Tail parachute questions
Chris Reed
explore the use of the tail parachute. However, the manual gives very little
detail. Any advice on the following please:
1. Is the tailchute for approach control, or for reducing the landing float
only? A Nimbus 2 owner tells me that his tailchute effectively stops the
aircraft flying, and he would only use it after the roundout.
2. I presume I need extra speed to deploy the tailchute - how much extra?
This is fairly critical, as I don't want to stall the first time I pull the
lever!
3. Any other suggestions/points to watch?
F.L. Whiteley
"Chris Reed" <chris...@NOSPAM.qmul.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3eb16...@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com...
+5knots to deploy
Steeper descent angle
Deploy on downwind as one of three things will happen, 1) it will deploy
normally, 2) it will not deploy properly, or 3) it will fall off. If 1),
then adjust your speed and approach more like Grob than Open Cirrus. If you
wait until final and 2) or 3) happen, then you land like Cirrus but will not
be in the proper position.
If the intent is to use the tail chute to assist your landing approach into
small fields, then you must be ready for any of the above and adjust as
necessary as early as possible. The place to do this is the downwind leg.
With practice you will find them quite reasonable. You will learn to pack
and check them carefully. If you tie the Cirrus out at night and there's
rain or heavy dew, you might expect the chute to deploy as a frozen block.
If you will be using it regularly, you might repack it before each flight.
It doesn't take long and is reassuring.
Frank Whiteley
Robert Danewid
made a number of outlandings with the tail chute.
If you deploy it on down wind the propability to get in to deep shit is
high! You can not even imagine the sink rate. From experience in our
club (we had one accident because of the tail chute deployed at
altitude), we found that, as was also written, the thing to do is to
deploy the chute just after passing the last obstacle on final and
simultanuosly put down the nose in order to have energy enough to round
out. In this way you could make a really short landing.
But ber careful we had a bad accident with a Libelle 301 where the pilot
deployed the chute to early, it fell down and hooked in the tress before
deploying, make down the glider to go almsot vertical into teh woods.
We had the Cirrus in my club for 4 years. We used the chute quite
extensively and were always very, very careful when packing it. It never
ever failed to deploy.
At that time I was young and landed in small fields that I would not
even consider as an alternative today! The tail chute was great!
Robert
Rod
not. If the chute is anywhere as effective as my 301's tail chute you are
likely to find yourself on the ground very quickly - regardless of the speed
used.
Using a high final I've deployed my chute a few times. The first try was
about 200 meters above ground, and I almost did not make the airport
(someone stole my chute, too!) from less than 500 meters from the threshold.
Other attempts have been successful, but these were done with a higher speed
and much closer to the runway / landing site.
Rod
Russowens
H301 Libelle over the last 35 years that I've been flying it.
I have never had a chute failure in more than 60 uses of the chute.. But having
said that, the chute provides SO much drag, that if you ever rely on it and it
fails, you are now in really bad shape. I would never try to guess exactly when
it will open. Sometimes the chute opens immediately. Sometimes it takes ten
seconds to fully open. While you are over the trees on final is not to time to
find out if it will open and how long it will take.
What works best for me is to open the chute on a VERY close downwind leg. If it
opens, then you just do a very close base leg and a short final. The sailplane
comes down extremely steeply with the chute deployed. If you want to increase
your descent angle, just increase the speed a little and the descent angle
increases sharply. Any excess speed dissapates almost immediately by raising
the nose slightly. Plan to touch down very shortly after starting your landing
flare as your airspeed will dissapate very quickly once you raise the gliders
nose in the flare.
If the chute fails to open, then you can extend your downwind leg and fly and
fly a more normal pattern.
Learning to use the chute has been a fun challenge. , The chute should not be
used to land in a short field without prior developement of the skills required
to do it well. This takes practice. Accept the challenge, but be aware that the
descent angle with the chute open is very dramatic.
