An Early Ultralight T.v Report

[skeptic36]

[dazza 38]

Thankyou Skeptic36, I have never seen a side by side trike before.I thought they have always been tandem.:)

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

Weird things happened to this as I pasted it here... all sorts of hidden commands appeared but didn't perform them . I've sorted most of them (took half an hour) but I'm not re doing any more, so there is a different font later in the story . Sixties

 

I had a number of flies of the first minimum aircraft to be allowed to fly in Oz.

 

Ron Wheeler (who lives near Yamba last I heard), fought the department of transport (CASA) for years in the early seventies, to have an engine driven, flying machine with an all up weight of 180 KG approved for unlicensed pilots to take aloft.

 

A mate of mine asked me if I’d go with him and his friend who had bought one and learn to fly it and tell them what to do. They were airport firemen, Keith had a private license and Col the owner, had never flown.

 

Always on the lookout for adventure, I agreed. It was around 1976

 

We met at ‘Old CabIoolture’ strip one balmy autumn day and I was introduced to the Skycraft Scout.

 

It was indeed a MINIMUM aircraft! A couple of sails threaded from the ends of two aluminium boat masts and stiffened with thin ally pipe battens, gave the ‘wings’ and their camber. You pulled them together at the roots with nylon cords and tied them together, to give them their tautness.

 

The ‘airframe’ was a rounded cornered, extruded, aluminium box section, about four by two inches, that the wings attached to with stainless bolts. The empennage was made up of three triangular flat surfaces made from sail material and edged with thin aluminium half inch, pipe. They had a throw of about thirty degrees either side of central.

 

A Victa lawn mower, single cylinder, engine was bolted on the front with a beautifully crafted, pretty, laminated, three foot six, wooden prop free-wheeling on a pulley not in-line with the engine. There was a wide belt that connected the engine to the prop.

 

Hanging from the airframe, under the wing, was a pyramid made up of more one inch pipe that the golf buggy wheels and a plastic ‘pub chair’, seat were bolted to.

 

There was a thin, aluminium pipe, bow attached below the tail with an extension of the rudder post sticking down with a tiny, four inch, solid aluminium, tail wheel on the bottom.

 

The whole contraption was held together with a hundred or so, yards of stainless steel cable with eyes swaged on the ends.

 

Lots of stainless nuts and bolts held the cable ends in place.

 

 

It took twenty minutes to assemble it AND ensure ALL the nuts had been tightened, especially after a flight where we found we’d forgotten to use a spanner on the nut on top of the Jesus post. Luckily it stopped the wings falling down while they weren’t under flight load and everything was nice and tightly rigged, so the wires from Jesus post, to well out along the wings, only sagged slightly, while aloft.

 

Col bought her second hand, so Ron Wheeler had no input into his learning to fly the machine.

 

Old Caboolture was a cow paddick with a rusty, war surplus, igloo hangar, a dunny you could smell from the train line crossing, a couple of hundred yards away and a stack of rusty corrugated iron ready for aerodrome improvements.

 

There was a seven hundred foot, good main strip and a five hundred foot cross strip that was mostly shallow swamp in the height of the rainy season and had a million tenacious thick, high, grass clumps growing on it that played havoc with nose-wheels and I never saw used.

 

Farmer Sampson was the fairy godfather of aircraft owners and allowed us to keep aeroplanes on the property NO CHARGE! He slashed the strips periodically for us too.

 

Owners and close mates needed a key for the lock on the rail crossing into the property. Railway locks in those days, were machinery… manufactured in heavy industrial workshops and the keys weren’t something you misplaced… ya tripped over them.

 

There were only four aircraft on the property then, a Tri-Pacer, Tiger Moth, Luton Minor and either a Cessna172 or the Cunnamulla station owner’s car, one of which was parked in a new corrugated iron lean to, attached to the end of the igloo.

 

The Redcliffe aero club used Old Caboolture as a forced landing strip for commercial trainees but only did a touch and go landing as it was hideously short. We would fly over to Redcliffe to load the Tri-pacer if we wanted to take more than two aboard.

 

The minimum aircraft had to keep clear of houses and weren’t allowed to cross public roads, so Caboolture was adequate to take off, fly ahead and land before coming to grief in the barbed wire fence at the end of the strip. Tall gumtrees on the south side of the strip stopped any turns that way and there wasn’t the room for a turn over the paddock on the north side, it being only a couple of hundred yards wide and potholey.

 

I was first go in the Scout to get some feel for her. Wearing shorts and T shirt and a motorbike helmet I threaded my way through the cables and got a foot on the ground in front of the seat. Dragged my other leg through and was able to sit down.

 

Lap seat belt was the safety equipment. No windshield, dashboard… no instruments … just a lawn mower throttle attached to the triangle side on my left and a stick between my legs. I put my feet up on the bottom of the pyramid when they weren’t needed as brakes.

