Deadstick Landing! "Don't try this at home".

1.  "Don't try this at home."
2.  "The sound of wind rushing around the plane is awing, blood-rushing, soothing, clearing, empowering, pulsing, privilege."

And now, on with the blog post....

The conversation at coffee break this morning ranged through politics, Cessna's profit and delivery woes, and eventually wandered towards aircraft landing speeds.  Sitting next to me was a seasoned Cessna 182/185 glider towplane pilot, and he mused how he had to keep his approach speed up on final, so that he could execute a successful flare into our grass strip.

We talked about how the Belite would do:  was I able to execute landings with the engine at idle?

Why yes, I thought I could land with the powerplant at idle.

Why not give it a try right then?

It so happened that I had our gorgeous 'Harley' orange and black Belite 254 ready for flight; we'd recently completed some upgrades to it, and it was sitting, begging to be flown.  I had test flown it earlier in the day, and I knew that it was ready to fly some more.  Did I say it's gorgeous?  Did I mention that it flies beautifully?

 

Why not?  Let's do this.  I hopped in, hit the electric starter, and the single cylinder CRE MZ-34 soon came to life.  (Nothing beats an electric starter on an airplane.)

After a brief warmup, I took off into the light south breeze, climbing at about 200 fpm.  (Amazing.  I weigh 200+; the engine is just a miserly little 28hp 'single lung', the prop isn't quite optimum... and yet the performance is great.)  I swung the obedient airplane around the pattern, turned base to final, and retarded the throttle to idle.  With the engine at idle, the plane easily floated over the runway, and I landed without any difficulty whatsoever.  After touching down, I hit the power, went around, and did it again and again.  The Belite lands effortlessly with the engine at idle.  There are zero issues with flare authority, even with the engine at idle.

At this point, you're probably wondering why I would call that a "Deadstick Landing".  Well, I wouldn't.  It wasn't a deadstick landing.  But I had a sly thought....   why not try a true deadstick landing? 

And so the next time I came around and turned final, I verified to myself that the runway was assured.  And I reached over and turned off the ignition.  The engine went from idle to off... and the windmilling prop stopped.  I was floating over the runway a moment later, and flared to a beautiful, light landing with no noise other than the wind over the wings and the roll of the wheels.

I told Gene to grab the camera.  I wanted to do that again!

I fired the engine back up, took off, and did a couple more true deadstick landings, with Gene recording the sequence.  There's some great pics!  Note the stopped position of the prop in each photo...

 

Here's some final comments.

1)  This plane is for sale!
2)  The cowling was not installed.
3)  The sound of wind rushing around the plane is awing, blood-rushing, soothing, clearing, empowering, pulsing, privilege.

Shortly after liftoff, the plane stalled, and then glanced hard into the runway...

Let's all learn from this: a Belite trike had a landing accident yesterday. 

My first thought after it occurred was that I would not take pictures; nor would I blog.  That was an expected first reaction; but incorrect.  I saw it happen; I can still see the whole sequence of events like a motion picture, in my mind.  With permission of the customer pilot, I am now blogging on what happened.

No one was hurt; and the plane was not badly damaged.  And I'm weirdly pleased with how the nosewheel took the blow and then failed in a manner which protected the pilot and the remainder of the airframe.

This particular airplane was equipped with the very strong Compact Radial Engine MZ-201.  I have flown this particular plane many times; we'd sold it and upgraded several features of the plane, including the engine.  We'd also added an inexpensive Second Chantz ballistic chute.

A transitioning pilot was practicing a takeoff roll in the bright yellow Belite.  Although this particular roll was to achieve a height of no more than about 6 inches; it didn't work out that way.  The pilot had been practicing taxiing and had demonstrated proficiency in low and high speed taxiing -- it was time to focus on the transitional takeoff attitude.   

I observed the plane rotate; the pilot quickly leveled the wings.  But by then, the plane was already quite a few feet off the ground and climbing...

In order to cancel the climb, the transitioning pilot cut power, and then the plane angled back towards the ground at a descent angle of perhaps 7 or 8 degrees.  This was probably an inadvertent departure stall.  The plane struck the runway very hard on the nosewheel, which folded under the airplane.  The plane skidded to a stop, briefly tipped sidewise and up onto the left wing, then settled back to the ground.  The main gear were still intact.  It was as if the plane was kneeling forward on its broken nosewheel.

By the time I had made it over to the plane, my customer friend had climbed out of the plane.  He was absolutely fine:  not a scratch, not a bruise.  He was even in amazingly good spirits, all things considered.

We rolled the plane back to the hangar. 