Needless to say, make sure your landing gear is down BEFORE you deploy the
chute. You will go from pattern altitude to the ground in about 30 seconds.
Russ Owens
H-301b Libelle 00
ASH-26E 00E
delta...@mindspring.com
tear on the tailcone/chute assembly?
David Stevenson
Doug Haluza
little high, and on base leg ask the passenger up front "how's this
look." The answer is always "too high!". Then when about 1000' above
the ground and 2000' from the threshold, with full flaps already on, I
pop the chute, pull full brakes, point the nose at the ground and say,
"gee, I hope we make it!" That's really the "E" ticket ride.
A few things to keep in mind if you do this is that you need enough
runway ahead to land if the chute doesn't open. You also have to be
ready if it doesn't open for a delayed opening. I only had the chute
fail to deploy once, and since have learned to pack it with the heavy
metal yoke as far aft as possible to prevent this.
The other thing you need to do is keep the speed up a little, and make
a very precise and pronounced round out. If you try to stretch the
glide with the chute out, you won't have enough airspeed to get the
nose up without stalling.
What you will note when you pull the lever is that there is no
pronounced pop on opening--that's typical for a ribbonn chute. But you
will have to point the nose down to maintain airspeed. You should do
this a few times so you can immediately identfy an accidental
deployment, should you experience one.
What I also noticed is that with full flap, full spoiler and chute is
that you can point the nose down very steeply, and the speed won't
increase very much. In this high drag configuration, the flight
characteristics are more like a dive bomber than a glider. You can
pretty much point the nose at the threshold, and that's where you'll
round out. I don't know how effective the spoilers are on the open
cirrus, but they are good enough on the Janus that the chute is not
needed.
"F.L. Whiteley" <gre...@greeleynet.com> wrote in message news:<3eb169a8$0$53000$7586...@news.frii.net>...
Burt Compton
Cirrus, e-mail me and I'll attach it.
My main points:
1.) A drag chute is aptly named - it is pure unvariable drag. Drag chute and
airbrakes are way too much. Close airbrakes and wait for the chute to deploy,
you'll feel it as a big rubber band of pure drag. Keep the nose pitched down
a bit and then either use a bit of airbrakes or jettision the chute before
dragging it along the runway. The big problem here is that if you let go of
the airbrake handle to operate the drag chute knob, the airbrakes may come full
open and you'll be wishing for a third hand!
My system is to set up on final with the runway just under the nose, all
obstacles cleared. Let go of the airbrakes - they come full open - pull aft on
the drag chute knob (not the trim!) and then grab the airbrake handle quickly
and shut them full closed. Wait for the big pull of the drag chute - if it
fails to deploy within a few seconds you are ready to extend airbrakes to
complete the landing.
2.) Always know how the deploy / jettison knob works and in which direction.
On the Open Cirrus it is close to the trim knob and somewhat out of your range
of vision while on short final. Tugging on the trim knob to deploy or
jettision the drag chute may be the the cause of a land short accident with
drag chute deployed and unable to jettison.
Using a drag chute can result in very short, low energy landings with practice,
but if you don't think it through, you'll drop in hard!
Burt Compton Open Cirrus # 33
Marfa Gliders, west Texas
www.FLYGLIDERS.com
F.L. Whiteley
"F.L. Whiteley" <gre...@greeleynet.com> wrote in message
news:3eb169a8$0$53000$7586...@news.frii.net...
>
> news:3eb16...@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com...
> > I've just acquired an Open Cirrus, and have enough time in it to want to
> > explore the use of the tail parachute. However, the manual gives very
> little
> > detail. Any advice on the following please:
> >
> > 1. Is the tailchute for approach control, or for reducing the landing
> float
> > only? A Nimbus 2 owner tells me that his tailchute effectively stops the
> > aircraft flying, and he would only use it after the roundout.
> >
> > 2. I presume I need extra speed to deploy the tailchute - how much
extra?
