Pietenpol-List: seat height and a little more on tailwheel flying

[matronics]

Original Posted By: "Michael Silvius"
Subject: Pietenpol-List: seat height and a little more on tailwheel flying Hi Tim, My thinking in raising the seat was to get better visibility over the nose duringtakeoffand landing but unlike some of the WWII fighters where you can crank up your seatfor takeoffand landing we obviously don't have that luxury in the Piet so for everything buttakeoffand landing my upper body is out too far in the wind and the wind beats you upafter a while. My solution should have been to just add cushions until I liked the view and thencould alwaysyank a cushion out after takeoff and before landing--if I even needed to do that.There are some Piets with steep deck angles so in building my landing gear I triedto keep minefairly shallow like the angle you'd have on a Champ and that helped with my forwardvisibility.You never really see anything over the nose anyway and especially so with a passengerso yourrunway alignment method comes from visual cues just on either side of the fuselage. When I first transitioned into flying tailwheels it was in a tired old Champ thatmy friend Joefrom church and I bought for $7,000 in 1989. Joe flew Champs for years so afterwe got the planehome he rode in the back seat and let me fly it from the front (off of grass) andI was astoundedat the visibility--it was excellent. After I flew off the required 15 hours with an instructor (to be insurable) weboth got bored after about 6 hours and he decided to put me in the back seat. At first it was reallyhard not seeingover the nose but you quickly learn to just look ahead and use your peripheralvision to sensealignment and when you need a correction. And as long as I'm rambling on likea school girl westarted on calm days with me in the front seat flying off of sod runways. Aftera while we flew on more windy days then transition to hard surface paved runways and then flewon some REALLY windydays and then worked in windy days with nasty, gusty crosswinds. Then he putme in the back seat and we repeated that whole process starting on grass on calmdays. As a side note I went FIFTEEN years without flying a nosewheel airplane and lovedevery minute of it. When I broke that string of years I was totally blessed to be offered to fly anolder gents MooneyMite and boy....was that thing FUN !!! I was just glad the termites joined handsin the wings whenI pulled a few g's doing some big old wingovers. Mike C. ________________________________________________________________________________

[matronics]

Original Posted By: Ryan Mueller
Subject: Re: Pietenpol-List: Fuselage wedges on sides

[matronics]

Original Posted By: Michael Perez
Shouldn't the centerline of all members intersect through the same point? As I recall it is so on the GN1 drawings.Michael in Maine ----- Original Message -----