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You can all judge by yourself. When I read this, I thought that this
guy exceeded his abilities and the airplane capabilities.
""The wind sock was
sticking straight out 90 degrees to the runway, but taxing in I
noticed the wind was gusting the sock 45 degrees either side of 90
as well. We hadn’t been out of the planes more than 5 minutes before
we realized we’d been a huge mistake stopping here.
There were no facilities, not even an outhouse, so there was no way
to escape the gale. We came to the realization that continuing
our exploration or spending a night camping in these conditions was
not palatable. We chose to go back to Tonopah .
So now we were tasked with figuring out how to escape this place. We
discussed departing across the ramp directly into the wind but with
the gusty
conditions, high field elevation and fence at the end of the ramp I
didn’t feel
comfortable with the available room. I paced off a route facing the
45 degree
gust from the northwest. It was marginally long enough but it would
require
exiting the ramp at an angle passing between two taxi markers,
avoiding a large
pothole and once again, a fence at the end. I then paced off a path
into the 45
degree gust from the southwest. This route would allow a running
start on the
runway, turning to angle across the ramp. At the end of the ramp was
a dirt road
that started out aligned with the take off path but with a left hand
dogleg about
halfway to the ubiquitous fence.
I wasn’t crazy about any of these options but Bill liked the odds on
the
SW departure path. He went first and I watched him depart.
Everything looked
good until he missed the dogleg and ran off into the weeds. He did
manage to
miss the fence but it sure looked scary. I chose to depart on the
runway, figuring
that was the smart decision. I parked on the runway next to the wind
sock, watching and
waiting for the gust to swing my direction. When it did I slammed
the throttle and, bending
the stick into the wind, went tearing down the runway.
Unfortunately, somewhere between
going pretty fast and not fast enough a gust picked up my upwind
wing beyond anything I
could control.
I muttered “Here we go” before I began sliding backwards off the
runway into a
dirt berm. The gear folded, the right wing stabbed into the ground
and the full power
propeller churned up a cloud of dust. 0-40 and back to 0 in less
than a minute.
Impressive.""
Raymond Lambert
On 11/8/2010 5:54 PM, Newton, Eric wrote:
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Dustin,
My hanger landlord, a 20,000 hour ATP finished
building a Bearhawk with an 0-540 in it. He's a
serial builder and it's a 10.5 out of 10. According
to him, the design has several serious flaws. He
put it on it's back in a moderate crosswind. Cost
him 30 grand. After checking out the problem he
found: The landing gear from the factory are not
straight. He modified and straightened them. It
needs Much more engine offset. The tail is much too
small. Factory support leaves much to be desired
and design deficiency problems are left to be worked
out by the builders. The company may be in
financial trouble. I have flown it in once with him
since all the rework. Nice solid airplane and not
as heavy on the controls as many. I watched his
landing on a no wind day and he worked very hard
with a lot of fast stick and rudder work. He still
won't fly it with moderate cross winds. There is a
Bearhawk builders group on Yahoo. Suggest you spend
a lot of time reading over the postings. Just a
heads up.
Don Walker
RV-8 Renesis
Flying and modifying
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