> > This is fairly critical, as I don't want to stall the first time I pull
> the
> > lever!
> >
> > 3. Any other suggestions/points to watch?
> >
> Approach control
> +5knots to deploy
Minimum, 10 or 15 won't hurt. Keep in mind, that SHK, Kestrel19, and maybe
even the Open Cirrus (my tail chuted gliders) may fly past the airfield with
full airbrake and 65kts and no chute.
> Steeper descent angle
>
It's not the same glider with the tail chute. Think K-8 or Swallow. You
don't fly the same pattern with those.
> Deploy on downwind as one of three things will happen, 1) it will deploy
> normally, 2) it will not deploy properly, or 3) it will fall off. If 1),
> then adjust your speed and approach more like Grob than Open Cirrus. If
you
> wait until final and 2) or 3) happen, then you land like Cirrus but will
not
> be in the proper position.
>
Not at the beginning of downwind, but opposite the touchdown point or just
before base, with plenty of height. You need to know if it's working before
committing. This was suggested to me as the proper procedure several years
ago since we didn't have a tail chute equipped two seater for training.
That being said, I guess I'd have to say if you can't fly this pattern with
it deployed, you maybe shouldn't be using it. Shouldn't need it on a long
runway in any event. Using it on final is not the place to enter the
discovery phase as you are in the committed phase. The SHK and Open Cirrus
come down fine and land like a K-8 with a little spoiler. It's redundant in
the Kestrel 19 with those big landing flaps, unless, as in one case when the
knob at the end of the landing flap handle came adrift and the rest
disappeared through the panel as the flaps dumped. The pilot pulled the
chute in this case to keep from disappearing through the hedge and trees at
the opposite end of the airfield. Another time he pulled it, the chute fell
off and it took quite some time to find it. They aren't cheap. He never
used it again.
> If the intent is to use the tail chute to assist your landing approach
into
> small fields, then you must be ready for any of the above and adjust as
> necessary as early as possible. The place to do this is the downwind leg.
> With practice you will find them quite reasonable. You will learn to pack
> and check them carefully. If you tie the Cirrus out at night and there's
> rain or heavy dew, you might expect the chute to deploy as a frozen block.
> If you will be using it regularly, you might repack it before each flight.
> It doesn't take long and is reassuring.
>
I have found the chute both wringing wet and frozen on the Open Cirrus. I
suspect it would not have deployed in the frozen state.
Never flown an H301, but a good sized chute would seem to be extremely
powerful in such a light glider. I think the SHK, Open Cirrus, and Kestrel
chutes were all similar in size, if not identical.
Frank Whiteley
Wallace Berry
I use my tailchute frequently in my 301 Libelle. I have never been in a
position where I HAD to have it, just times when it provided an extra
option and times when I just wanted to show it off.
Care and feeding of tailchutes should be pretty much like any other
parachute. Proper storage and inspection are important. The location of
the packed tailchute pretty much guarantees that it will get wet if the
glider gets wet. Anytime I suspect that the chute might have gotten
damp, I open it up and let it air out.
Take some care in packing the chute and it will work reliably. The main
reason for failure to deploy properly is tangled lines. For some reason,
tailchute lines will braid themselves into tangles of hyperGordian
dimensions. Be very careful not to tangle up the lines when the chute is
out of the glider.
Here's how land with the chute: Deploy the chute while on a high,
close-in downwind or base leg. If the chute comes out in a wad and
doesn't open, you should be high enough to easily widen your pattern or
even fly another circuit to lose height. HOWEVER, a chute that didn't
open fully may open up unexpectedly, so be prepared to jettison it. I
have had my chute fail to deploy fully once. I was at 1500 agl and just
went round the landing pattern again.
It is a bad idea wait to deploy the chute on final unless you are VERY
high. Like, high enough to fly around the pattern again.
