Drifter 25-0787 TIF report Clifton YCFN 4 September 2011

[mnewbery]

*Work's a b_tch then you die* false

 

*Open cockpit ultralights are dangerous* false

 

I'd planned to egg on a fellow pilot up the road from Clifton who got in a bit of a rut by taking him out the the airfield and just messing around for the day.

 

That didn't happen the way I wanted it to.

 

In my experience you come to these small airfields for the flying and end up getting engrossed in all the side things - conversations, arrivals and departures, test flights, re-qualifications and so it goes on.

 

I arrived by accident at the Clifton airfield the day before and had a wonderful time just being around aircraft and their associated people. This is the accessible side of flying where there is always something to do with your hands when the conversation runs out. This day it was re-arranging the contents of a hangar that had recently been re-floored and de-moused, err, and some gardening.

 

This time next year, Clifton airfield clubhouse will be sporting a much larger and nicer hedge than the one it had in March. This in due in no small part to a group of enthusiastic and able volunteer members of which I was only a small part.

 

I slept like the dead at the airfield that night. I am a mostly sendentary office worker so physical labour was a bit of a foreign concept. Fortunately the bed was excellent and I wore gloves.

 

The Drifter was in the hanger on the other side of the wall next to my bed so straight after breakfast the TIF began.

 

I didn't have a good look at a Drifter at the Clifton fly-in so I was eager to get up close and personal with this unfamiliar wing. It is a high wing. After that its different to everything else I have flown:

 

Tailwheel

 

Pusher prop (opposite p-factor too I think)

 

Two-stroke

 

Open cockpit

 

Fore-aft seating

 

Rag and pole construction

 

But they all 'fly' so we skipped the bit about primary and secondary effects of controls because I passed my GA GFPT finally in May.

 

The Drifter has a 'magic speed' which it 'shall' be flown faster than, all the time. Unless you are on the ground, at which time you figure its a good idea to go a lot slower. It is tail wheel after all.

 

I say 'shall' because if you go slower-than-or-even-near the magic speed, a disembodied voice will yell into to your ear the following phrase:

 

"What are you trying to do, kill us both?"

 

There are two valid reasons for this phenomenon. Firstly there is no stall horn and even if there was its an open cockpit. Between the engine and the wind noise, you're not going to hear it. Also the helmet headphones are great ear protection. Secondly the voice belongs to the instructor behind you (fore and aft seating, see ... try to keep up) who is heartily more weary of repeating this mantra than you will ever be of hearing it.

 

The Drifter has nose ballast to bring the pilot weight into the ~88-110 Kgs range. Not much was required, only maybe 15Kgs for me but if you forget it, the Drifter will kill you because you will run out of pitch trim plus elevator authority and either not land or not take off. For me it would be nose up (therefore no safe landing) because I'm average weight but note this situation is no different to the Beech Bonanza (?) and some gliders.

 

Learning the basic handling characteristics of the Drifter proved some things to me. A hundred or so hours of flying GA aircraft was useful but only 'so much' and the Drifter requires FAR LESS rudder than I was applying in order to make it turn.

 

My instructor arrived by Jabiru (as you do) but his handling of the Drifter in banked turns was nothing shot of inspiring. I thought The SkyFox Gazelle was a real stick-and-rudder aircraft in that it was hard to keep the balance ball centred and the rudder is relatively massive. The Drifter takes this up a notch because the rudder is on a long pole, has a propeller blasting air at it and when you fly unbalanced, it loses airspeed like crazy. This in turn changes the drag and torque equations, making the aircraft even more out of balance. Conversely when the aircraft is flown balanced, it speeds up and before you know it, its out of balance again but in the opposite direction and slowing down again.

 

Happy times! For this reason the Drifter often sports a jaunty piece of wool on the top of the VHF antenna which is right in your line of sight. So there are no excuses for flying out of balance but I dare you to avoid it on your first attempt.

 

After 30 minutes flying we were on the ground again and discussing what I had just done. I kept forgetting that we were flying a tail dragger which means the nose needs to come down on the initial takeoff run, I kept getting too slow and using too much rudder. Also I was making quite gross stick inputs where much smaller and frequent ones were required. Back to school on these. Bugger it, I've never flow tail wheel or high drag ultralights before.

 

The high drag bit was to become very important during the next flight...

 

 

[willedoo]

Thanks for a great report & post. Read it word for word, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Aerodynamics is a fascinating subject; it's good to hear someone talk about it with the enthusiasm it deserves.

 

Cheers, Willie.

