Horizontal stabs

[Dan L]

I was hard on my horizontal stabs last year. Most of the wounds came from landings on the river gravel bars. I put a GoPro out on the wing tiedown ring and aimed it back towards my mains to see when the rocks were flying. I was able to see that it occurs at touchdown and I think part of the reason is I get on the brakes immediately or even prior to touching. I'm going to change my technique a little and let the tires spin up first. But I'm not going to quit the off-airport fun.

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There's a bull moose in the center of this image.

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Here he is at river level.

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So, last fall I called Vera and ordered a couple of spares with the intention of covering them this winter.

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They're finish sprayed in Insignia White Polytone now and masked for trim painting with Aerothane. I should have that finished this week.

Added a youtube link to landings with the GoPro. In the video you might notice some of my techniques and mods like the full swivel tail wheel, keeping the tail up until the end with brakes, full nose-down trim position when I've got any amount of flaps deployed, landing with full flaps and all take-offs with 2-notches. The tires are 31" and I really like the AOS lower struts. An improvement over Hydrasorbs.

I'm a novice with both the GoPro and more so with editing it so bear with my shortcomings. After this video last fall and my attempts at editing with the GoPro free software I lost interest and gave the camera to my son. He's off at college now and having lots of fun with it and snowboarding.