Practice slips in case you need to get down short and the tailchute is
unavailable or maybe you are just a bit too low to be comfortable
deploying the chute.
Deploying my tailchute makes my Libelle feel like it is on rails. The
glider becomes very stable in yaw. It is quite comfortable to fly that
way as long as the nose is kept well down.
VERY IMPORTANT SAFETY CONCERN:
Inadvertent deployment of the tailchute:
Be very aware that an inadvertent tailchute deployment early in tow may
very well dump the glider and towplane in the trees.
I had my chute deploy inadvertently in a thermal once. Luckily, I was
close enough to the airfield to drag the thing home and not have to
jettison it. This was due to my having accidentally pulled on the deploy
lanyard while pulling out the instrument panel. I neglected to check the
security of the tailchute cover in my preflight inspection. Now, I
always check the tailchute cone before launching. I am not comfortable
considering what might have happened had the chute deployed during tow.
I probably wouldn't have recognized what was happening.
One last thing: The tailchute adds weight behind the hinge line of the
rudder. This is weight that is not balanced ahead of the hinge. So, with
the tailchute in place, you have a control surface that is not "mass
balanced". In other words, the tailchute increases the potential flutter
risk. I have flown my 301 as fast as 120 mph without and sign of
flutter, but other 301 drivers have reported it and some won't fly with
the chute at all.
Wallace Berry
delta...@mindspring.com wrote:
Hi Dave,
I let mine tailchute drag. Doesn't seem to cause much wear on the chute
or tailcone, even on pavement. The chute seems to say inflated and
doesn't drag much until the glider is very slow.
Oh, and Dave, please consider a Franklin Primary as your mount for
Sports Class next year. I don't care if you beat me on handicap, but it
sure would be nice not to have you kicking my rear on raw speed for a
change...
Martin Gregorie
large corn field last summer and heard them muttering about the high
replacement cost, here's an answer to the question that hasn't been
asked yet:
What is an easy way to find the jettisoned chute on the ground?
The answer comes from Free Flight model flying: we use small animal
tracking transmitters in the models. These weigh anywhere from 6 grams
upwards (depending mainly on the battery size) and have a ground range
of anything up to a kilometer (5/8 mile). Cost is around $US 80 for
the transmitter. Some UK model fliers use a relatively big battery
(CR1323A lithium cell, like a half height AA cell weighting 20 g),
solder it to the transmitter so its always on, and replace it once a
year.
Receivers can be anything from a cheap Radio shack scanner to the
special purpose receivers fitted with a Yagi directional antennae sold
by the tracker manufacturers. Receivers with rubber duck antennae are
also directional if you use body shielding and signal strength as
direction indicators. In other words, you can pay anything from $100
to $600 for a receiver, though my guess would be that a reasonable
scanner would do the job.
If I was a Libelle owner I'd certainly fit a big battery tracker in
the removable rudder fairing and change the battery as part of the
annual inspection.
Even a top of the range Biotrack system costs about half the
replacement cost of a Libelle drag chute and rudder fairing, so I
reckon doing this is money well spent.
Sources:
Biotrack in the UK (and probably Europe as well).
http://www.biotrack.co.uk/ tell them you want the same tracker that
Free Flight model fliers use and they'll know exactly what you need.
Walston in the USA: sorry, no web reference: look at a good model
flying or rocketry mag (like Model Aviation) and you should find a
Walston ad.
Vin Morgan in Australia and NZ. http://www.aeromodel.com/TM/E18556T7
HTH
Martin
--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :
Philip Plane
Initially I was nervous about it because of all the reasons that have
been mentioned here. But I found that it was no big deal when used
correctly. In my case I found correctly to be:
Get your airspeed nailed before popping the chute. If you're slow,
you're in trouble. I used the chute in still or low wind and popped
it at 55 knots.
Carry your speed all the way to the ground. If you raise the nose
you're in trouble.
