Bertie the Bunyip wrote in
:

Marty Shapiro wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote in
:

Marty Shapiro wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote in
:

WJRFlyBoy wrote in
:

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 00:32:04 +0000 (UTC), Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

I'm just getting invovled in instructing in lightplanes again. My
mission? To get the guys in my flying club and turn them into
luddites. First thing they're going to learn is to fly without
anything but their oil pressure and alitimeter..

Gosh, can't you give them an engine?

Ideally, we'd get a glider to start them off with, but this will do
in lieu.
I'm not kidding about this, BTW. They'e going to learn to fly this
airplane from minute one with no airspeed indicator.It has no gyros
anyway. It has a comm and an encoding xponder alright, which we
kind of need (Citabria, BTW) They can have the ASI back when they
don't need it anymore and they can start carrying a GPS when they
don't need that either.


Bertie



Where are you instructing? This would be a great course
for any BFR
or Wings phase.

Far far away in a distant universe!
That's kind of the idea, but it's only for guys in my club and there
aren't going to be too many of them willing to go old timey.
Good job too, because I'm away a lot with work and have only limited
time to see to them. One of them will eventualy be an instructor, I
hope and he can carry on with these rapidly vanishing techniques, I
hope. There are guys who do this around the place, though.
Where are you?


Bertie




Palo Alto. My airplane is based at RHV (more convenient for
all the
partners). It's a Rallye 235E, all steam guage with a loran that went
tango uniform.


OK. I've flown them a bit. Only the 100hp version, which don't climb so
good. Beleive it or not I was talking to the current holder of the
Franklin engine type certificates just last week!
Your's is probably a lycoming variant, though, eh? Slow as molasss, but
good fun!


Bertie



Yes, the 235 has the Lycoming 0-540 B4B5. Much better than the 100hp
with the RR engines. I also have 4 seats. Once you get to the Franklin
220 and the 235 (C is a tail dragger, E a trike) you also get the "heavy"
airframe with 2 hard points on each wing. Some neat pictures on the web of
these in South America used as light fighter/bombers. On the down side,
the heavy airframes only came with yokes.

With the 235 hp engine, speed is 132 knots flat out, about like the
Arrow, but at a cost of 3 gph. Much, much better climb and short field
performance. With just me and half tanks at about 60F and 10 kt headwind,
I can get airborne in 300' and stop in about 400' with light breaking. If
you really wanted to, you could get your night currency in one pass down a
12,000' runway with room to spare.

As you said, slow but loads of fun. Very stable, great visibility,
fantastic slow speed handling characteristics, nice precise handling, and
being able to fly with the canopy open. I had one passenger on an Angel
Flight who was nervous about flying in a small plane. But she so much
enjoyed the smoothness and the view, especially as we flew passed a snow
capped Mt. Shasta, that she told me how wonderful small airplane were
before we landed. Later, the relay pilot who took her to her final
destination told me that she wasn't nervous at all about being in a small
plane, but had remarked that the visibility from his Bonanza wasn't that
good!

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)