Building a Nieuport 11...

[Frank Giger]

Well, I'm early on in my inevitable march to becoming a true hero:



-Frank "But I don't want to be an EAA technical advisor" Giger

[rwanttaja]

Oh, the evils of Fast Taxi!

In the Fly Baby world, I recommend that pilots don't attempt high-speed ground runs. On the Fly Baby, at least, there's a zone of....hmmmm, "less stability".... around 35-40 MPH. The airplane on takeoff powers through it quickly, and on landing, slows quickly past it. Assuming your taildragger current, I'd just power past it and take off.

Just checking, but you DO have the Starks/Glaser mod that moved the main gear back a bit, right?

Ron Wanttaja

[Frank Giger]

Oh, yes. Robert Baslee, guru of all things tube and gusset, put it this way when we built the gear and fuselage: We can move the gear back four inches and give you some ground handling or put it straight down like the originals and maybe put some skid plates under the lower wings. I may be embellishing a bit, but he didn't mince words on what his suggestion was.

And oddly enough, when I glanced at the ASI just as the world went around it was just past 40mph.

I talked to Robert today about a new wheel and he was both amused and sympathetic. He reckons I was transitioning to flight and once I chopped the throttle she was going to loop.

I am very, very, very hesitant to say the advice I was given by a whole host of sources (including you, FAA Test Flight Pamphlet) should have been ignored in favor of my gut feeling on the hazards of fast taxi procedures. But in reality I weighed it all out and made the decision to put it as the first part of real flight testing and then followed the plan. The "Education" part of "Education and Recreation" doesn't stop when the pink slip is handed over, after all.

I'm actually kind of pleased. Chalk it up as the rehearsal of the first flight, and a bad rehearsal makes for a great show.

[rwanttaja]

Well, I'm early on in my inevitable march to becoming a true hero:

Doesn't really reflect the "Hero's Journey" of the Frank Giger we all know....

http://www.wanttaja.com/frank.wmv
Ron Wanttaja

[Frank Giger]

Awesome!

Thanks for making my last look at the web today one that made me laugh!

[pittsdriver3]

Frank, Try this next time. As you advance the throttle when you feel you have positive rudder control relax the stick forward and let the tail come up to a tail low attitude and hold it there about halfway between three point and level. It will lift off when its ready. Level off in ground effect and let it accelerate a bit check your airspeed, feel out the controls and climb out. On test flights I climb up 2-3000' over the airport and orbit for 30 min to an hour if everything is looking good. Before descending slow it down and do a power off stall. With a lightweight high drag biplane you will want to use more than 1.3 VSO for approach more like 1.6 as when you pull the power off and start your flare the speed will come off very rapidly. It will slow down twice as fast as something like a Champ.
What happened to you is when you shoved the stick forward and raised the tail rapidly you got lots of gyroscopic precession and when you chopped the throttle old Newton took over and you got lots of precession the other way and away you went. Get it fixed and have another go and have fun. There is nothing else like taking an airplane you built aloft for the first time. Don

[Frank Giger]

Yesterday was a maintenance day at the aircraft, and I got a lot done.

First, here's a picture of the wheel after the loop event:



So the first thing to work on is tightening the bungees. I guess they'd shifted or something to loosen over time, and I hadn't really noticed. The axel was floating in the slot nearly halfway on the right and a quarter the way on the left.

When I put a jack under the gear to lift there wasn't any tension at all! The bolt there is to show how much slack was under the bungee and not forced at all:



In re-tightening the cords I got a real insight as to what Robert was doing with the zip ties - they're an extra thumb. As one tightens they sort of hold things in place to help keep the tension as one wraps.

So now she won't be all loosey-goosey in ground handling.

Oh, how tight did I make them? As tight as I could. I figured the same loosening process where some places are tighter than others and it all equals out will unfold to give a little.

On to the tail wheel. The Airdrome Airplanes bog standard solid rubber tire gave its all in the loop (and wasn't looking all that great to begin with) and had to go.

I opted for another solid rubber tire that I made a bushing for.



And now she's back down and moving freely.



I also have a much better idea on what happened in the loop. When I was moving the one good wheel from side to side to check my bungee tension something just screamed at me.

Pulling the wheel from the right, the drum came right out of the brake strap with no problem. In both putting it on and taking it off from the left it was tight.

Basically the left brake was rubbing the whole time. No wonder I was turning left.



Once I started correcting to the right, the loose bungees over-reacted (one can note that the paint all the way to the top of the slot has been scraped in the above picture), and when she went up the slot on the left the drum moved forward and grabbed the strap even more.

So a rapid pull to the left, lateral stress on the wheel which caused it to bend, and a full stop on that side.

That makes me an idiot for a whole different set of reasons - hurray!

Anyhow, all fixed and now I have a technique to check brake tension. Just jack each side up and spin.

[deftone]

Great job with the diagnosis, I am willing to bet you have just saved future Baslee builders from a similar fate.

[Frank Giger]

Well the whole purpose of this thread is to show the not-so-great of the build to serve as a way for folks to jump in and say "oh no, don't do that!" and to get a chuckle at my long way around to solving simple problems.

With new wheels on the way, I'm faced with an old problem again. My brake drums don't match the wheel in a way that makes attaching them nearly impossible. Last time my father-in-law and I found some old bushings from a bit of farm machinery and welded it to both wheel and drum. It worked great with one problem - it's very permanent. I need to develop a mount adapter that can be moved from wheel to wheel in case this ever happens again (and in talking to the KC Dawn Patrol guys, bending a wheel is uncommon but not unusual).

My first idea was to put in some dog ears on the drum (the inner diameter of the hole of the drum bisects the bolt holes for the wheel), make a wooden spacer, and bolt the drum to the wheel through it and then the drum to the spacer. A fine idea with a flaw - getting the drum center to the wheel is such a fussy affair that it comes down to luck, and I wasn't sure it'd stay true when tightened down. I'd like to say that I figured out this was the wrong road to take pretty quickly, but I'm hard headed and spent two days trying to make it work.

The answer is to weld a strip of steel to the drum, covering the hole in the center, and going from there. Now comes the second problem - centering all the holes perfectly on the drums. One would think that finding the center of a circle and then measuring out three holes at an equal distance from the center that match the ones on the wheel would just be a matter of geometry, a ruler, compass, and a sharp pencil. But my drill press is dead (casualty of my leaky tent workshop) and to be honest my confidence in getting it right is just about nil.

The obvious answer is a lathe. Throw the drum in there and center becomes easy. One can measure and mark for the holes, and even make the hole in the center that fits over the axle (right now the plate goes over it). But hell, if I don't have a working drill press the odds of me having a lathe are about the same as having a trim lever in the cockpit. Enter the brother-in-law who came to see the welding of the drums out of idle curiosity and a series of incredulous looks at my plans for how to handle it.

"You do know I work in a machine shop, right?" he drawled, "I reckon that's a half hour for both of them. Won't you just leave them with me and I'll do them up during lunch one day this week."

The wife's family isn't very demonstrative, so with great effort I suppressed the urge to hug him and weep with joy and relief onto his shoulder.

Meanwhile I made a call to Worksman Wheels to see the status of the new wheels. They said three weeks and this is week four. The fellow on the other end agreed that it's taking too long and asked that I call back today after he did the research on it. Sounds like a good opportunity to ask for a discount due to my inconvenience.

So hopefully next week, weather permitting, I'll have a fresh opportunity to break something else on the aircraft.

[Frank Giger]

Wheels should be here tomorrow!

Either Thursday or Friday I'll be up to the airport to mount the brake drum and maybe cover them, too.