 

Keith hand swung the prop a couple of times and broom. Lots a smoke for a moment. View through the motorbike helmet a bit foggier than before.

 

I let her warm up and the boys got away (so they could photograph the inaugural trial). There was that delightful thrum some fabric aeroplanes have, drumming through the wings as the engine RPM, exhaust and prop set up their harmonics. The other aeroplane that has that magic sound of numerous notes harmonising is the R1830s on a DC-3. They sing to you.

 

I opened the throttle and moved forward bumping across lumpy grass tufts.

 

The undercarriage legs were one eighth thick, maybe one and a quarter inch wide, spring steel strips with a shaft welded on the end for the golf buggy, plastic wheels.

 

There were only two axes that the aircraft was controlled in, by the stick.

 

Stick forward and back … elevators. Side to side … RUDDER!

 

The tail wheel was responsive to stick input and she turned nicely. I lined up and opened her to three quarter throttle. She accelerated and I was trundling down the strip at about twenty K. and she responded to turn. I pushed the pole forward and the tail came up. And I continued towards the end before closing the throttle and seeing how long the tail could be kept up with elevator.

 

No wind, so I gunned her again with full throttle back down the strip and pushed the pole full forward… nothing.

 

 

I leaned forward as far as I could to move the centre of gravity a tiny bit forward and the tail came up. I accelerated till I got to high speed and lifted her off and let her bounce back down.

 

Keith’s turn.

 

Took the helmet off and wiped her on me shirt to get the oil off and handed her over.

 

Keith stumbled in, looking like a kid playing on a jungle Jim in a playground. Older readers remember THEM… they’re too dangerous for little kiddies now.

 

 

He did some feeling and hops and handed over to Col and we told him what we’d discovered.

 

.My next go was to take her aloft and see how she flew. .

 

Full throttle, lean hard forward and push the pole forward and off. Whoops… she was a bit like a lady passing a shop window. Had a tendency to unexpectedly turn… either way.

 

Didn’t get airborne on the first try, till well past half way because of the long grass on the edge of the strip interfering with the wheels. Got her in the air a couple of feet up and didn’t like the nasty feeling in the seat of me pants as we dawdled along. Lots of lurching.

 

Closed the throttle a bit and she quickly sank to the ground with steady movement of back stick.

 

Keith had a go. Off into the boonies too, so it wasn’t me. She was a bit unforcastable in her direction whims till in the air. We were tightly confined with a barbed wire fence to the north and tall gums to the south.

 

Keith and I got her airborne with uncomfortable sailings left and right. We stayed a foot or two above the ground, as that wasn’t too far to fall down.

 

Reducing power to three quarters had her settle gently onto the tufty runway.

 

 

On our second day I talked my old man into coming for a go. He had thirty seven thousand hours and had started out flying, when Gipsy Moths were the mighty performers of the day for learning on.

 

Being almost seventy he was stiff and groaned a lot as he ]intricated himself into the cockpit.

 

 

With all our gained knowledge passed on to him, he opened the throttle and sedately oozed over towards the barbed wire fence with the rudder jammed opposite to counteract the unexpected turn. Closed the throttle and taxied out of the long grass and had another go.

 

Must have been a magnetic field set up in the Scout, because once again she was attracted to the barbed wire fence.

 

He’d had enough. Turned her around and taxied back to us, turned the engine off, staggered out, tripping over wires, ripped the helmet off, chucked it down in disgust and declared, “Bloody thing’s dangerous” and stomped off to his car and went home.

 

We persisted with flights down the runway, only a foot up till we had her sussed out. Col was given his briefing on his first solo… gun her to get her off the ground and hold her there, then slowly close the throttle applying back stick to keep her up till she can’t fly any more.

 

We’d dispensed with the helmet. Extra WEIGHT and you were enclosed in a foggy bubble. A pair of goggles for the wind in the eyes and your ears were used, to listen to the airflow whistling past. This was a much better indication of speed.

 

Col did his pre-take off check and gunned her Aeroplane gunning… (smooth opening of the throttle… not flooring it like some of our young road knights).

 

Col forgot to push the pole forward straight away and kept straight till he remembered to ease her tail up. Careering along the runway at almost full speed, Col applied back pressure to lift her off. Full back stick and up she went, sudden … looked like a helicopter. Wing dropped a bit and Col got frightened, he was ten feet up and oozing towards the trees. Pushed the pole forward to reduce height and she took on the path of a refrigerator falling out of an upper story window.

 

Bo-ing… Still lots of speed (full throttle)… collision with the ground had all wheels bam down and she had angle of attack and speed.

 

Whoosh, up again to ten feet like a helicopter again.

