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Lynn,
I
won't try to shout anyone down, heck I don't even own a Lancair, but wish I did
in the middle of some 3 hour flights. I think one area of the turn-around
not fully appreciated is difficulty of simulating, even at
altitude, or especially at altitude, is the sudden stoppage of
power while in near max performance climb at high AOA. There is so little
energy stored and the 2-3 seconds for recognition and response that one will be
fast dissipating whatever speed energy is stored before the nose has to be push
down HARD with precious altitude lost to regain best glide speed.
Some will be better at it than others, most will be less than
acceptable.
Once
that transition manveure is accomplished (assuming it is and there are a lot of
instances where the turnaround attempt never makes it any further than that),
then one has to deal with an airplane, beautiful and fast that it is, that
extracts a high penalty for a stall in a turn. All told, a decision
altitude of 500' for RTA sounds like a one in ten shot...at
best.
Granted, I would try it in a Velocity as there is little penalty for a
stall in a turn--the turn flattens out (upright I might add) and one is stuck
with seriously degraded airspeed and the landing, wherever that occurs, is going
to be a bit of a pancake unless there is enough altitude and fortitude to jam
the nose down again to gain just a little speed.
As
much as I admire the Lancair series planes, low, slow and tight turns does not
seem to be their forte. Just an outsiders viewpoint.
Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: Lancair Mailing
List [mailto:lml@lancaironline.net]On Behalf Of
farnsworth
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 5:58 PM
To:
lml@lancaironline.net
Subject: [LML] Re: Turn back to the Airport
after engine failure
Oh, and pull the
prop out. This is critical. The glide ratio on the Legacy is about
doubled with the prop pulled out.
A feathering prop is
even better.
Lynn
Farnsworth
Super Legacy
#235
TSIO-550
Powered
Race
#44
Feathering
Prop.
PS
Lee Behel has a
feathering prop; when he had an engine failure at Reno last year, the
feathering prop was the difference between an uneventful landing at an airport
and an off airport landing.
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