Greg, try experimenting flying your finals at 70 mph, then, if you are still floating a lot try 65. Airspeed indicators vary quite a bit, as evidenced every time I lead the flight of Ercoupes in to Oshkosh. We are flying in trail, about 500' apart, and some pilots claim their airspeed is 120 mph and others say theirs is 85. I fly my finals at 75, but I once flew a coupe that read about 20mph high, so finals in that plane were about 95.
Syd Cohen NC94196 Wausau, WI Greg Bullough wrote: > Okay, here's a change from the guys complaining about trying to > fit their 220# bulk into an Ercoupe. > > I have the opposite problem (problem?). I'm a real feather-weight at > 125-130 lbs. soaking wet. And I'm flying a 415D whose empty weight > is pretty low to start with (898 lbs). > > Through a series of circumstances, I've rarely, up to now, flown with > anything less than an extra 190 lbs. of weight in the right seat. > > I'm finding that, with just me aboard, if I fly final at the standard 75MPH, > I waste about 1000 feet of runway floating in ground effect. Yikes! > > Standard advice would be 'slow down.' However, I've seen and heard the > dire warnings about slowing a non-split-elevator 415D too very far below > 75, lest there be nothing left for the flare. I *think* that running out of > elevator authority should be somewhat independent of gross weight, > as it doesn't really lift the nose so much as alter a fairly balanced mass's > pitch angle. > > So I don't want to get myself into deep guano either that way or by getting > trapped by sink. > > I know I have to experiment a bit, but is there anyone reading this who > has flown a 415D at low loads and has some numbers that they've > used? > > (By the way, yesterday at 60F and about 500 MSL, I was seeing 750FPM > on a C85 at 75MPH.) > > Greg
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