 

 

[Guest David C]

Thanks for posting your TIF report .. I too read it word for word , which is unusual for me , such was the level of interest . Took me back to the Bantam flying days , although the Bantam seems to be a "snack " to fly compared to the Drifter , both open cockpit and rag and tube though , which I find very addictive , and did I say slow !! .. Your account of the closeness and friendly atmosphere at Clifton is typical of small country airfields , I love that side of our interest , and reminds me of The Oaks , my local airfield , where typically we all do a lot more talking and hangar flying than actually getting airborne , which again appeals to me .... Looking forward to Episode 2 with great anticipation ...

 

Dave C

 

 

[mnewbery]

TIF 2

 

Trevor Bange and Daniel King know a thing or two about teaching for Drifters. Something that I didn't immediately consider is that the sound of a 65Hp two-stroke engine behind your head can be a bit overwhelming. Combined with a lightly loaded wing and a bit of a wind gust, it can become uncomfortable as in motion sick uncomfortable.

 

This is why the time aloft starts out at no more than 30 minutes. Its a good thing to keep it that way until you can effortlessly fly straight and level, relaxed and oblivious to the screaming cacophany.

 

Clearly I can't do that yet so we moved on to steep turns, stalls then spin-and-recovery exercises. Caveat: I have done more than my fair share of spin, spiral dive, unusual attitude recovery and basic instrument flying so I'm already used to feeling like I'm upside down when I'm not or vise vera, so I thought this would be a doddle.

 

Standard stall and recovery (SSR) stalls in a Drifter are a quiet affair, somewhere between the benign but heavy stall of the Cessna 150 and the non-event mushing stall of the SkyFox Gazelle. Tangential comment: If you want to stall a Gazelle like you mean it you need to enter a gentle climb at 5000 rpm, pull the carb heater on then yank back on the stick and idle the engine at the same time. Don't do that, ever. The SSR stall for the Drifter provides no opportunity for wing drop and like the Gazelle the rudder authority is there to help you out if there is. Recovery is as per "the training" although I note that recent discussions in the magazines are leaning towards lowering the nose then adding full power rather than doing both at the same time. This is claimed to be because you get airspeed (and back to flying) sooner with the nose pointed low and no longer rotating about the pitch axis at the time full power comes in.

 

The Drifter has a high thrust line which means the propellor is above the centre of gravity. That means when you cut the thrust it naturally pitches up and pitches down when thrust is added. Tractor propellors do the reverse which means you really want to control the pitch change when practising SSR there. A bigger engine means you need to be smoother with the throttle to cancel out the forces with control inputs. The Drifter has neither of these traits.

 

Neither the Drifter nor the Gazelle have landing flaps so there is no such thing as a landing configuration stall.

 

Entering a spin in a Drifter is waaaay easier than for something more GA-esque. Once again the rudder authority comes to the rescue. I'm not going to tell you how to enter a spin or how to get out of one here. What I will say is that once the power is cut, the high drag characteristics mean that everything is under control with only minimal altitude lost. This was proven at least twice even with a fully developed, inverted spin.

 

*now where did that horizon go...* :biggrin:

 

I didn't check but we lost maybe 100 feet both times. It is however quite possible to get close to Vne if you don't get back to straight and level promptly. The craft is rated to +3.6G and you can safely pull out at 2G by the seat of the pants with about 10 knots of airspeed remaining. The trick of course is not to let the speed increase much before starting the recovery but that means you need to look at the horizon, fly and glance at the airspeed indicator at about the same time. Um, I couldn't do that either. In fact, I felt very alone without my DG and AH instruments. Because its an open cockpit, you have to look where you are going, just like on a motorcycle and that look could be a very very long way away from the instruments. High bank angle turns are a hoot but you have to make a deliberate effort to glance at the dials mid turn or ignore them completely. The other thing is that the pitot tube suffers like crazy when you yaw, causing the airspeed indicator to oscillate uselessly like a nodding dog.

 

After the spin recovery we headed back to the airfield using a simulated engine failure. High drag does not mean low glide ratio. Additionally, when you are flying over ploughed fields in the morning there is a *lot* of updraft. We did an uncomfortable, steep, slipping dive to the airfield always keeping the airspeed above "that" number. At about 500 AGL feet I realised that slipping wasn't going to cut it because we were too close to the threshold. Not to be outdone I turned on to the runway centre line and with about 200 feet to spare I chickened out and killed the slip.

 

Big mistake.

 

The maxmum take off weight of a Cessna 150 is 760 Kg. The Gazelle is about 600Kg and the Drifter is 356-454 Kg depending on the variant. Essentially the heavier aircraft have more rotational inertia which means slipping close to the ground is a bit of a no-no. Especially when the aircraft has landing flaps and not full width ailerons. The Gazelle and Drifter have full width ailerons which means if you want to slip close to the ground, mmkay! I didn't do that.

