On Fri, 14 May 2004, anonymous coward wrote:

a discussion of all
the factors that affect safety in homebuilt aircraft.

My homebuilt airplane design has saved my bacon at least twice. It is
a canard pusher.

First, I landed very hard in high winds. I broke the nose gear linkage
and stopped quickly on the runway. A fellow canard builder flew in with
epoxy and cloth to patch the road rash, and another fellow mailed me some
brake calipers. A few weeks later, two men perished when they landed
hard in a tractor engine airplane. Their nose gear failed, the prop hit and
started a fire which they did not survive.

Second:
After one 1,000 mile long, very high flight (I have oxygen now), I turned
base to final too tightly, and the canard stalled. I leveled her off and builtup
speed, and did an extra trip around the pattern before landing.

I often read about stall/spin crashes, and am very glad to fly this bird.
It does prefer clean paved runways, it seems much more safe to me.

I learned to fly after I turned 50 years old, and do make newbie mistakes.


George Graham
RX-7 Powered Graham-EZ, N4449E
Homepage http://bfn.org/~ca266