Montycosmos racer
ALMOST!
i've read about 'goose stepping', seen results of it, but until this AM i had'nt dun it. i was landing ( in light rain, ( rain, in wa state?) and alltho within 6 inches of runway center made a DUMB last second lateral correction while already stalled, and a few inches off the runway. the carriage moved right , in reaction to my pushing on the 'suggestion' bar dropping the left wheel which on contact pulled the carriage hard left, then , the right wheel hit, pulling it hard right, entering the 'goose stepping' phase of this my ' 4000th +landing'. it got quite violent for a few seconds !. i possibly could have ' gassed' my way out of it, but with the engine at idle 'spool-up' time would be a ploblem (as chinese aviators often utter when faced with decisions to make), so i instinctively stiffened my ( already stiff and old) legs, not letting that little old front wheel attempt to get into it! i think that allowed things to quieten down. i had my vid cam on my helmet and if i can figure out how to post i'll do it, ( after 're-attaching' these flexy-wing thingeys since 1993 i thought i was getting the hang of things, but now i ain't so sure!) ps (i'm NOT posting this on 'the dark side' due to the propensity of ' helpful criticism ' from the 'great loquatious one ' who would doubtless 'put me straight' ,not that i'm immune from 'larning', i've already decided NOT to do it again! monty
Comments
Glad you locked your legs instead of getting out of phase and adding a PIO to the nose wheel and exacerbating the problem.
yea cburg, i neither knew how to get into a 'goose step' nor how to get out of it but realized that i couldn't 'out-phase' it by initiating a pio, as many pilots have 'scratched' their equipment over the years and found out to their cost. someone out there in 'trikedom' may have a better remedy than mine for escaping the GS. jf so lets hear it, monty ps my two new metal knee joints wouldn't have enjoyed a bout with 'pio'.
These related threads have extensive avoidance and mitigating techniques:
http://alltrikes.com/elgg/videos/view/42008/goose-stepping-on-landing-results-in-loss-of-control-and-flip-over#.U4FjqHJdWSo
http://alltrikes.com/elgg/videos/view/22698/weight-shift-control-trike-crash-landing#.U4Fkh3JdWSo
http://alltrikes.com/elgg/file/view/42417/turned-front-wheelpng#.U4FkxXJdWSo
having read all of the associated threads, the commonallity seems to be few of the respondants speak (or write) from personal experience. well, untill yesterday me too. if you are below flying speed accellerating out of it might take too long (i can't honestly claim to have considered gassing it but as i was stalled with engine at idle with (most!) all wheels on the blacktop i doubt if i had enough time to initiate that remedy (which would no doubt work for some situations,i.e. if the wing was still in lift mode, if the engine was still running at closer to providing thrust, if the potential wreckage was still bowling along at a 'merry clip', closer to lift-off speed, ( 'if' and 'if only' are the biggest little words in use today!). BUT (another big little word!) the ONLY' worser' thing than rolling over with the big fan on back loafing along would be with it spinning RAPIDLY with nothing but blacktop and arms and legs to chew on! i certainly would NOT reccomend using brakes (my pathetic little brake couldn't have affected things either way,with it's 3inch drum , barely capable of stopping the wheel from turning while flying!) ( that is pathetic!), no, braking would almost certainly worsen things. while not claiming to have consciously deciding to end this nonsense by locking that little front wheel (by locking these scrawny old legs agin the footpegs) from joining in with the frivolity taking place between it's cousins at the back i knew instinctively NOT to attempt joining in, PIO is a dead-end street, i didn't wanna visit. so, 'yer pays' yer money an takes 'yer chances! i agree with all the wiseness reccomending DON'T GO THERE! if you DO blunder in, (as i did) larn from them 'as dun it, as well as them 'as wanna do it, but are too smart to try it, but know how THEY would deal with it! there are those among us that stipulate that ALL landings be performed at FULL STALL MINIMUM AIR-SPEED ONLY, NO exceptions! ( you wiser ones know those that DEMAND this,) well there are times when a little hotter landing is a good thing! hugs monty
Hi Monty, great job- yes you are right on two counts-- Most of us haven't done it, and the Loquacious One on the Dark Side (probably hasn't either) but can surely beat you up over it. I can help you post the vid when you're ready, would like to see it.
I think Chris was goose-stepping at 15:46 in the MegaFauna movie. Chris " WTF " ??!! ;-) I think it was because he decided to go to 8,000 feet where it was (what did he say?) -2°C ? (but smooth). Is Chris on AllTrikes yet? (@FlyHighGlider get him on here with us buddy!) Did you try a last minute juke to avoid the puddle, kinda like Monty did above? How did you save it? Great job! Those mean ol' @ToucanFly Boys sure were rough on you ...
thanx xc will edit out the naughty bits, and contact you when ready monty
The Mega fauna clip showed how important a Level Touch-down (two wheel) is. Every trike has varying susceptibility to duck-walking. Some are nearly impervious and tolerate a heavy single wheel touchdowns and automaticly dampen the oscillation. On the other extreme, some trikes readily enter a divergent oscillation which progressively gets worse…usually much worse Unless you’ve seen your model have hard single wheel touch downs and subsequently self-dampen…it’s best to assume that the one you are flying could enter a divergent oscillation. A single wheel touch-down or hitting a chuck-hole is the most common (but not the only) way to get bit.
