First flight of my P-47 occurred on May 5, 2002. Good news and bad news.
Good news is the plane flies GREAT! Even at its rather bloated weight
(just under 13.5 pounds), it flies wonderfully! I'm REALLY going to enjoy flying
this airplane. I had hoped to make this my every day flyer, and it looks like that
may be possible. The RCS140 engine is way
more engine than necessary and I didn't need much over 1/2 throttle... even for
takeoff. It sounds great in the air too! Changing the angle of the retracts
helped the ground handling tremendously! I was able to neutralize the elevator
as soon as I got above normal taxi speeds. No more tendency to nose-over!
Bad news is that I must have dumb-thumbed the landing, didn't get
the nose up enough, and experienced my worst landing ever. The video clip
looks worse than it is... not much real structural damage, and the cosmetic
damage is easy enough to repair. The retracts tore out, bent themselves (again),
and damaged some of the wing sheeting in the process. I have already ordered Robart
retracts to replace them (#551RS with #663 struts)... though the Century Jet's could
easily be put back into service. I was just tired of messing with them... not to
mention that I was over their recommended weight-range anyway, and I fly from a rather
rough grass field.
Take-off was also very scary for the first
couple seconds. The plane rolled immediately to the left in what I thought
for sure was a "warbird death roll". Fortunately, it responded to the rudder and
aileron inputs just fine and didn't even come close to stalling. However, it took half
of the available
right aileron trim to fly straight and level. Careful analysis of the first video
revealed that the right wing definitely started flying first. Once I figure out
why it is taking so much right to get it trimmed, it should be fine. Once trimmed,
it flies like a dream! Looks great doing it too!
Follow these links to see pictures of the
damage and
repairs.
MOVIE CLIPS
(Choose a format to view by clicking on one of the two links provided.
The native format for the video camera (Olympus C-700UZ) is Apple Quicktime MOV. This
version will produce the
best picture and sound possible, but the file sizes are large. The Microsoft AVI files
were converted using Lead Multimedia Converter and while much smaller... their image quality
suffers (a lot on some movies, very little on others). If you have trouble viewing these
by directly clicking on the link, try right-clicking on the link, choose save to disk, and
play the video ouside the browser. The MOV files require
Apple Quicktime
player or plugin, and the AVI files require
Microsoft Windows Media Player
or similar.
The AVI files are converted using an
Indeo video codec,
if you have trouble viewing the video.)
This is the take-off run. No extensive taxi test,
as the first taxi and turn went perfectly. Very scary take-off,
with the plane immediately rolling left. It required half of the available
aileron trim to fly level... will have to look into why that is.
The rough running engine was caused by a
plugged vent-line... it simply didn't get enough gas to
run over half throttle. Didn't bother the plane at all,
it had plenty of power, but I have addressed this so it should
never happen again. My son lost track of the plane about 3/4
the way through the clip. This was his first time using the camera
on a moving plane, so I'll give him a break. My brother-in-law, who built
most of the plane, missed the take-off... he was doing something else,
but that is his comment near the end.
160x120 - 50 seconds - (AVI 1.5MB) (MOV 3.3MB)
A few seconds later. Randy is asking me about the gear and
if it made any difference and what my throttle was set to.
Why I said 35% instead of
"a third", I don't know. Comes from being a computer geek I guess.
John Fangohr is the one asking me if I was going to put the gear up.
It was flying so well that I didn't mind answering their questions.
160x120 - 45 seconds - (AVI 1.1MB) (MOV 3.0MB)
Another pass down the runway, getting ready to take it up to
see how it stalls. Slows down great and doesn't snap. Did tip the left wing,
but very gently and at nearly zero ground speed. Need to double-check lateral
balance again.
160x120 - 50 seconds - (AVI 0.6MB) (MOV 1.5MB)
Time to test the Flaps. I had too much down elevator mixed in with
it (JR 8103DT), so I left them up for the first landing. That probably was a mistake.
Randy called landing a bit too soon.
160x120 - 62 seconds - (AVI 1.5MB) (MOV 4.1MB)
"Gear Pass". Slow flyby to check the gear (which were never raised,
but I'm trying to get in practice anyway). For some reason, the camera injected
some odd noise into the soundtrack... clicks and some chirps near the end. Not sure what
is causing this.
160x120 - 28 seconds - (AVI 0.7MB) (MOV 1.8MB)
First landing pass. Too fast, so I powered back up and went around.
Randy is talking to Jeff Buchner and Robert Perkins, who are are also flying...
and had been flying for a while.
160x120 - 25 seconds - (AVI 0.9MB) (MOV 1.6MB)
"Landing". In quotes because it was nearly disasterous. Should have powered up
and went around again, instead of trying to use the rudder to correct my course.
Frame-by-frame analysis of the final quarter-second of flight (video timestamps 18.01
to 18.23), show that the right wingtip dropped, as did the nose, about the time I thought
I applied a bit of right rudder to get me more on the runway. Collapsed the
landing gear, which seperated the wing from the fuse. The whole thing tumbled a couple
times, and it was over. You can safely ignore the last half of this clip... my son pretty
much forgot all about the camera after the crash (most all of the moans and groans came from him).
All I said was "Oh Well.". At this point I was sure I had re-kitted most of the fuse and
surely broke the wing... but there really wasn't much serious damage.
160x120 - 30 seconds - (AVI 1.3MB) (MOV 1.9MB)
Follow these links to see pictures of the
damage and
repairs.
Click here to return to the main P-47 page.