From: CasaDeHate@aol.com
Message-ID: <bc.c1536fa.272cd541@aol.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 21:20:01 EDT
Subject: Flap asymetry
To: lancair.list@olsusa.com
Reply-To: lancair.list@olsusa.com
Mime-Version: 1.0

          <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<--->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
          <<  Lancair Builders' Mail List  >>
          <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<--->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>
Dan:  

Glad to hear you telling the story vs an NTSB report.  For everyone's 
benefit,  I had the misfortune (?) of flying right seat in a 235 years ago to 
give a gent some recurrent time in his airplane since he hadn't flown for 
several months (after bending the nose strut on a porpoised landing).  There 
were no rudder pedals in the right seat.  After a few landings he was doing 
well, untill he said someting like " I can't hold it, you've got it"  and all 
hell broke loose.  We were on downwind leg, and I found myself holding full 
left aileron to keep the airplane somewhat level.  I kept telling him what to 
do with the rudders to help, which was mostly cross-controlling to counter 
whatever caused the problem.  I looked out quickly and all I could see was 
that the ailerons were attached and at full deflection and minimum flaps were 
down ( right side only, the left is not visible from the right seat).  We 
were able to declare the big "E" and skid the airplane to final where we were 
able to find the runway, and made several attempts to land before getting 
everything aligned and planted it on the runway edge, all with full aileron 
deflection against the roll.  All this happened within the span of maybe 45 
seconds. 

Post flight inspection revealed that when he deployed the flaps, the right 
flap hung up on a screw head, that was holding an end plate, fixed on the 
wing fillet.  The left flap (the one I couldn't see) was down approximately 
1/2 travel.  I wasn't watching everything he was doing , and didn't have time 
to analyze what caused the assymetry.  When he gave me the airplane we were 
already in trouble.  Had either of us realized the cause, we could have 
easily raised the flaps and continued uneventfully to the hangar and 
discussed the down side of having a control surface passing through anything 
that can jamb it.  Lower, slower or more flap travel on the left side would 
have resulted in us being in the NTSB files, no question about it.  

I'm glad this incident happened with Dan, because he was smart enough to 
realize that something wasn't normal and stopped immediately to analyze the 
feeling.  Would you have reacted the same ???  When was the last time you 
really looked at all those wiggly things on the airplane and thought about 
losing control of one ???

Mike DeHate
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
LML website:   http://www.olsusa.com/Users/Mkaye/maillist.html
LML Builders' Bookstore:   http://www.buildersbooks.com/lancair

Please send your photos and drawings to marvkaye@olsusa.com.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>