| I've done that myself, several times... The turn becomes a hover
as you come into the wind. That's why I'm very thankful we keep
a nice area of high weeds off the end of the runway... you can just
set it down into those with little fear of damage.
In higher winds, I find that I start my final 180 about 40' UPWIND
of the downwind threshold (at about 10' altitude) and can usually
place it well in the center of the field!
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\ ____|____ / Regards,
\________________________O_________________________/ Frank.
|
| Well, I did it now! As my wife says "I ran out of airplanes and
had to come home early". This weekend here in Maryland was interesting
to say the least!
The winds were out of the south at about 10-15 with gusts over 20.
The problem was that our runway at GMAC runs east-west and is about
20 yards from a line of trees to the south so we were in a wind
shadow. Taxiing was great and takeoffs smooth and uneventful.
The Eagle 63 with the O.S. FS-48 was running beautifully until
I climbed to about 50' when the wind hit me. Having soloed only
a month ago, my first reaction was that I was taking RF interference,
the plane acted like I was over controlling and dual rates didn't
help. I decided to get down to safety fast and made a BIG mistake
by turning into the wind and throttling back to idle. With the
flat bottom airfoil and gusts it was a nightmare. I finally got
down and hooked a wingtip slightly but enough to crack a wing bolt
attachment.
After calming down I decided to take up the Duraplane, nothing can
hurt it, right? Same situation smooth takeoff right into h**l at
about 50' but the Duraplane was able to penetrate the wind but
the gusts were hard for a novice like me to handle. If you all
remember Our field has two radar test platforms at each end 80'
tall and made of steel girders. On my cross-wind approach to final
I was blown into the east tower at about 3/4 throttle. There it
was jammed into a stair railing 80' from the ground. Luckily one
of the NASA security guards was watching us fly and had a key to
unlock the gate to let me climb the tower to retrieve my Duraplane.
Guess what? After hitting the railing and being jammed tight enough
to get hung up the only damage was a slight dent on the leading
edge of the wind and a cut fuel line when the externally mounted
tank was thrown against the propeller! They could use this story
in their advertising!
That was enough for one day! So I sat around and watched people
destrou one Electric Lady, cartwheel a 1/2 A pylon racer and land
a PT 40 in the weeds! I did learn an important lesson - look at
the leaves on the trees to determine wind conditions everywhere
not just where you're standing and never cut power when flying into
gusty winds.
Scott
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