Noisy, rattling nose wheel .... what’s normal?

[Markdun]

Hey Spacey, that’s really true. I was just telling Glen the other day that I did a prop strike after landing a Minimax on car track at a mate’s property near Cootsmundra.  Thought I’d wash off a bit of speed (I’m really just taxing so just jogging speed) by running one of the wheels into the longish grass and she went up, just clipped the prop on the dirt, and then back down on the tail wheel... several hours later a broken crankshaft (1/2 VW conversion)..

 

 Brendan, that’s showing a good deal of confidence that you are always going to have a good place to land. Good attitude to have. Just don’t assume it’s the aerodrome in your flight plan. I have a rule I only fly over terrain I feel comfortable I can do an OK landing, ie. one I can walk away from, as opposed to a ‘good landing’ which is defined as one that the plane can fly again.

 

 The other big negative of tailwheelers is that any maintenance in the cockpit is s royal pain... drop a screw or washer and it rolls down into the tail with the empty beer cans. Everything is on a slope, You need a special hatch down the back to clean out all that stuff every 5 years or so.... amazing what you find.... spectacles, old paper ERSA, handheld gps, spanners, sockets & other tools you accused your sons of nicking, toilet paper etc c etc.  it’s like discovering that 5th dimension where all those things you had a minute ago but can’t find now go; that mountain of lost socks, nuts and screws, mobile phone chargers that defied the first law of thermodynamics and just disappeared.

[BrendAn]

once i actually get my certificate i will only be buzzing around yltv local area for a couple of years before i go for my cross country endorsement. i will be happy just to be able to go for a fly when i have time. the weather stopped my training the last 3 months. hopefully our gippsland weather will improve now although september can be pretty windy.

[BrendAn]

Just now, BrendAn said:

once i actually get my certificate i will only be buzzing around yltv local area for a couple of years before i go for my cross country endorsement. i will be happy just to be able to go for a fly when i have time. the weather stopped my training the last 3 months. hopefully our gippsland weather will improve now although september can be pretty windy.

sorry for going off topic.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Most of my hours have been in tail-wheel gliders. But the reason for nose-wheels is that on landing, the bump of the mains touching down REMOVES angle of attack a bit and so makes a bounce less likely. This is true even though you are keeping the nose wheel off the ground till you have slowed so much that it falls down anyway. It is to do with the mains being behind the c of g not before it.

The exact reverse happens with a tail-wheel plane.  This is why tail-draggers are more expensive to insure.

So, without airbrakes, a nose-wheel plane is much easier to land. This is so pronounced that the extra drag of the nose-wheel is forgiven.

 

[RFguy]

Bruce , your point about killing the AoA is interesting. done much reading about landing Canards / how Canards fly ?

Like the Dragonfly ?, Quickie etc ?  I have, .  Now they are an interesting beast.

[IBob]

So Bruce, what you're saying is that if the Real Men aren't in the ditch, or proceeding sideways then backwards, they are likely to be making multiple landings for every takeoff???  

[spacesailor]

" if I get my Certificate " .

I Wil learn on that ' nose  ' wheel, Then convert my H B to a tail dragger .

And after '  waltzing ' down the runway a few times .

I will convert my T D back to a ' line dancer '. LoL.

spacesailor

 

[BrendAn]

 

[BrendAn]

4 hours ago, BrendAn said:

 

Thought it was well done.  Got it off the Facebook Jabiru site.

[turboplanner]

There have always been people like this; don't understand engineering, can't handle progress.

 

In the 1950s it was people who couldn't handle seat belts: "they'll kill more than they save becaise you can't jump out if you're going to have an accident." "If you run off the road into a dam, they'll drown you." This extended into the 1960s when a prominent race driver, an outspoken anti seat belt campaigner refused to wear a racing harness for all those reasons. He rolled his car during a race, it spat him out on the road, rolled over him and killed him. Victoria's road toll dropped by 52% after the seat belt legislation came in.

 

Then there was power steering; "for sissies", "wrong because you can't feel the road", "you don't know what the car's doing", if you got out of shape with the 5 turns lock to lock manual steering, you had a very hard job executing a steer into the skid. With power steering we could handle 3 turns lock to lock, and then variable ratio. Another incremental drop in the road toll.