 

Col got his thoughts together and half closed the throttle. Ten foot drop in about thirty feet forward travel and she alighted in the long grass. Luckily Farmer Sampson was a tidy farmer and didn’t leave fallen timber lying around.

 

Keith and I ran down to Col who was scrambling out of the intact flying machine and started jumping around like he might have squashed a ball or something.

 

It was jubilation. He felt like the rest of us after OUR first solo. He was just a lot more demonstrative and absolutely STOKED.

 

We decided Caboolture was too restrictive, so I asked a mate at Villeneuve with hundreds of flat acres if we could fly at his place. We flew together in the Friendship and were good mates.

 

]He slashed a big wide strip on the flat for us and only Col and I drove up for the big day. Keithy was on duty ready to put out fires and save people at Eagle Farm.

 

To transport the beast, Col had a trailer on which the tied down, dismantled bits were taken to fields. We tied the prop vertical so it didn’t spin freewheeling all the way.

 

We got to me mate’s place and when we stopped he asked, “What happened to the prop?” We looked around and the top half was a foot shorted than the bottom. Nasty jagged edge on the stump like that prop on the Southern Cross replica.

 

We hadn’t noticed the cross bar made from a whacking great gumtree, sitting way up on the tall gate posts. The prop was one inch too high on the trailer.

 

Took three weeks to have another hand crafted prop carved and delivered for three hundred bucks. Thatty was always tied horizontal when on the trailer. On a trailer, the airframe on its wheels with the Jesus post sticking up was waaay above head height.

 

The first fly at Villeneuve was still pretty scary as the strip was on a big bend in the river and the trees along its bank were too high to climb over. We were in a basin of river trees on three sides and the steep slope from the river on the fourth.

 

Turning towards trees for a down wind in a high wing aeroplane wasn’t an option

 

Me mate reckoned we should go to an Ag strip out at Toogoolawa. It was a beauty. An old war time one. He gave me directions how to get there.

 

We went there after I drove out to ask the owner of the property if we could use it. It WAS a beauty. Two long strips in an L shape and country roads on the opposite sides to the strips in the forty or so acre paddock, meant we could sneak right round in a circuit. We could fly just inside the fence line beside the road and wouldn’t be breaking the law .The road would be a forced landing strip if we needed it. We found out later, it was bitumen roads we weren’t to fly over.

 

 

We all had great difficulty with direction control on the ground. My captain wouldn’t give up and hung in there, careering into the long grass, so only the red wings could be seen darting about and suddenly the whole machine appearing, to shoot across the runway into the grass on the other side. The wide spoon drains along the edges, added to the keystone cop quality of the scene with lots of bank angle making her look like she was rolling over

 

We had a sandwich and coffee from the thermos flask and discussed the waywardness of the little bugger on the ground and it suddenly came to us.

 

We were using the Tiger Moth technique of pushing the pole forward at the beginning of takeoff that we’d learned at the beginning of our careers.

 

As we accelerated the elevators raised the tail off the ground and the tail wheel was clear while we sat blanketing the whole rudder which was ineffective till the tail was fairly high. The tail took time to come up because there was plenty of drag from full down elevator. While there was no directional control she was steered by the drag on the wheels as we hit tufts of grass.

 

We held the stick back till we were pretty close to flying speed (wind note in the wires and passing our ears), then smartly raised the tail into the airflow.

 

No more directional problems.

 

NOW we could fly really high … like four feet up.

 

We started discovering many other interestingnesses in the design.

 

Remember learning about flat plates in airflows in theory of flight? Sixteen degrees come to mind?

 

The elevators, or more correctly, the flying tailplane and the rudder (no fin) could move thirty degrees into the airflow and they suddenly were spoilers.

 

We also found it a bit alarming when we tried climbing a bit and she’d descend. More back-stick and more descending.

 

 

We used to get her up to maximum altitude of perhaps fifteen feet so we could make it round the ninety degree turn onto the cross strip.

 

We met a couple of other Scout owners who joined us at Toogoolawah. They were car mechanics with the same company. Young guns with plenty of adventurism. Man did they have some stories of interesting crashes they and another bloke had experienced.

 

The crash champ's most spectacular one was, the day he decided to fly over the heads of the audience who was standing close to a hangar. Champ wasn't aware of his wingspan and managed to collect the corner of the hangar with his wingtip.

 

Strong turning force that. He immediately did a split arse, ninety degree flat turn, smack into the hangar wall.

 

Prop flew to bits and zinged hell west and crooked past the diving spectators and the aeroplane turned into a parachute and gently descended to the ground with the engine now unfettered with the drag of a prop screaming like a Banshee at some unbelievable RPM.

 

They had never learned to fly, so with the approach of the unskilled, did things we were never would have attempted and they got away with it because they didn’t know, you can’t do that!

 

One thing that one didn’t get away with was, when going over a fence you need speed.

