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Time still
flies rapidly but these days together with Seagull. We have made ten flights by now and
it’s time to go back to the factory for completion of some left out
items. Our strategy was to get in the air as soon as possible to find out
whether the flying should reveal other areas for modifications. Then during the last flight, firstly one
then the other of the AFT cabin doors blew open, cracked and pieces of them
hit the prop that became unbalanced. This happened in the landing circuit and
the landing was completed without further problems. Let’s talk about our experience
from the ten flights so far. In general the Seagull flies wonderful.
The ailerons are crisp and the stick forces exactly where we want them. Also
the elevator is just perfect while the fin is subject to infrequent flow
separations that come and go. More pronounced under high power and almost non
existing at low engine RPM. After some filmed flights with yarn tufts
together with vortex generator experiments the problem have been reduced and
we feel confident that we are close to have it completely fixed. People looking at the Seagull always say
it looks streamlined and slippery and that was confirmed already on the first
flight. Some preliminary performance tests verified by GPS, give us numbers
we really want to investigate further before telling about it. What can be
said is that the performance figures seems to go well along with the
calculations, if we look at the curve for the 100 hp Rotax! It’s just
that we have a 85 hp Jabiru! We will
certainly come back on this subject further down the flight testing. Another experience is that this airplane
is surprisingly easy to land. I feel for saying that of all 70 types of
airplanes I have flown all categories, this is one of the most easy to handle
during landing. Reminds much of a sail plane. Staffan has made four of the
flights and he agrees. The main task right now is to finalize
the landing gear retraction. So far the wheels have been locked in a down
position. The work is somewhat disturbed by our move into a bigger facility
that has to be finalized by the end of this month. We have not gotten the
proper revs out the Jabiru after talking to the manufacturer we found that we
used a prop with too coarse pitch. Therefore we ordered a new prop some three
weeks ago. How about the timing? Thanks for your interest, Lage |