Melbourne in Spring

The only thing you have to know about Melbourne at this time of this year is that everyone wishes it would stop blowing! We've had a succession of strong low pressure systems through here and it's driving everyone mad. Not as bad as the west coast of Tasmania though. They reported sustained winds of 80 knots at one stage last week!

I haven't managed to do another session in the Savage Classic yet - my instructor has had a rough time over the last couple of weeks and the last thing is that he's now nursing some cracked ribs! I'll keep you posted as soon as the next session comes along.

What I have been spending some time on though is making a table top. I fossicked around and found a piece of reclaimed river redgum. It's about 1200 x 600mm and around 38mm thick. It's a beautiful piece of timber. Like many of these slabs however it has a cup across the width.

So I've been planing away the sides to make the top flat. I've been using a low angle smoothing plane. Removing the heavy stock with the mouth wide open and then closing the mouth up to get a finish.

As you can see from the photos (sorry about the quality) there is beautiful fiddleback figure in the wood. But that of course means that the grain goes every which way. I've sharpened a secondary bevel on the plane blade to bring the included cutting angle up to around 50 degrees. I tried to remove the first major cut with a scrub plane but I got too much chip out so I reverted to slower work with the jack plane and the smoother.

My old man started out life as a carpenter and joiner. He reckons I don't need to remove all the cup - just make sure that it's "flat enough".

This is great cardio vascular exercise and it's doing wonders for my upper body and fore arms! I'll have to find another piece after this to keep up with the exercise regime!

Tailwheel Travails - Lesson One

It shouldn't be hard right? I know how to start an aircraft, how to taxi it, how to take-off, fly and land. That means that flying a new type should be a snack! Wrong I'm afraid - much to my disgust.
If gliders qualify as taildraggers then I've got a fair bit of taildragger time. I suspect however in all the things that are important to flying a taildragger gliders don't count. That means that like many pilots of my age I don't have the rare qualification of being a "real" pilot, because I don't fly a taildragger.
I decided that as I did want to be a "real" pilot it was about time I did something about this glaring hole in my capabilities. I'm getting endorsed to fly a 'dragger. As you might have guessed from a previous post I've chosen the Zlin Savage Classic (called the Cub in Australia) as the initial vehicle for my mortification. So from time to time I'll write about my progress - or more to the point, lack of it.
Lesson one: We had the briefing - you know the one about the C of G being behind the main gear in a taildragger, unlike in a tricycle undercarriage aircraft where it's in front. That means that the tail wants to swap ends with the nose, the tail wants to go first and let the nose come along later. So the story is that as a pilot your only important job is to make the tail stay behind the main gear, and not just behind but straight behind please. Why straight behind? Well as you let the tail get out of line the aircraft will start to turn and the line of the C of G will move rapidly outboard on the outside of the turn. Once it gets beyond a certain point you are going to ground loop and nothing is going to stop you. So keep the tail nicely in line behind you please!!
Once we had got over the briefing we climbed aboard and the instructor said "let's go and do some taxiing practice". Taxiing practice? That's the first thing you learn when you learn to fly - you're kidding me aren't you? Not kidding and what's more let's pick an open area away from obstructions and other aircraft. Well even getting to the open area was a series of drunken lurches. Once a taildragger starts turning it keeps turning. Unlike a nosewheel aircraft where relaxing the rudder on the ground tends to see the aircraft returning to straight line progress, the taildragger keeps going round and indeed has a nasty tendency to tighten the turn. So to stay straight you watch the nose like a hawk and use little dabs of rudder to correct any deviation from the path of righteousness - and don't leave the rudder input in will you! The toe brakes can help too but we'll come to the difficulties of those in a minute!
OK we've lurched drunkenly to an open area and on the way avoided any collision with any object. "OK let's just turn to the right here - more power, keep her moving, why have you got all that rudder in?" This as the aircraft performs a perfect low speed pirouette. Without power the rudder isn't so effective so you tend to pile in more rudder to get the aircraft moving where you want it and then as you increase power to aid the process you have way too much rudder and around you go and unless you are very quick you keep going around. As for the frigging toe brakes, I couldn't work out how to hold one rudder pedal still whilst I rocked my other foot forward to use the toe brakes. By this stage the local idlers had moved into a prime position to view the fun. These are the guys who don't need to burn fuel to get their jollies, they just watch idiots like me and gain immense amusement from it.
Slowly it began to make sense: initiate a turn, release the rudder once you are turning, maybe use some opposite rudder to keep things seemly and never use too much rudder. Now lets see if we can taxi to the end of the strip without hitting the fence or making a runway incursion. At the first turn on the taxiway I conducted a graceful little groundloop and stopped only a few feet short of the runway. Over the radio "xyz turning final for runway 11 and I have the Cub in sight (giggle)". Sweating and red faced I encouraged the Classic back onto the straight and narrow and we waltzed to the end of the runway, managed to enter and line up straight and then took a deep breath.
Open the throttle slowly, feet nice and soft, eyes fixed on the far end of the strip, tail up slowly and we're are in the air. Straight, perfectly straight, fuss free! Climb out and wander off for some upper air work - time to understand the beast in the air. After a very benign session we head back to the circuit. The Classic feels great in the circuit and everything falls into place, no fuss on final, sliding down on rails and into the flair. The exhortations from the back seat start at about this point: "keep coming back on the stick, don't give up on her, more, more..." and we touch in the gentlest most graceful landing of my life. Little dabs of the rudder to keep her straight and we slow to turn off the strip and taxi back for another one. Well I managed to get through that without wrapping her up in a ball!!
None of the other landings were quite as good as the first, but my footwork got better and more assured. Of course if every landing was perfect we'd never bother coming back. My daughter is one of those pilots whose landings vary between very good and completely bloody perfect. She's fond of telling me that I have every reason to keep coming back to fly some more - one day I might just fluke a landing that's worth watching!! That's why you have kids.