 

He was flying along about three feet and climbed over a four foot barbed wire fence and landed up with a nasty scratch down one leg. He was pretty lucky not to have put the prop into the ground as the tail bow snagged the fence.

 

That was when we discovered the progressive stalling characteristic of the Scout, so always dived a bit before the fence, to balloon over it and save the day over the other side by trying not to bam down on the ground and leap back into the air. We continued meeting up at the strip and staggering around at altitudes of two to occasionally ten feet and learning things like don’t try a one eighty turn in any sort of wind.

 

Cart-wheeled her. Dug the wingtip in the ground and got a lot of grass and dirt jammed between the wheel and the rim.

 

She showed us that her strength was the stainless cables. A real aeroplane would have folded up… the Scout just went boing , bounced, danced around the buried wing tip and raised a lot of dust. We decided to give flying up that day.

 

We went to a Fun in the Sun fly-in at Kingaroy. We had a turn at using the runway with minimum aircraft and were all ready to go when there was an engine snag. Couldn’t get full power so she wouldn’t even stagger into the air.

 

We were trying to find out what the problem was, when some cove who was one of the spectators wandering around the aircraft, said to me, “That won’t fly!”

 

Well! We’d flown her plenty of times and what would HE know?

 

I said as much … luckily kindly.

 

His answer was one you read about.

 

“Because I’m Ron Wheeler and I designed and made her.”

 

I became humble and shook his hand and told him how I was very impressed that he’d beaten DOT (The department of transport) who didn’t want minimum aircraft flying.

 

He explained that we didn’t have the wings pulled tight enough together so she wasn’t giving her full lift, with drag coming from the tiny flapping of the trailing edge for one. We said we thought the six inch gap between the sails’ foot was about all they could take. He said, “No they need to be only three inches apart to give the full lift.” Hurts ya hands pulling them that tight I can tell ya.

 

Unfortunately we couldn’t find the fuel fault so I didn’t get to fly her and never did again for some reason.

 

The mechanics went in for attaching floats and I heard they flew in Moreton Bay and did well.

 

I later was given a go in a Mark two. That was the improved version with wing warping to raise a wing rather than the yaw needed to get it up in the original. Never liked that old idea of just rudder for raising a wing. Spins can come of that. That was why we stayed very close to the ground and would have continued doing so with the sails pulled in real tight.

 

The wing warping was another nasty experience. You had a few ounces of pressure in pitch and about five pounds on roll. Hard to turn smoothly.

 

The one I had a go in, also seemed to have the engine pointing down a bit, so when you closed the throttle, the nose went up. No other aeroplane I’ve flown does that and it is quite disconcerting.

 

In all, I’d say flying the Scout was the most exciting and invigorating flying I’ve ever experienced and I’ve had LOTS of great experiences in DC-3s in PNG, Jets in Indonesia and owning a Tri Pacer.

 

You were out in the air … nothing around you for protection. No instruments, so you had to be very conscious of the theory of flight. You titillated her and encouraged her to fly with gentle inputs.

 

No radio, no other aeroplanes to worry about … low flying where sixty two KPH was flat out and ya bum was less than two feet from the dirt scooting by.

 

In our search for performance to get up a hundred feet we even arrived at the frosty strip just as the sun rose, so we were in low density altitude. That got ya nose running, sitting in wind a couple of degrees above zero. We were probably overweight wearin’ leather gloves and two footy jumpers.

 

 

That strip later was gotten a hold of by the SAAA and they named it Watts Bridge. We were the first to fly minimum aircraft there. The only other aircraft that used it back then were crop dusters and a mate when he ran out of options and spotted it in the rain years before in an Auster, or maybe it was a Leopard Moth.

 

Ron Wheeler… we really need to thank him for what we have now. He opened the ANO 95.10 that got us funny things with engines that we can fly without at least a private license.

 

Hang gliders were the only other aerial conveyances one could fly and after seeing one of them doing about seventy knots as it screamed into the treetops with the deflates wings flapping, I decided I was too much of a squib for them. That attitude was reinforced when another airline mate told me about the bones he broke flying his.

 

 

[Coop]

Great read, Sixties, and great photos too. You are right about the hang gliders. I tried that while at Uni in the early 70's. Best effort was 4 minutes of soaring along Maslins Beach. But like you, I was concerned at the ease with which you could break a leg or arm even if flying with due caution and care. I gave it away after a mate of mine was upended (fortunately into a forgiving bush with no injuries) by a nasty gust. He complained bitterly that they (meaning the met office) ought to forecast such things. I'd not gone flying that day because I'd heard the forecast, so I said to him: "Jerome, just what do you think ISOLATED THUNDERSQUALLS means?". Seriously, I don't know if he is still alive...

 

Cheers,

 

Coop