 

Instead, 100ft AGL at the threshold combined with a gentle down slope saw me float pretty much all the way to the other end of the runway, causing a prompt go-around because we did not have enough runway left to stop. Note to self: If you are not on the ground by the first 1/3 of an 800m runway, its a go-around. For me that will be every time it happens, your mileage may vary.

 

Drifter brakes are fine even though they are hand operated, its the combination of tiny, tiny wheels and grass that is the problem. You can get a Drifter to creep along with the wheels locked at 3000rpm which is a bit disconcerting if you are trying to get in it at the time.

 

I still suck at tail wheel landings but I've only done four. The last one was a thumper but it was all mine and not the instructor's.

 

Drifter Summary - an acolyte's opinion

 

• Its safe and inexpensive
   
   
  
• It will teach you to take-off and land tail wheel
   
   
  
• It will teach you to fly smoothly and accurately, without relying on a six-pack of gauges
   
   
  
• If you ride motorcycles it will feel like one, just not a fast one
   
   
  
• If you fly out of balance the guy behind you will freeze and his microphone will have constant wind noise (that noise in the intercom is a big clue)
   
   
  
• At 55Kts planned TAS, its not a viable alternative to a car
   
   
  
• When you pull back on the steering wheel of a car, nothing interesting happens
   
   
  
• Its cold, especially at 5000 Feet AMSL. I cheated and wore a motorcycle touring suit
   
   
  

 

Finally, it is my opinion that a person will become a better pilot because of this combination of tail wheel, high drag and light wing loading. There is nowhere for your mistakes to hide and they become very apparent through the seat of your pants because of these three things. The feedback is immediate therefore there is plenty of time to correct a mistake before it becomes fatal. Alternatively you can get ham fisted and still not generate pilot induced oscillation.

 

I can't wait to do it again but before then I have a new bathroom to pay for and a baby due in time for Christmas :eek:

 

 

[willedoo]

Thanks for another great report, looking forward to hearing about the next flight.

 

Cheers, Willedoo.

 

 

[Guest Darren Masters]

Mate, really enjoyed reading this. There has not been a report like this in a while Many many fond memories of my Drifter flying days with my mate Sunny out at The Oaks Airfield (same as Dave C). Some of the best times I ever had. I myself own a little rag and tube Mirage which I fly here in NZ. Reading your story is prompting me to pull her out of the shed and go for a fly! Ah, for the 45kt winds to ease...The noise (I prefer to call it lovely music) of the 2-stroke you will get used to. Nothing quite like the sound and smell of a 2-stroke!! Again, really enjoyed reading this. Thanks so much for sharing!!!

 

Below for you mate. I used to have lots of fun in the Drifter as you can see

 

 

 

[dazza 38]

I love the drifter, flew at Austflight at Boonah back in 1987. CFI was Marc Aurer at the time.XP503.I loved flying them.I have and still do fly at Airsports at Boonah.The last TW aircraft that I flew was a Savage Cub.Loved it even more.Unfortunatley it hasnt been their since last Xmas.Gone to Vic. I fly Teccys ATM but i realy miss the TW aircraft.Drifters are a fantastic Aircraft.

 

 

[XP503]

My drifter weighs 190 kg on it's own, and has the same wing as the one you flew in. Which means it climbs near vertically but can be like a rollercoaster at times. Lucky for me though I genuinely enjoy riding turbulence.....perhaps I'm strange.

 

 

[mnewbery]

Wife killed our car. The replacement car arrives tomorrow. This means I am effectively grounded until 2014-ish

 

 

[mnewbery]

Episode IV: A New Hope

 

I've just read all the posts previous to this one.

 

Yes we got a new(er) car and even made it to the Tumut Vallley Fly in. Made and met some great friends who have since crossed paths with us in the most pleasant of ways. After changing jobs twice, moving house and watching basically everything I worked for in the last four years either be turfed out, stuffed in a box, sold or just forgotten ... it was time to get back to the Drifter.

 

Fortunately for me it was still there.

 

Today I did Drifter hour four for the year and its coming along nicely. Between family and work commitments I have discovered some "me time" between dawn and lunch on Mondays.

 

This morning the wind sock was pointing straight down. I commented that its was my favourite direction for wind socks. I now have some more contrasts to provide as today I started the real work of getting an endorsement like this - one hour of competent solo flight without crashing a tail dragger. At least its on grass...