Zlin Savage Classic - First Impressions

I flew the Classic a week or two ago - it's a copy of the old Piper Cub.

The one pictured was a photo I took in Italy, the one I flew was in Australia. They were initially designed in Italy I believe and are now manufactured by Zlin in the Czech Republic. In Australia this has been called the Savage Cub but it is officially the Savage Classic.

They are sold as a Light Sport Aircraft in Australia. MTOW in LSA config is 560kg which gave about 263kg of useful load.

The aircraft is powered by the Rotax 912ULS and has a Woodcomp wood grain style prop.

The first impression is of a very, very well constructed and finished aircraft that's great fun to fly. It's very simple - a small, well laid out panel, with an XCom radio slung under the edge of the panel.

Stick is central, throttle is to the left, just where your arm/hand fall. Below that towards floor level is the flap lever it's the old "handbrake" style. It requires a little effort to pull flaps on, but the biggest issue for me was being able to reach it. To quote the man at the clothes shop (Henry Bucks for the Melbournians) I have "a long back, short arms and a fat neck". So I found that when the seat was all the way back - which I needed - I had to loosen my left shoulder strap in order to be able to (just) reach the flap lever.

At middle height on the left and back beside the seat is the trim - a toothed quadrant with a lever on it. Pull the lever towards you, pull or push to set and then let it go and it engages with the teeth and stays where you put it. Trim was quite aggressive - one notch at normal cruise made a big difference.

I'm a novice tail wheel pilot so ground handling was an initial challenge. However visibility is very good and after a while it all began to fall into place. The toe brakes are very effective.

Once at the end of the runway it was simply a case of feeding in power, gently picking up the tail and we were flying. I have no idea at what speed - my eyes were fixed on the end of the runway - but I would guess at something between thirty and forty knots. Acceleration was very quick at close to MTOW. First stage flaps were used for take off and Vfe is 60 knots for first stage and 50 knots for full flaps.

Climb after flap retraction was 60 knots and about 850fpm. The nose was sitting just below the horizon and the fun was really starting. This aircraft translates every action to the seat of your pants. Great fun to fly.

Levelling off the first thing that takes some getting used to is the very low nose attitude for S&L. The horizon is well up the screen by the time you are settled into your 85 knot cruise at 4900rpm or so.

Slow flight simply required increasing back pressure until finally the Classic stopped flying with the needle hovering somewhere between 20 and 25 knots. This aircraft was equipped with VGs and they are tremendously effective. I think that the speed was pretty accurate and not the result of positional error at the high AOA.

Wing drop was virtually non-existent and buffet was similarly all but absent. The aircraft is very well behaved at the stall but not telling you too much either.

Turns require a little rudder and very little back pressure for even moderately steep turns. Again the tendency is to climb until you get used to the low nose attitude. Visibility is great with the centre section of the wing having a perspex panel.

Returning to the field the aircraft was remarkably loathe to lose height and we used a couple of moderate descending turns to soak up some height. The Cub showed no sign of wanting to drop its nose or tighten the turn - all very placid.

It was in the circuit that the aircraft showed its true colours. It is docile, highly predictable and well behaved. Approaching base turn we cut the throttle and as the needle dropped past 60 knots we put out first stage flaps. Trim fairly far back - and now the trim is much less sensitive - and the aircraft sat solid as a rock at 60 knots. Easy to manage and not at all busy.

Indeed the one thing that I found unusual was that there was no sense that this was a draggy aircraft - this despite the various struts and bracing wires. It didn't require heaps of height or power to keep it flying.

Turning final we slowed to 50 knots and got full flaps out. Trim almost right back and again the aircraft is highly stable. However there was no sense of high sink rate - unlike a Tecnam in this configuration.

Over the threshold round out, throttle closed and just keep coming back on the stick. My first landing - with some encouragement from the back seat - was an absolute greaser of a three pointer. And that's the only landing I'm telling about!!

Again I have no idea about the speed I landed but the aircraft was easily managed on roll out with little dabs of rudder to keep it tracking. The one thing that got me on a couple of my landings was the fact that you are actually sitting quite high up. I kept thinking the ground was further away than it actually was.

I had the very strong impression that this is an aircraft that would really respond when you wanted to squeeze it into a little, rough strip somewhere. Even on a first flight I felt like I was really communicating with and being communicated to by the aircraft. Just the kind of thing that would inspire confidence if you are near the limits.

Overall first flight impressions: A simple aircraft that's really nicely built and finished. You could have a very great deal of fun in this aircraft. It reminded me so much of the very simple aircraft of the past. No fancy instrument panels, everything simple and manual. An absolute joy to fly.

I'll have one to sit in the hangar alongside the long distance cruiser that flies 40 knots faster. That really is the only downside - unless you count not being able to see your significant other whilst you are flying along.

This is the manufacturer's site: Zlin Savage Classic