Fancy Dancing

Fancy is getting used to me and sometimes I think she even likes me but, every now and then she tries to go off on her own, it’s usually always my own fault. The last character in her N# is F (Foxtrot) and that’s a ballroom dance. When operating a taildragger on the ground, takeoffs and landings especially, there’s a little dance involved and like in Foxtrot it works better when you lead properly. Fancy and I have been doing some dancing lately and having a lot of fun. One day we flew up to Massey in loose formation with my friend Don and his Stearman and had
fun doing that. Picture was taken by my wife from back seat. Good shot eh?

Fancy flying again

Here it is Feb. 09 already and I looked to see when I last posted on this site. It was Jan. 08.

Well we took 'Fancy our airplane out of service from jan thru Nov. for some work. We recovered, painted, installed new windows, and a lot of other stuff to make her almost like new. SOmetime towards the end Of Nov. my IA deemed her airworthy again and returned her to service. A happy day that was too! Since then I have managed to put around 14 hrs on her. She looks and flies beautifully. Had one problem when wifey and I decided to land at Space Coast Regional in dec. When we landed the tail wheel went into a shimmy so bad it felt like the whole assembly would depart the airframe! It didn't. We managed to taxi off of the runway and to a safe place where we could look the thing over. The clip that attaches the chain and spring to the yoke on the rudder was missing. We made a repair and flew her back home. Upon our arrival at our home airport we did a wheel landing instead of a three point. Everything worked like it was supposed to when we let the tail come down. Since then we have replaced the wheel bearings in the tail wheel and everything seems to be as it is supposed to be. I have been practicing wheel landings when ever I fly now and haven't done a three point on a hard surface since. I have done them on the turf and so far so good. I have an idea that the problem that started the shimmy was with my landing. It was full stall and maybe dropped a couple of feet and maybe the rudder wasn't quite centered. Sure got my attention though! You tail dragger pilots know how these things can be.

Now that she's working good we're ready to go out and create adventures again. When we do this we'll write and post to this blog.