 

Trevor Bange as many of you may know is the chief flying instructor of Lone Eagle Flying School. He celebrated his 50th year of flight during the 2013 Clifton Fly-in. It would be an understatement to say he's done a bit of teaching in Drifters. Today we did some very cool and fun flying in the equally cool and very still air around Clifton airfield. I knew this was getting me ready for solo flight and checking my responses to a) EFATO and other circuit emergencies b) runway incursions c) threat and error management. Having gone through this with other instructors I knew it was soon going to be time to step up to the plate. Also, I'd stuffed all of this up before, recently, in front of Trevor so he knew my weaknesses.

 

Side note

 

For those of you who think that belting down the road on a tiny motorcycle at dawn in May only to rattle around inside an equally unwelcoming hangar for a ride in an open cockpit ultralight, I have three words for you:

 

Hot Water Bottle

 

Riding a motorcycle is a huge advantage because I already have just the touring gear for this sort of lark plus the drifter feels like a motorcycle perched on top of a power pole at any rate. So I arrived with the hottie stuffed up my jumper and plonked it on the front seat before doing the pre-flight. Onlookers were suitably impressed. Trevor just turned up wearing his long underwear beneath a wind proof jacket and a grim smile. Possibly pants too... Rolling into two degrees wind dressed up like a big black michelin man, I was toasty warm and grinning like an idiot by the time the runway slipped under us. The ride to Clifton was pretty nice too.

 

After the obligatory review of "everything we've learned up to this point" Trevor announced his bladder had decided it was time for me to fly solo. His following words turned out to be prophetic. Below is a summary:

 

1. Flying a Drifter with a lot of weight in the back (fuel or arms and legs) is a lot easier than flying solo with half fuel. Everything happens bigger and faster when you are solo

 

2. As was demonstrated prior to the solo, the high thrust line will flick the nose down quickly on take off roll and up quickly during power off. Be ready to react accordingly

 

3. The tail will do what tail dragger tails do. Solo, it happens much more madly so get ready to pedal like crazy and sliiiide across the grass

 

4. Get ready to bounce. A lot. Feel free to laugh hysterically when you pull off a perfect three point landing, hit a bump and feel the main wheels fly for a bit further.

 

5. And you thought the bouncy landings were fun. Take off ground rolls generally end with a little bounce into the air followed by what can only be described as "not coming back down again". During a solo flight, the bounces are further apart and a lot more noticeable. Not dangerous, just attention grabbing

 

Finally, with nobody behind you to hear you scream the glide is very draggy so the nose is lower on approach for the same speed and power setting.

 

Over the next three landings, the wind picked up ever so slightly and it all happened - the wriggly tail, the nose low takeoff and the bouncy bouncy roll out. But as with all well designed endeavours we survived and prospered.

 

What I have failed to mention is that I flew with a head cold. After all this was over I was very happy but in a bit of pain. On the way home tonight I passed by Toowoomba airport which is a thousand feet higher. Just as I was passing the western end of the airport I felt a big pop in one of my sinuses followed by stuff that's a bit too gross to write about.

 

Its been that kind of day.

 

 

[mnewbery]

Oh yes ... I did get used to the sound of the engine. The helmet I used wasn't special but it was a great help.

 

 

[Guest aviatrix27]

Well done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This has been a long time coming, glad to hear it's finally happened. As for that head cold and stuffed sinuses, since you're now home for the night and the little one is tucked in, I suggest a nip of Cointreau - sip it slowly and it has to be neat. No ice, no mixers. The object is not to get sozzled, but to clear the sinuses. Limit = 3 nips in any one evening.

 

 

[nomadpete]

Clifton is a great place to commit aviation. Except for the cold winter mornings. The training, the scenery and people make every visit great therapy. Congratulations on mastering the drifter.

 

 

[mnewbery]

I would not say I'm a master of anything yet. Maybe after some hundreds of hours more...

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Well written and a pleasure to read.

 

There are those who sit importantly in heated cabins with 'glass cockpits' imagining they're Jumbo captains and there are airmen who feel the breeze if they aren't manoeuvering perfectly balanced, smell the earth and hear the song of the wires around them.

 

Things have changed. There were no instructors back in the day of the first minimum aircraft, Skycraft Scout, Drifter ... Thruster.

 

The Scout was as minimum as you could get... Only elevator and rudder and you sat out front with nothing to stop being whacked in the moosh by grasshoppers. The Drifter and Thruster at least had windscreens, three axis controls and better performance.