That Mega Fauna clip is scary from 15:46 to 16:30. Was there a spot landing contest going on here? That will get people landing setting down too fast and hard where they would normally gently land further down the runway.
Fortunately these particular models exhibit good directional stability and aren’t prone to divergent oscillations. Many trikes, particularly older ones, would have not fared as well. Please don’t expect all trikes to be as forgiving…some are not.
Many factors determine a trike’s susceptibility…suspension, weight distribution, hardware/bracket snugness, wheel alignment, tires, wing size to name a few.
still trying to post my video, in slo-mo i can see it was my sloppyness at the moment of touch-down caused it. i interrupted the flare by lateral input. my 1993 single-place cosmos echo has only tyres (tires to you colonials) to soften the re-attachment on rear, no springs or flexy legs. after 600hrs landing my tukan with it's fi-glass legs my first landing with the echo was FIRM, car alarms were going off, woodland animals ran for cover, tsunami watchers tried to figure out the epicenter, i realized that those fi-glass legs, though they felt stiffer than a' honey moon d..k' when i built the tukan actually worked, though i did install drag cables to prevent rearward movement of the wheels.also i added 6inches to the wheelbase . i realized i 'd have to re-learn to flare to reduce peripheral damage! i was getting away with it till my goose-step episode. so if you wanna make smmmooooooooth landings rigidize your suspension and have at it, monty
Hi Guys, I don't like commenting too much on these things. But I do think you are reading to much into the GTS 450 landing at Balranald. Chris has flown his aircraft in much worse conditions than what you have watched. On the runway, there were two very large pools of water. This would have made Chris look very hard at his approach. Nobody else had any problems, and we did have a very good X-wind for the landings. Chris missed one pool of water and hit the next which was the larger of the two. The aircraft slowed quicker than he thought but as he said there was no problem and he didn't even notice the bouncing around. When you look at the landing in slow motion it looks very bad, but it was not too bad when you were there on the day. In fact on the day I thought that it must have been oil on the exhaust making the smoke not water. That's my comment on the landing. I was there, and I saw it and spoke to Chris about it. I will not make another comment of the Landing.
As always Monty, very entertaining writing style. I am glad you are ok. I would like to see the video too.
On a personal note, I kind of experienced "goose stepping" (I am not sure if it can be called that) myself. But what happened with me was that my passenger (who had no trike flight experience) upon landing was correcting my pedal movements, so basically we were countering each other and what started as a gradual right to left and left to right correction turned into a more violent PIO movement. For a low hour pilot like me it was scary but just like you, instinctively I locked my legs and since I was flying my slow 19 meter wing, the trike had slowed down pretty quick. I think if I had a faster wing, I could have flipped the trike over.
In the end it was my stupidity, the lesson I learned was to properly brief my passengers in the future.
Rizzy
Yes, as YFT noted I was there too and to the naked eye, all I really noticed was the big splash and wonder why he didn't avoid the puddle. I thought the splash would look great on film though !! It was colder than a witch's T*t in a brass bra though, so muscle may not have been working optimally either. Oh, we're going flying in the HOT, RED (green) and DRY (wet), practically unsurvivable Australian "Desert," Ha !! Sheesh, I packed shorts and T-shirts (lots of T-shirts)-- I froze my butt off-- If it wasn't for the Policia uniform that Jozinko gave me, I could be a statistic now.
Monty, I re-read what you said above starting with "having read all of the associated threads ..." Great info and insight, thank you for telling us from a been-there done-that perspective.
Can I call you tomorrow morning, or evening RE getting the Almost video posted? or you can call me when convenient. Have you been able to shrink it with video editing software (NOT ZIP, repeat NOT zip ;)? If not, try and use the "Help" menu of your video editing software to shrink it (look under "share" or upload to youtube, or etc) before we connect on the phone. Ken @Knussear might call you tomorrow also-- but he get's up before the hairy butt-crack of dawn.
Yeah, Monty, you got it posted ! (I bet Ken helped? ;). Video is HERE
yes ken/dave any time after 9am wa time i have to take my g/daughter to school hugs monty
Why? ;) For post-traumatic stress counseling? ;) You got it posted !! Yeah!
Jeff xc and i were on the next final we saw chriss hit the puddle of water by accident. we had flown quite a few hours on that leg of the journey.just for the record there were no competitions during megga faunna other than the incontinence quiz which were alot of laughs and fun after our wonderful feasts at the hotel. we all made ribbing s of chriss.s unexpected puddle jump.yft held the event with an enormous degree of safety and weather briefings and organization.. Several pilots had made some mistakes in judgement in which after dinner they received what yft calls lashings . a very pleasant way to remind pilots of their mistakes without humiliating them. chriss is a just absolute wonderful pilot and person to be around and took it all with a heart of gold.the tucan movie was just a wonderful reminder of just how great this event was and poking fun at a harrowing moment that we all watched. jeff with your truly incredible videos and adventures which i completely admire i hope that you will get the opportunity to fly megga faunna . you would just love this event. maybe next year eh
Oh, and under the Policia uniform was the incredible jacket with hand sewn patches from Oz (& Slovakia) that @Anne_M & YFT gave to us as a gift (with additional patches by Jozinko). Wow, what an honor! Kept us from freezing :)
yea! we dun it! it only took hours and hour of key poking!