Position yourself for a high final, such that full brake and full sideslip
would be required. Pop the chute. Nose down a _little_ to keep your speed.
Stay calm. Flare positively.
Always air and repack the chute before use.
Practise on an airfield with lots of room. Especially lots of room to
undershoot. My first flight involved flying base along the fence, turning
finals at 5-600 ft and being really surprised at how little ground
I covered.
Once you get comfortable with it a tail chute is wonderful entertainment
that you can use to dazzle the owners of less well equipped gliders.
--
Philip Plane _____ phi...@xinqu.net
|
---------------( )---------------
Glider pilots have no visible means of support
Chris Rowland
This won't be a popular opinion but...
I would take the chute off, throw it away and tape the fairing back
on.
My observations of tail chutes are that they can fail to deploy,
deploy and fall off, or - worst of all - deploy and not jettison. Many
years ago I was at a glider repairers and he had two open cirruses
that had both used the tail chute, had it fail to jettison, and
undershot into corn fields.
They're good for impressing the natives but that's all.
When the BGA got a Janus one of the safety features was no tail chute.
All IMHO of course.
Chris.
Alex Upchurch
news:slrnbb66q7...@nessie.xinqu.net...
>
> Once you get comfortable with it a tail chute is wonderful entertainment
> that you can use to dazzle the owners of less well equipped gliders.
>
flaps, with the added benefit that you can modulate the drag.
Alex. :-)
Staffan Ek
A little more than a year ago I bought a 301 Libelle with tail chute.
My method is to fly totally normal pattern and use the S-H airbrakes
on final. I have the final speed a little higher than I would without
using the chute, about 100 km/h (55 kts) and add extra margins for
wind and turbulence etc (like we always do). After clearing the last
obstacle or, if there are no obsatcles, at a little less than tree top
altitude I deploy the chute. Two things can happen:
1) The chute deploys and I keep the speed until close to the ground
where I flare. This results in a very short low energy landing. I have
to use the airbrakes the way Burt Compton describes in his post. It
can take some time before it is deployed but it will always help to do
an accurate landing.
2) The chute does not deploy (so far it hasen't happened). Well, since
I have done a normal final to this point, I will land on the same
field. My extra speed will make the flare a little longer, maybe
overshoot the touch down with 50-100 meters. This can happen in most
gliders with inadequate airbrakes (std Cirrus, Std Libelle and so on).
I really don't understand the method to use the chute on downwind.
With my normal pattern, about 150 meters (500 ft) when I am opposite
to the touchdown point, I can't see how I can do a 180 and final
without hitting the ground with the chute deployed - even if I do a
close downwind.
I practised to use the chute by first doing a final on which I was on
my way to severely overshoot. The intended landing spot was way below
the nose and I deployed. Even if I thought I know what was coming I
was really amazed (and thrilled) by how steep the glide angle became.
I then "normalized" my final by moving down the altitude of the
deployment. I had a few hundred meters of landable ground minus to the
intended touchdown in case I misjudged (and plenty of runway ahead of
it).
If I would be able to make a choice I would prefare the air brakes
from an LS4 or something and get rid of the tail chute. But when the
airbrakes are the way they are I am glad that I have the chute and
have trained in how to use it.
Staffan
Sweden
"Chris Reed" <chris...@NOSPAM.qmul.ac.uk> wrote in message news:<3eb16...@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com>...
F.L. Whiteley
"Chris Rowland" <chris....@dsl.pipex.spam.com> wrote in message
news:0k67bvctn3gs4urdf...@4ax.com...
ASW-12 is probably the only glider that really needs one, or the second
Schuemann mod chute.
Frank Whiteley
Bruce Hoult
staff...@hem-pc.bip.net (Staffan Ek) wrote:
> A little more than a year ago I bought a 301 Libelle with tail chute.
> If I would be able to make a choice I would prefare the air brakes
> from an LS4 or something and get rid of the tail chute. But when the
> airbrakes are the way they are I am glad that I have the chute and
> have trained in how to use it.
