lml@lancaironline.net Mailing List Archive

I once had an instructor who told a good story regarding turn around altitude. He flew ultralights and was asked by a student about safe turn around altitude. He said he practiced over and over at altitude until he was convinced he could safely do it from 400 feet in his ultralight. Finally he decided to try it at 500 ft from the runway. Long story short he tried it and ended up spinning it into the ground. Good news was he only suffered minor injuries. He woke up with ultralight collapsed around him covered with a warm liquid that he thought was oil- later found out it was blood. Lesson from all this was that the control inputs necessary to do a 180 degree turn from altitude were different than he did when close to the ground. The fear of the closeness to disaster made him react differently even though he had in excess of 20,000 hours. Something to think about. -----Original Message----- From: Lancair Mailing List [mailto:lml@lancaironline.net] On Behalf Of bob mackey Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 9:51 AM To: lml@lancaironline.net Subject: [LML] Re: turn-around altitude Kevin K asks > Some <good> questions: > > 1. What was the Prop set-up. wind milling? Yes, windmilling. I have not stopped the prop to determine the change in glide angle. Will do that someday when I'm over Castle air force base (MER) and its' 11,800 foot runway. > 2. What was your decent rate in FPM? About 500 fpm wings level, and 700-1000 fpm in the turn. > 3. Fuel situation? Low fuel, about 8 gal in the header and wings about 3 gal. > 4. One or two passengers? Pilot only, no passenger. So gross weight was about... 1030 empty 66 fuel 10 oil 25 airplane's junk 130 pilot 10 pilot's junk ===== 1271 lbs, well below the max gross of 1700 lbs. At 1700 lbs, expect to be 15% faster and to have a flatter climb angle. The flatter climb angle will actually improve the situtation by reducing the need to fly away from the field before turning back. But it will also degrade the handling and the landing speed considerably. Until I check the actual turnaround with a heavy load, I will round the altitudes up a bit. Again, at my home field, the straight-ahead options are not very attractive. A partial return is no worse than crashing straight ahead as long as the descent is arrested and the speed minimized at impact. -- For archives and unsub http://mail.lancaironline.net:81/lists/lml/List.html -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 269.5.4/768 - Release Date: 4/19/2007 5:32 AM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 269.5.5/769 - Release Date: 4/19/2007 5:56 PM