Here's an inventory of the damage:


Carbon Fiber firewall:  undamaged
Left Wing front spar (it hit the ground):  undamaged  (the spars are open and we can easily inspect on inside)
Engine:  undamaged (sheared blades and PSRU provide really good protection to engine)
Propeller blades:  destroyed
Propeller hub:  undamaged
Nosewheel landing gear:  folded under and destroyed
Nosewheel aluminum / delrin assembly and wheel:  no damage whatsoever, even after scraping along ground, but jammed against muffler
Left wing carbon fiber spar, which struck ground:  absolutely no damage
Left / Right nosewheel landing gear braces:  folded under, destroyed
Fuselage front cross member:  1/2 inch bend
Instrument panel bottom cross member (receives nose wheel landing gear strut)  1/4 inch bend

Here's a closeup of the bottom damage:

Nosewheel Destroyed on Belite Trike

 Here's the same thing, after removal of the nosewheel.  This clearly shows how the nosewheel strut has absorbed the blow, along with the nosewheel cross brace struts:

Bent nosewheel strut on Belite, with wheel removed

Look at the above picture very closely, one more time.  You can see the following:

a) bent nosewheel strut
b) bent cross braces
c) very slight bend in fuselage cross brace member (pushed back about 1/2 inch)

Just to make it crystal clear, here's a photo which shows the fuselage cross brace member:

Here's the basic process to repair the airplane:

1. Unbolt the nosewheel strut from the plane.  It has a bolt in the fuselage cross brace member (bolt hole visible in above pic) and below the instrument panel (not pictured).  Then remove.

2.  Remove fabric from front bottom of airplane.

3.  Cut out bent cross tube.

4.  Cut and weld in replacement section and nosewheel strut receiver.  Use doublers as necessary.

5.  Repair fabric.

6.  Insert new landing gear strut and cross braces.

7.  Replace propeller blades.
  
8.  Inspect & fly.

How did the nosewheel strut perform under this failure condition? 
Everything worked as planned. 

a) The landing gear did not 'jam' up and into the cabin.  Both the lower fuselage cross member and the top receiver cross member exhibited backwards force, but very little bending.

b)  The landing gear did fold underneath and backwards.   In fact, a careful inspection of the nosewheel strut shows that it had gross bending failure at two places, and a minor bend at a third place.  These bends each absorbed substantial energy from the impact, shielding the pilot.

c)  After the landing gear folded under the plane, the plane then skidded along the ground.  The plane did not flip over.

d)  The main landing gear were not damaged or affected.

e)  The 4130 ChromAloy fuselage provided 100% protection to the pilot.  (The 3 point safety harness was an essential piece of his protection.  His torso could not roll forward.)

f)  The damage is easy to repair.  We already had replacement parts in stock.

This happened yesterday.  With the exception of the propeller replacement, the bird should be ready to fly again tomorrow.

Wichita's Aircraft Industry: Time for Reinvention?

In today's Wichita Eagle (Sunday, 10/10/10), a letter to the editor, from me:

Sedgwick Country Commissioner Gwen Welshimer presented a strong case for reinvention of Wichita's aviation core at last week's commission meeting.

In a presentation designed to help Wichita understand that it remains at a tipping point for its aviation future, she articulated the need to pay attention to developments in aviation — specifically in the light sport and ultralight niches — so that Wichita may continue to call itself the "Air Capital of the World" for decades to come.

It is disheartening that appropriate investments in the grassroots of our aviation industry were not made years ago. Instead, innovative small aircraft designs have been announced in many other cities and from many other countries. (Europe has become a hot spot for aviation technology development.) Some of these innovations are producing orders along with jobs.

All of these developments are in harmony with what this city already builds and sells — the world's greatest general aviation airplanes, jets and airliner components. But the smaller, less-expensive products rebound first from difficult economic times, and they are lacking from our community's collective product offerings (with the exception of Cessna Aircraft's Skycatcher and Belite Aircraft's "254" and derivatives).

Welshimer should find support from our community for the development of programs that will enhance the ability of our entrepreneurial private sector to create new aviation products and resulting jobs. Will she?

JAMES WIEBE
CEO
Belite Aircraft
Wichita


Read more: http://www.kansas.com/2010/10/10/1535343/letters-to-the-editor-on-incentives.html#ixzz120aM0WKV

Wichita Eagle quotes James on aviation incubator idea

The Wichita Eagle wrote an article about Gwen Welshimer's propsoal for an aviation technology incubator in Wichita, KS.  A couple of her ideas were pretty far out there, but most were based on realistic aviation products that are happening now. 

The Eagle's article was slanted towards the stuff that was 'far out', and slanted in a negative way. 

But they finished the article with a very nice quote from me.

You can read the Eagle's article here.