlier? But that, on the Europa, you have to lift the tail as late as possible? Well, in the 5 weeks that I hadn't flown, I'd forgotten all my Europa training, and gone back to Super Cub flying techniques. What probably happened was that, when I hit a bump, the momentum of the counter-weight that balances the stabilator had resulted in the stick moving forward slightly in my hand. Combine this with the fact that the tail was already raised off the ground when it shouldn't have been, and it was a little higher than it should be raised anyway, and the prop clearance was down to zero.
You always read about the chain of events which leads up to an accident. There were a couple of obvious problems in this case. First of all, I hadn't flown for 5 weeks. I know there are lots of pilots out there who fly less regularly than this, but I wasn't used to such a long break. Then, when I did the first couple of circuits and realised my take-offs weren't going according to plan, I should have stopped. Sometimes just stopping for a cup of tea gives you the chance to think about what you're doing wrong, then you can go back out and put it right. But I didn't stop for a cup of tea.
But I think the chain of events in this case probably goes right back to the day I started my training. As the instructor was explaining about tail-dragger flying, my eyes glazed over slightly. Not much - I'm always interested in listening or talking about flying - but I didn't pay as much attention as I should have done, because most of the introduction, I thought, was for the benefit of the other guy, who hadn't flown tail-draggers before. And, because of that, I never really understood how to fly a Europa. And, when it came to having a few weeks off flying, the little Europa knowledge I had was replaced by the much greater knowledge of Super Cubs.
That's been put right now. I have a much better understanding of how my aircraft flies. But it would have saved a lot of hassle if I'd paid attention in the first place.
So, if you're in the process of checking out on a new type, please make sure you really take the time to understand it. My non-flying friends are often amused at the fact that I need an instructor to check me out on a new type - they compare it to having a driving instructor check you out when you get a new car. But the machines we fly aren't cars. and we owe it to ourselves to learn as much about our aircraft as we can.
Safe flying!
FFF
-----------