| Hi Tim, There's nothing wrong with the 360 wing; the accidents were caused by the pilot pulling the wing to a stall AOA. A wing will not stall unless the pilot pulls the wing to a stall aoa... the wing (hands off) will instead remain at it's trimmed AOA, no tmatter whatflight gyrations the plane does. Pilots need to SEE airflow, to SEE what they're doing, so they can avoid causing a stall AOA.. But we all learned the wrong, FAA way... airspeed -- and since flying is like bike-riding, by habit, we're cautious about changing. The FAA guys are the same Don't abandon the excellent 360 wing... is my suggestion. It would be much simpler to just make yourself a stall ANGLE indicator vane. With that, you can SEE your angular distance you are controlling your wing to fly at, compared to the stall mark on the AOA indicator, and avoid pulling the stick back to a stall AOA. I've been flying with my AOAs since 1969, and am uncomfortable without one. I've made one for each of my experimentals.... I mount thre Lancair's to a tube on the inside of the left wing stub, and it is removable, held in place with a 3/32 csk pop through the mounting tubes, rivet held in place with white electrical tape... It's in my left field of vision, which I reference by habit whenever pulling high AOAs, like in steep turns onto final, with no sweat. Here's mine on N211AL, our 235/320.
FYI, one year before I returned to civilian life from Patron FOUR, the Navy put AOAs on all carrier aircraft in 1956 and cut landing accidents 50% the first year! They've been using them ever since. That got me started on using AOAs when I was running my TC program in 1968. I've used AOAs on all my stuff since: FAA Provisional TypeCertificate A19CE on O'Neill Model W, 1969.(See Janes 1973-4) Designed, built and test flew original or major mods to Waco Model W Aristocraft, O'Neill Model W, Magnum, V8 Pickup, Mitchell B-10 Wing, Dragonfly, Lancair 235/320. Make yourself a simple little AOA with a shielded stainless steel ball bearing floating a balanced vane. Try it; you'll like it. Terrence L235/320 N211AL (90 hrs) EAA No. 5572. Tech counselor and flight advisor 15+ years On Apr 1, 2011, at 9:34 AM, Tim Jørgensen wrote: Hi all. My LNC2 is near completion and I have started preparing all the paperwork necessary for the flight permit. During my research I have stumbeled across the NTSB website and made a search on "Lancair 360". For those of you who have not done that (probably most!), this is HORRIFIC reading !!! There seems to be quite a large number of stall related accidents, which leads me to believe that the airfoil is basically unsafe. Anyway, I am not going to fly this thing as is, although I have had my license for more than 20 years and have accumulated more than 200 hrs. I have now come across a set of RV-7 wings that survived a hangar collapse last winter. This airfoil seems much more forgiving, anyway, that is what my A&P says, and I am trying to come up with a way to install them on my otherwise finished airframe. I will, of course, have to keep the stub wings and make them fit the slightly larger RV wing but, apart from that, would I be in for at lot work? Has anyone done this before? Any advice taken! Regards Tim Jorgensen Lancair 360, was 95% done, now back to maybe 60%.....
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