Homebuilt aerobatic restriction removal

[Jerz]

Hey garyt. All good points in posts above. I am not an RV expert, but I know the guy who is - Ken Fowler of Rocket Aerobatics. He is ex military tech, turn homebuilder extraordinare, turned airshow pilot. He built several RVs and Rockets and is one of the most competent RV guys I know.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I did a bit of aerobatics with a freind in his RV7. I thought it had several challenging charcteristics that demanded a fairly high level of care and attention. The very low pitch forces make it easy to load on a lot of Gee and the aircraft is very clean so speed rapidly builds when it is pointed down. I also noted a rather slow roll rate even at fairly high speeds. IMO this is not an aircraft for someone who is just learning aerobatics as it unforgiving of the common beginner errors

I would suggest care should also be taken with spins in homebuilts. Two outwardly looking identical airpalnes may have radically different spin characteristics. Even small redistributions of weight at thet ends of the airplane, like a ballastweight in the tail, can affect the spin recovery characteristics. I recommend a carefull and methodical spin flight test program and a two turn limit.

[Hedley]

aerobatics ... in his RV7 ... this is not an aircraft for someone who is just learning aerobatics as it unforgiving of the common beginner errors

+1

As I have said before, any aerobatic maneuver you are not comfortable performing in a C172, don't do it in an RVx, either. It is NOT an aerobatic trainer, nor an aircraft for aerobatic newbies.

spin characteristics

Most pilots are like Bambi on the Hwy 401 - roadkill, sooner or later - when it comes to spins, and that includes a lot of aerobatic pilots, who regularly kill themselves every year from unrecovered spins.

Spins are their own inner, arcane and generally poorly-understood world of aerobatics, and every aircraft type spins differently, and C of G and polar moment of inertia can totally transform an individual aircraft's spin recovery behaviour.

Ask Paul Lopez, Kathy Jaffe and Art Scholl about this little detail.

Note: Two aircraft even with identical C of G can have very different polar moment of inertia. One can be completely docile in a spin, and the other could be unrecoverable. If you don't understand this, don't perform any spins, either intentional or unintentional, because you're Bambi on the 401, and you don't even know it.