lmritger wrote:
Dan, correlation does not always equal causation, and I wouldn't say this kind of incident would be limited to the FlugWerk aircraft. The Collings P-40B got stuffed up pretty good last year thanks to a ground loop as well, and I seem to recall one or two P-51s running into the same issue. It just draws more attention because of the relative rarity of the type, I think.
Cheers,
Lynn
Lynn,
Rarity of type has nothing to do with my perception; the number of incidents per operational hour of each type does.
Lynn, would you not agree with me that the wide track of the Butcher Bird's landing gear negates comparison with an early P-40 (Spitfire/Buchon/FM-2, etc)? Based on the comparatively-wide dimensions of the landing gear, groundlooping should be a comparatively-rare occurence for the Butcher Bird (Wasn't this the common observation of Jaegerfliegern during WWII?). About half of the operational examples of the type have now suffered a similar incident. Something in the gear's structure/design must be suspect.
Using your FW-190 vs. P-51 premise, the P-51 community would be suffering more like 20-30 groundloops per year...perhaps more (that is--admittedly--a VERY ROUGH estimate concerning operational hours per type).