Cessna tail slide testing.

motoadve

motoadve

Pre-takeoff checklist
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motoadve
Testing the tail Slide for Cessnas, worked real nice, did some high angle of attack take offs and landings on purpose and worked nicely as it slides smoothly and does not dig at all.
Looks cool too.
BTW I do not get paid to do this.

 
Awesome video. I’m no structural engineer, but I wonder how the energy is dissipated throughout the fuselage. The vid says it makes things stronger but what’s the limit?

I can see how this would be a huge improvement in the takeoff. Right off the bat you are able to extract a higher AOA. That of course is more lift immediately. Sweet
 
That looks like a really good way to beat the crap out of your horizontal stab and rear fuselage as fast as possible. I hope that tail slide comes with a spare airplane so you can still go flying after the third of fourth tail strike. I usually love your videos, but this one made me cringe and seriously question the longevity of this technique in relation to aircraft damage.
 
I never hit the tail on take offs or landings, this take off and landing were done on purpose at high angles of attack just to test the tail slide, its not a new technique I will use from now on, definitely not.
Tail slide is just there to protect just in case.
 
Oh that clears it up! In that case, that’s an amazing idea!!
 
motoadve said:
Testing the tail Slide for Cessnas, worked real nice, did some high angle of attack take offs and landings on purpose and worked nicely as it slides smoothly and does not dig at all.
Looks cool too.
BTW I do not get paid to do this.

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Did you do that in Costa Rica or did they bring the plane up here?
 
Did they sell it to you in Missoula by any chance? ;)
 
Lachlan said:
That looks like a really good way to beat the crap out of your horizontal stab and rear fuselage as fast as possible. I hope that tail slide comes with a spare airplane so you can still go flying after the third of fourth tail strike. I usually love your videos, but this one made me cringe and seriously question the longevity of this technique in relation to aircraft damage.
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If the tail strikes a paved surface, the shock can do several things. There's a heavy lead weight in the rudder horn, up top. It's the mass balance to prevent flutter. If the tail hits the runway hard enough, that weight's downward momentum jerks the rudder downward. I have replaced cracked rudder hinge brackets several times that were broken by that, and once had a C150 rudder horn bent downwards and wrinkled. The horizontal stabilizer spars can also be damaged, caused by the elevators' mass balance lead weights at their tips; they yank the stab down hard when the tail strikes the runway, flexing it too much.

This tail slide won't prevent that sort of shock. It IS better than the expensive tiedown ring, as far as that goes. A bent ring tends to distort and possibly crack the aft bulkhead.

There are non-STC'd tail tiedown springs to help prevent all that, but their drawback is that they can get bent upward and foul the rudder. I suppose that's why they were never certified as an add-on.
 
I’d be very concerned about cracking that bulkhead, and I doubt the slide will stop that from happening, since it’ll transfer the load right straight into it. That is not a cheap repair.
 
A lot of planes I flew in Alaska had a nylon leaf spring type device that kept the tail from hitting.

Apparently it worked. I hit the tail a few times on short unimproved strips. I am not sure if I hit hard enough to do any damage, but that leaf spring type device kept the tail off the ground.

Some of those planes had better than 25 some odd thousand hours on them.
 
yea, no structural engineer here either, but I would think some kind of shock absorption should be incorporated, that video makes me cringe thinking of the forces that are transferred to the bulkhead... I know you said its "just in case" but...
 
Neat.

Some have installed spring skids on Cirrus tails:

15241447969_a9de4bc085_o.jpg


My Sky Arrow has something very similar back there to protect the tail - and it has been put to the test at least a couple times.
 
FlySince9 said:
yea, no structural engineer here either, but I would think some kind of shock absorption should be incorporated, that video makes me cringe thinking of the forces that are transferred to the bulkhead... I know you said its "just in case" but...
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I think those things compress and then rebound a bit, the idea being that it isn’t one hard smack carried directly into that bulkhead but spread out over a little time, and hopefully that saves it.

Talking to mechanics they say that’s a common area of damage on 182s, cracks in the bulkhead back there from tail strikes gets very expensive very fast.
 
I thought you meant the other kind of tail slide (tailslide).
 
If I could afford a 182 as nice as @motoadve has, I would buy something that has the steering wheel way out back and two big things up front that look like they’d be good to use for floating down the river on after I screwed up my first gravel bar landing. ;)

Seriously, excellent flying, but he is really pushing the utility of that airframe unnecessarily hard if he needs to go to this extreme. I wish him continued success and flawless safety, and I hope to see lots more videos. Be careful out there!
 
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If the price were the same would these pilots choose a 180 over a 182 or a 185 over a 206?
 
motoadve said:
That would be a nice airplane too, I would love to try one of those, I am sure they fly amazingly.
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I love mine, but I’m probably not even using 25% of its capability. Still learning and testing edges of the envelope. And as a newish pilot, I have little else to compare it to. Someone like you would be able to rock this thing.
 
Got a flight review in a 152 that had a tail tiedown that was about half ground off and seemed to be attached to the airplane more by habit than any actual structural connection - I sure wouldn't count on it to tie the airplane down. Some kind of skid seems like a good idea.
 
Here is another take on it. Saw this at Osh on display yesterday. 1960s 182 conversion to Wren 460 (ancestor of all the Peterson 260SEs, Kenais, and King Katmais out there).



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