 

You got in and flew... a couple of feet above the ground so you wouldn't fall down far and on returning, report what you'd learned to your waiting mates and they'd go off and scare themselves. We dived then climbed to clear barbed wire fences with a sink and bounce over the other side and the idea of getting up to maximum allowable height of three hundred feet was pretty pertifying. I think DCA reckoned there'd be lots of crashes in that dangerous operating zone and they could ban minimum aircraft seeing as they'd actually gotten through the screen of negativity and somehow were uninhibitedly, flying free.

 

There was no secondary effects of controls as the Scout's turned into spoilers if you used a bit over half travel of rudder or elevators. You were very gentle using tip of index finger and thumb on the stick. We didn't do stalls as the stall crept out from the wing root as you started raising the nose to stop the sink when you lost a couple of kilometers per hour, say in a turn or the climb over the fence.

 

The whole aim was to keep the thing in the air somehow. Turns usually resulted in a wheel touching the ground as we gradually sank.

 

We didn't have the sails pulled tight enough together at the wing root so the wings were not producing all their proper lift and were producing a bit more drag.

 

Ron Wheeler (The designer who had fought DCA long and hard to get CAO 95 approved) pointed it out to us the last time I was sitting in the Scout and I didn't get to find out how well the thing flew because the carby played up and I never went in another.

 

Two owners I met and flew with at a paddick on the Brisbane River near Toogoolawah, which the SAA later got a hold of and named Watts Bridge had never had a flying lesson (illegal in single seat minimum aircraft) and went off flamboyantly bending bits of aluminium as they collided with fences and the ground. They'd straighten bits of airframe and I was told the crash champion of Queensland actually broke parts of his and had to buy more ally tubing to replace the busted bits.

 

They did things I was astounded at (They hadn't learned 'You can't do that' and somehow pulled them off.)

 

They flew their aircraft on floats out in the bay and had the same experience as the earliest aviators ... no fear and no restrictions.

 

The bloke who owned the one I flew, had never had a flying lesson.

 

Put yourself in his shoes. Remember your first solo? Bit of fear and trepidation, but you'd been instructed and practised flying with an instructor beside you to take over if things got out of hand, but now it was JUST you.

 

Col's first solo was the first time he got the wheels off the ground. He'd done a fair few fast taxis, but was gung-ho and wanting to get it in the air.

 

We told him to gently lift the thing off the ground and then slowly close the throttle so he'd not climb and ease the stick back to keep off the ground till she settled.

 

Col was a bit exuberant with the 'easing the stick back to get airborne'.

 

Leapt about ten feet up, got a hell of a fright and pushed.

 

Kabam and boing.

 

The kabam was harsh, so the tailwheel banged the ground. There was speed and lots of angle of attack so the boing catapulted the thing back up to ten feet altitude.

 

Col was concentrating solely on pitch and yaw wasn't in his concentration equasion. Remember your first flight? You could keep two of the three axis under control, but the third was just a bit too much. When you got the little smirk on your face because you had kept the wings level and pitch pretty constant, did you find there were hills in front of you instead of the water...'How'd that happen?'

 

Now this particular strip (Old Caboolture, a cow paddick with an igloo in it) had trees not too far from the strip edge ... big straight buggers, and there was fallen timber in the long grass so we started fearing the aeroplane was gunna get awful bent and there'd be no more flying for a week or two AND we'd be visitin' Col in hospital rather than fixing the Scout, but Col got his thoughts together and chopped the throttle and turned. The thing fell down in the long grass and missed fallen branches.

 

There was the problem of the looming barbed wire fence at the rapidly approaching end of strip.

 

Col fell out of the seat after undoing the seatbelt and started rolling around on the ground punching it, whooping and looking like he was having an epileptic fit.

 

'Poor bugger must be winded'...

 

Nope he was exhilarated.

 

He felt all the thrills we had experienced over those ten or so hours of training in one bomb blast.

 

Naturally as more people got in on the act and died, something had to be done and instructors started teaching people about what they were doing, thus making it safer, BUT no one can take the pioneering experience of 'hopefully I won't hurt myself' some of us had.

 

 

[siznaudin]

"...the same experience as the earliest aviators ... no fear and no restrictions."

 

Wonderful stuff - and as ever Den, your prose paints a beautiful (if a little scary) picture.[ATTACH=full]1786[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

You'd have been one of them for sure. I've seen ya drive on two wheels.

 

 

[siznaudin]

It just seemed that way Den ... look here: all four still on the tarmac!

 

[ATTACH=full]1787[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Looked pretty spectacular!

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

It was ANO 95-10 that Ron Wheeler along with Ces Anderson obtained in 1974/5. Much different to the (over regulated) CAO 95-10 we have now.