How are your side-slipping skills? The Std Libelle comes down really
nicely in a slip.
-- Bruce
Bob Salvo
>This is fairly critical, as I don't want to stall the first time I pull the
>lever!
I flew an H301B for 12 years, and never had a chute failure. I always used it
for off fielding landings, to keep them short. I would set up a normal pattern
using spoilers. Then, as I crossed the threshold (the treeline) at a normal
airspeed, the spoilers were closed, the chute was deployed, while the nose was
simultaneously pitched over to maintain the airspeed. The spoilers were
immediately opened and modulated until touchdown. Made great short field
landings. Even shorter landings can be made with the drag chute, if the
landing gear remains retracted.
RS
Eric Greenwell
br...@hoult.org says...
It's nice to be able to do that, but a side-slip is feeble compared to
a deployed tail chute in a H301. I used mine much as described by
Stafan, practicing deploying just as I flared. I considered it the as
the last resort for saving a botched off-field landing. The one time I
really botched an off-field landing, it performed beautifully and
probably saved me a lot of damage. Of course, if the 301 had good
brakes, I wouldn't have been in that situation in the first place (or
if I'd done a better job in the pattern).
--
!Replace DECIMAL.POINT in my e-mail address with just a . to reply
directly
Eric Greenwell
Richland, WA (USA)
Robert Ehrlich
> ...
> If I was a Libelle owner I'd certainly fit a big battery tracker in
> the removable rudder fairing and change the battery as part of the
> annual inspection.
This would probably be a modification neither approved nor certified.
If you are ready to this, a much cheaper one would be to tie a line
from the tail to the center of the chute's canopy, with a length such
that it remains slack when the chute is deployed. When you jettison
the chute, it remains tied by this line and is folded by the relative wind
so that its drag should lower than the drag of an extended landing gear.
Eric Greenwell
says...
This doesn't sound like a modification that would be approved or
certified, either, and is a much bigger change than the little
transmitter he was talking about. But if you did it, be sure to
measure the effect on performance, because you don't want to find out
it's a more than extending the gear in an inconvenient place.
Don Johnstone
in anger. I was given advice by an experienced Kestrel
pilot that I repeat here. I have never actually tried
it but it seems a valid solution. Start the approach
high, (600ft) deploy the chute and continue the approach.
If the chute does not deploy/falls off you will still
have enough height to carry out an orbit to loose height
to get into your field. I would add to that, keep the
jettison knob pulled when doing your orbit just in
case the chute decides to deploy.
I repeat I have never tried it. Bearing in mind the
failure rate in deploying on a Kestrel it seems a reasonable
idea.
My ASW17 does not have the parachute fitted but with
the double paddle airbrakes it does not need it.
>Once you get comfortable with it a tail chute is wonderful
>entertainment
>that you can use to dazzle the owners of less well
>equipped gliders.
>
>
Robert Ehrlich
>
> In article <3EB65B2B...@inria.fr>, Robert....@inria.fr
> says...
> > Martin Gregorie wrote:
> > > ...
> > > If I was a Libelle owner I'd certainly fit a big battery tracker in
> > > the removable rudder fairing and change the battery as part of the
> > > annual inspection.
> > > ...
> >
> > This would probably be a modification neither approved nor certified.
> > If you are ready to this, a much cheaper one would be to tie a line
> > from the tail to the center of the chute's canopy, with a length such
> > that it remains slack when the chute is deployed. When you jettison
> > the chute, it remains tied by this line and is folded by the relative wind
> > so that its drag should lower than the drag of an extended landing gear.
>
> This doesn't sound like a modification that would be approved or
> certified, either, and is a much bigger change than the little
> transmitter he was talking about. But if you did it, be sure to
> measure the effect on performance, because you don't want to find out
> it's a more than extending the gear in an inconvenient place.
