I would note, as you mentioned yesterday, the few test flights I flew for the guys suggests to me that the "trimming" part of some previous events would still be worth a significant investment. All three airplanes I flew had significant trim issues that probably could have been diagnosed with a careful inspection. As always, I was amazed at how well the pilots managed to fly in the face of these problems, but Dennis' issues would have been easy to find and resolve in a basic bench trimming sesson and a few flights, and were causing him massive problems that he was completely unaware of.
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I agree entirely with Brett on the desirability of first "pre-flighting" the airplane and its control system (including the handle, an integral part of the control system) before flight. Ideally a test flight as well but, as Brett's adventures in that direction proved, time doesn't stand still!
The basic pattern is very simple geometry which, if a stunt ship is "pointable" any of the individuals who participated would have been flying the maneuvers as shown in the rule book. When the difference between the picture and the flight performance diverge considerably it is a good bet that the airplane isn't "helping" the pilot perform the tricks as printed.
During one of my 'potty" breaks I walked past the pits in my circle and picked up the first few (3 or so) handles I came to and worked the controls. Each and every one of them had controls so slow that I was perplexed as to how the pilots were actually flying corners. I later asked one of the fliers and he advised that narrowing the handle line spacing as much as possible was a common goal for at least one group of pilots that fly together regularly. Their intention apparently being to reduce bobble type errors by slowing the response of the airplane. While I don't advocate hair trigger quickness I do feel that a good stunt pattern can only be flown with modest movement of the pilot's anatomy. In my opinion the controls on each of those ships (competition stunters...not newbie profiles,etc.) were so slow as to be an impediment to flying competitive patterns.
While I did mention the situation during one debriefing there simply wasn't enough time during a flight/debrief sequence to both monitor and report on the maneuver quality/errors and watch the flier to see if the slow controls were forcing excessive pilot motion and attempting to evaluate to what degree errors were the result. Without a close examination of the airplane itself and, ideally, flying them debriefing on the degree to which the control system might be causing problems was unrealistic. As a result the issue wasn't discussed at length nor was each airplane investigated prior to flight with regards to control sensitivity.
The following is just my generic two cents worth that I wish I had been able to share early in the day....
I believe that full flap and elevator deflection should be achievable at the handle using only wrist movement with the ship at rest. The primary reason for this "ted" restriction is that, by definition, the pilot must otherwise utilize other parts of the body to generate the control movement necessary to do the tricks; bending the elbow for up (can't do that for down you know), or moving the entire arm up and down at the shoulder. Each of these alternative sources of deflection cause two bad things to happen.
First, geometrically, inputs from the elbow or shoulder require that the airplane be pulled into the circle which is inefficient, has an artificial increase/decrease in tension during the input and release which likely causes some yawing of the airplane while maneuvering.
Second, gross movements such as these require time to input and release thus impacting the quality and potential radius of corners.
Third, the chances of returning all those moving pieces--wrist, fingers, elbow, shoulder and, often, even body motion back into place to exit a corner/maneuver cleanly and at the proscribed place in the maneuver borders on impossible.
This subject matter was never addressed directly to the pilots because it was discovered more or less in passing and insufficient time was available to investigate each aircraft thoroughly and examine solely those items addressed above in a flight.
In short (aren't you glad) I agree with Brett that some sort of bench trimming session would ideally be a part of a future Chumley check out. Time. Time. Time.
Topic: Get trimming advice from a “Top Dog” (Read 4025 times)
