Dan Thomas

An oxymoronic homebuilt. Aerosport Scamp, an all-metal, T-tailed, tricycle-geared biplane. Spring-steel main legs, VW power.

Make sure you are taking into account the massive amount of energy and fossil fuel feedstock required to manufacture ammonia...

We have a historical precedent for stuff like this. Before and after WW2 there were dozens of companies building airplanes in the US and...

The castering lock. They break when shimmy is tolerated for too long. They also chew up the inside of the steering arm during shimmy. I...

And where did those underground carbon compounds come from? From prehistoric plants and animals. Where did they get it from? The...

:yeahthat: Electric airplanes are the alpacas of aviation. Every article I read in the popular aviation press says glowing things and...

The mag would likely survive. Its "antenna" is the coil core and it's pretty small. The Soviets knew that vacuum-tube electronics would...

I told the instructors and students that I wanted to know immediately when the tailwheel started to shimmy. It's primarily dynamic...

Yup. The incandescent landing lights were rated for 25 operating hours. For a while I was getting as little as four hours out of them...

A higher stall speed at the same incidence implies a lower stall angle. Maybe 15 or 16° instead of 17°. Crosswinds. It's easier to get...

That $5k part is cheap compared to the tailwheel itself. When I retired six years ago, the locking McCauley tailwheel assembly for the...

It's hard to. That horizontal stab and elevator are in pretty strong ground effect in the three-point attitude, and you don't have...

The wing on a Citabria has its chordline at 12° to the ground surface. I measured it. Stall is at about 17°. In the flare for a...

Which is why taildraggers rule with many bush operators. A taildragger is much safer on a soft surface than a trike. Its CG is very...

I think his instructor is being too hard on him. Wheel landings should be left until everything else is mastered. Three-pointers is what...