Comments on Homebuiltairplanes forum from Jeff Kerlo.
"I preached the importance of weight consciousness and adamantly voiced concern over all the unnecessary garbage being thrown into the airplane , not to mention one unnecessary oversized extremely heavy passenger side door amongst many other things. Mark did as well. We were both ignored and scoffed at by someone always thinking he knew better . Early on we threw our hands in the air and left it up to the Master Designer and project manager. We sincerely tried to keep it sane to no avail. Our recommendations were always second guessed. You have no idea the second guessing I went through during my efforts in correcting the aero problems discovered with the model.
The models creation was a direct result of my apprehension upon seeing the original design and incidence/decalage settings that made no sense. At this point I respond just as Schultz did in the old Hogans Heroes TV show, " I know nothing" when asked why this or why that. New Motto comes from a little cartoon penguin , "Smile and wave boys,smile and wave".Nuff said".
".. it (the model) exhibited horrendous spiral instability. Wings level to 50+ degree bank angle in three rapid cycles. This occurred when arresting descent and beginning "flare " to establish normal canard approach deck angle before touchdown. First occurrence was quite a surprise".
" The original vertical area concerned me from the onset and flight showed my belief they were inadequate. They were increased significantly in two steps and showed little improvement in stability. I was never a fan of BLENDED WINGLETS( there, I said it too) and suspected significant wrap around flow vertically up the winglet at high AOA , thereby compromising the flow over the winglet. That is when I figured a fence at the inboard point where the radius began should likely help . It arrested the dutch roll tendency, locking in the airplane when rolling into and out of banking. It also, not surprisingly, require adding significant amount of up elevator trim after their addition telling me the wing was now also producing more lift, again no surprise to me, and working harder. I then suggested we do stall testing and he scoffed at that and said everything is fine now , time to build the real one. So all bets are off as to how real articles stall behavior plays out. As I said , I have suggested many required test considerations, only to have them scoffed at. Don't like to throw hands up in the air but what else could/can I do. He thinks he knows it all".”
Peters ego is going to either kill him or make him fail.
