I've ~1000hrs of flying sky divers which is a similar style of flying. [ except we had to take them 'all the way up' :)] Standard proceedure was to fly pretty much max power [limited to 20-21" IIRC, in a 182 w/ a 470]. We'd be back to ~18" at 12000, once we dropped the divers it was red line on the airspeed [unless it was bumpy due to daytime heating] and keep the nose down. "Warping" was frowned upon [where the plane is stuck in a turn and then you stick the G's on and look out your window to watch the wings flex [or warp]] although you needed to pull some G's at some point as you couldn't just go in a straight line forever.

It's a bit unsettling the first time you watch those wings flex.. We'd only pull until we couldn't see the outboard screw heads [holding the tips on]  and just try and hold that many g's while not getting into a spiral [picking up speed]. All the time we are screaming down, we're maintaining 18" of MAP and every 1000ft we'd pull off another 1/2". By the time we got down to tree top level you'd be almost at idle and if you planned it right you wouldn't need to add any power before touch down, just bleed speed, yank the flaps [manual flaps on those old 182's] on the base/final turn and grease 'er in on a grass strip [w/ a 150ft hill at one end and pine trees at the other :)].

Someone had taken a pic at the drop zone of one of my 'last ride' flights [last flight of the day as the sun was setting] where you can see the tip lights, one over the other [vertically as the plane was pretty much in a ~90deg bank @ ~ 200ft] as I'm coming 'round to final, all in that evening 'sweet light' w/ pine trees as far as you could see in the background...  Loved that picture..

It certainly wasn't "for the faint of heart" flying.

Never blew a jug on any of my dive planes on any of the seasons I flew, so must have been doing something right. [However, I did have a jumper hit the tail due to an early chute deployment.. but thats another story]

Some [most?!] days I miss that crazy flying [compared to the hrs of straight a level I have to do now :)]

J Johnson

 

> Ray,
>
> Sounds like your procedure works. One of the tow pilots where I
> used to soar would basically chop power and go into an inverted
> military break to the left after release and then some sort of
> Walter Mitty full flap super slip to landing. The last part looked
> about like a 100 ft rope break drill except worse!
>
> It saves time and looks impressive as hell until the engine needs
> cylinders 1000 hrs before it should! Tow planes are one place
> where liquid cooling would have some huge advantages. I think
> there was a club over in Europe that put a liquid cooled auto
> engine in a Pawnee. In an ideal tow plane you could do what my
> former tow pilot did with no problems....It would also be nice if
> they had dive brakes. It might be more fun to fly the tow plane
> than the gliders at that point...;-)
>
> Ideal tow plane pattern.
>
> Establish release end of downwind @ 3Kft or so
> Chop Power
> Roll inverted
> Pull back on stick
> Deploy dive brakes
> Dive for end of runway
> Pull out of dive
> deploy flaps
> Flare and touch down dirty
> bleed off speed and stop ready to hook up the next glider.
> clean up do over.
>
> I realize this would give the 5 mile final types a heart
> attack...but it would be fun. Maybe make it a two seater so you
> could charge for rides ;-)
>
> Monty
>  ----- Original Message -----
>  From: Ray Cole
>  To: Rotary motors in aircraft
>  Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 12:06 AM
>  Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: tehachapi [off subject]
>
>
>  Hello Monty,
>
>  This discussion brought back thoughts I had when I was active in
> our local Soaring group. I thought a three rotor would work well
> in the nose of our Piper Pawnee for towing. Your are correct in
> that the 0-540 engine does not make full TBO standards. The trick
> is at release to dump full flaps and slowly reduce power as the
> engine cools while diving for the runway. In a perfect launch, the
> temps and the flare occur at about the same. It is amazing that
> for the most part we were getting pretty good engine life.
>
>  Good to see your post.
>
>  Ray
>

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