In reference to my "just keep forward pressure on the stick" comment,
Mike Stirewalt wrote:
> High speed taxi tests often end in grief.....
When I said "forward pressure on the stick", I meant PRESSURE, not full
forward stick deflection., if that's what you were thinking. Having
done something like 75 high speed taxi runs down the runway without the
hint of a problem, I feel qualified to have that opinion. Maybe I need
to clarify that I'm not talking about blasting down the runway at 80 mph
while holding the plane on the ground....that would be moronic. What I
was practicing, and indeed learned, is the ground handling of a
taildragger, both with tail in the air, dropping the tail slowly, and
maintaining control until the end of the runway and a U-turn for another
one. To me, it was important to master this phase of "flight" while at
a speed that was low enough to prevent flying (lifting the tail is not
flying speed with my taildragger KRs), while not going so fast that I'd
lose control and ground loop it. Calmly raising the tail, tracking
straight using the rudder, and then gently lowering the tail after
chopping the throttle helped me master that phase, before I ever did it
at landing speed. And like I said, if you go full throttle with a
taildragger and no forward pressure on the stick, you are about to go
flying without notice.
The distinction might be a tri-gear KR. I'm guessing that at the speed
you can lift the nose, you're about to take off, and in that case,
chances are good you're going flying. I don't know....I don't fly a
tri-gear. But if I DID have a tri-gear and wanted to taxi test, I'd put
a little forward pressure on the stick to ensure that I didn't take off,
at least until I learned the behavior in that regime. As we all know,
tri-gear planes are far more stable than taildraggers, so it may be that
our concern for tearing the plane up on the runway are practically
unfounded.
This debate will never end....we're probably all wasting our breath
trying to convince the other side. Folks just need to do whatever they
think they need to do and get on with it....
Mark Langford
m...@n56ml.com
http://www.n56ml.com
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