and that’s how the NTSB determined he
was the pilot. The pilot-rated passenger/
owner had a private certificate with single
and multiengine ratings, but no instrument
rating, so that would appear to indicate that
the right seat pilot had to legally be PIC for
the IFR flight.
Both pilots were 27 years old. The
Lancair owner had hired the right-seat
pilot about 10 months earlier to be his company pilot. The right-seat pilot had
commercial and CFI certificates, with
instrument rating. The Board could not
locate a personal logbook for the pilot, but
about five months earlier on his application
for a second-class medical he listed 600
hours of total time, with 200 hours logged
in the preceding six months.
The right-seat pilot reported on an
insurance application that was submitted
about six weeks before the accident that he
had completed initial training in the
Lancair IV-P. The NTSB report does not say
where he attended training, but notes that
he logged 9. 4 flight hours during the course
and received a high altitude endorsement.
Aircraft logs showed the pilot had then
flown the accident airplane a total of 2 0.5
hours before the crash.
The passenger/owner pilot’s personal
logbook could not be located either, but on
his third-class medical application made
about two and a half years before the accident, he reported 60 hours’ total time, with
30 hours in the preceding six months.
LANCAIR PERFORMANCE
The Lancair IV-P is one of the fastest piston singles in existence with a 280 knot
cruise speed (330 mph is the number the
company publishes) at 24,000 feet. The
airplane is very sleek, but much of its high
speed is due to the 350 or so horsepower
the turbocharged Continental engine can
produce at 24,000 feet, and the very small
size of the wing.
There is an old saw that airplanes take
off and climb on wing area, but cruise on
wing span. That means you want a large
wing to fly slowly for takeoff and initial
climb, but a very small wing area to cut drag
in cruise. That apparent contradiction is
actually, and routinely, resolved in larger
jets that have huge Fowler type wing flaps
that track aft to increase wing area mark-
edly. The Lancair IV-P does the same. It has
very large Fowler type flaps that, for take-
off, track fully aft before then descending 10
degrees to add wing area as well as camber
to the small wing.
Almost immediately after
the controller warned the
Lancair of the trailing smoke,
witnesses saw the super high
performance homebuilt pull
up into an abrupt climbing
left turn, perhaps initiating
a return to the runway.
Certification rules require single-engine
airplanes to stall, in the landing configuration, no faster than 61 knots. This standard
was established when the CAR 3 rules were
formulated about 70 years ago. Most production piston singles actually stall a few
knots below the 61 knot limit, but a few
such as the Cirrus SR22 and the Cessna
pressurized P210 bump right up against the
limit. The P210’s faster stall is a result of its
4,000 pound maximum takeoff weight,
while the Cirrus stalls at that speed because
its wing area is smaller at around 145
square feet.
As proof of how effective the slotted
Fowler type flaps on the Lancair IV-P are,
the company says that the airplane stalls at
about 64 knots with the flaps fully
extended. With the optional winglets
Lancair says the “dirty”—its word—stall
occurs at 73 mph, which equals 62 knots.
The company doesn’t specify that those
stall speeds are at maximum takeoff weight,
which is the industry norm for such specifi-
cations, but we can assume that to be true.
And, of course, all Lancairs are amateur-
built airplanes, so builder modifications or
variances could alter the actual stalling
speed of any individual IV-P.
FOWLER FLAPS
As you will remember from private pilot
ground school, wing flaps increase both
available lift and drag. On the Lancair the
Fowler type flaps track aft emerging from
the trailing edge of the wing to add total
wing area. The flaps then extend trailing
edge down, and a slot is opened between
the trailing edge of the wing and the leading edge of the flaps. This slot encourages
airflow to remain attached to the upper
surface of the flap, which adds lift-produc-ing efficiency to the extended flap. You can
see this type of flap design on any jet liner
that also needs to reconfigure a small wing
suited for high speed, high altitude cruise,
to a wing that can fly slowly enough for reasonable takeoff and landing speeds.
But even the extremely effective slotted
Fowler type flap cannot avoid a large
increase in drag. In jets the drag is actually
useful because turbine engines can only be
throttled down so far and continue to produce considerable thrust at flight idle.
Without the drag of large flaps it would be
difficult for a jet to approach for landing at
any reasonable speed. Jet pilots, however,
are trained to maintain a target airspeed
well above stall, and also to keep engine
power up to prevent the drag created by the
flaps from leading to rapid decay of airspeed and loss of altitude.
Another propeller airplane that uses
very large slotted Fowler type flaps to
reduce takeoff and landing speeds but
retain a small wing area for high speed
cruise is the Mitsubishi MU- 2 twin turboprops. The big flap on the MU- 2 is very
effective, but also generates more drag than
found on a typical propeller twin. The
MU- 2 has had a controversial safety record
