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From: aero_richie <littlegrandhome@yahoo.com>
To: Titanaircraft@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2009 12:09:33 PM
Subject: [Titanaircraft] Re: tail wheel
I have had an experience with the tailwheel I have not seen posted before I thought I might share. This summer I landed at a grass strip and contacted my wheel on landing with a small knoll in the runway. I looked at the wheel after shutting down and it appeared to be well attached.
I took off from the strip and climbed out to 2000 feet agl and started to level out. I reached down and turned my trim only to find that I could not trim my nose to a level attitude. I also found that I could not push my stick any further forward than a slight climb at normal rpms. Houston, we have a problem.
The good news is that the airplane was stable, maintaining altitude, and was still flying. I tried slowing down and applying flaps but my airspeed dropped drastically as the nose came up and I was unable to apply forward stick to counter it. I set my rpm around 3800 rpm (912S) and took out the flaps which raised my speed to about 75 mph. With a slight sink rate, and the aid of a moderate slip, I was able to get back to my home airport and down just above our grass runway. I lowered the rpm as I got into ground effect and snapped out of the sideslip just before the mains touched down. I have never been so glad to be back on the ground as at that moment.
Upon inspection I found that the impact to the tailwheel had bent the boom tube upwards just enough to allow the stabilator bellcrank to catch on the rear edge of the tube. The result is that the stabilator was not able to rotate past a slight climb attitude.
I bent the boomtube back to shape and then got my grinder out and went to work on the bellcrank, if that is in fact what the part is called. I ground off the square corner on the bottom leading edge to make a radius matching the unused hole located there. Now if the tube ever gets bent again I will at least be able to get a moderate amount of forward stick to get back on the ground.
You might want to take a look at your stabilator control and see if you could have the same setup. I own a 2000 Titan II D model so they may have changed the shape of the bellcrank since then. Take Care.
Richie Mattson and "Aunt Sally"
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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