Ken wrote:
Give us a pilot handling report Dave (unless it's all thoroughly documented in the article).
Ken
It is covered reasonably well in the article. They gave us more space than I thought. If I had known there would be 19 pages of article, I would have written more text.
The Lysander can get you, several ways, because the elevator does not have enough authority to control the aircraft at either end of the envelope -- so you aid it by using the trimmable horizontal stabilizer (it's on a jackscrew, like a Cub). This is controlled by a big manual wheel that takes 15+ seconds to wind from one end to the other. So, a go-around, if done too aggressively, could cause you to pitch up way too high. Similarly an engine failure on takeoff could leave you without enough authority to flare for landing unless you mis-trim a bit before that takeoff, in preparation. And on final, you can bury yourself on the back side of the power curve in a hole so deep that an engine failure would leave you without enough altitude to get pitched-down and gliding.
But the biggest factors in ordinary operation are the lousy brakes combined with a free-castoring tailwheel, which makes taxying an art-form, and the requirement to either run the engine every 5 days or go through a VERY messy pre-oil procedure.
For 2016 we plan to install some form of tailwheel steering.
Dave
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