>
Yes, I agree that it should be tested, but not that it is a bigger change.
The flight characteristics are certainly more affected after deployement
and jettison, but the impact on CG position and mass balance of the rudder
are much lower.
Bert Willing
know if you touch down with a deployed chute or with a wet heap of tissue.
The only way to know it before making plans is opening it on downwind.
If it doesn't make a big difference whether it deploys or not because you
have a clear approach and tons of runway in front of you, why do you pull it
at all?!
I'm pretty happy that in both of my gliders I have a lever which does
exactly the same as a chute - and I can re-pack it in-flight :-)
--
---------------------
Bert Willing
Calif A21S, ASW20
Come fly at La Motte du Caire in Southern France
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/cunimb/index.htm
"Staffan Ek" <staff...@hem-pc.bip.net> a écrit dans le message de news:
7e437f53.03050...@posting.google.com...
Bob Kuykendall
> If it doesn't make a big difference whether it deploys or not because you
> have a clear approach and tons of runway in front of you, why do you pull it
> at all?!
Maybe to reduce risk in cases of landing into unknown territory? When
landing off-field, every foot of rollout increases your chance of
encountering an unseen or unforseen obstacle. Using the parachute
cannot eliminate risk, but used properly it can substantially reduce
the risk.
Operational experience seems to support the position that for informed
and experienced operators, the risks inherent in using the drogue
chute are more than offset by the reduction of risk caused by the
shorter exposure to rollout hazards.
Regardless of what you do, being informed and experienced is almost
always better than otherwise.
Bob K.
Staffan Ek
out. In the 150 meter case I will land on the latter half in case of
failure, and need to brake hard with the wheel brake. Of course if
there are other problems like a downslope or strong tailwind I will be
in more trouble and probably risk to damage the glider in a groundloop
(like I will in most first generation glassgliders with insufficient
air brakes). From the posts I have read one can get the impression
that tail chutes fail frequently but I don't feel familiar at all with
this description, not from my experience or other pilots who have
flown my glider since 1969. It shouldn't be a "wet heap" if you store
and pack it the way it's intended.
Staffan
Richard Brisbourne
<REMOVE_TO...@bittering.gioserve.com> wrote:
>I had a Kestrel19 with tail chute which I never used
>in anger. I was given advice by an experienced Kestrel
>pilot that I repeat here. I have never actually tried
>it but it seems a valid solution. Start the approach
>high, (600ft) deploy the chute and continue the approach.
>If the chute does not deploy/falls off you will still
>have enough height to carry out an orbit to loose height
>to get into your field. I would add to that, keep the
>jettison knob pulled when doing your orbit just in
>case the chute decides to deploy.
>I repeat I have never tried it. Bearing in mind the
>failure rate in deploying on a Kestrel it seems a reasonable
>idea.
>My ASW17 does not have the parachute fitted but with
>the double paddle airbrakes it does not need it.
>
Likewise I've never deployed the Kestrel 'chute in anger, and I'm not
sure of the logic of your suggested approach: if you are high enough
to orbit I reckon that orbit is a much more reliable way of getting
rid of the height (not that you should be there in the first place).
Having done a few airfield landings with the 'chute to see what
happens, as far as field landings are concerned it's very much the
"Jesus knob", for use only if you've already screwed up.
We have been told, correctly, that you need more speed with the
parachute deployed, as you know the last thing you want on a "normal"
approach in a Kestrel (or anything else with a tail chute) is five
knots too much speed- and remember if the chute fails, or if you have
to jettison, you are now definitely going too fast.
Fact is with a still air approach speed of around 48 knots
(sideslipping if you have to) you can land fairly precisely. At a
sensible minimum parachute deployment speed of 55 knots, if it fails
the far hedge is going to come up very fast.
--
"Curmudgeonly is the new cool" (Terry Wogan)
(The real name at the left of the e-mail address is richard)