Monday June 06, 2005

Flew the Wheeler Express Got a chance to fly a beautiful composite called the Wheeler Express. It's a 4-seat low-wing, cruciform tail, IO-540, 3-blade MacCauley. The company has had its share of problems with a couple changes in ownership, and a couple crashes. But it's a great airplane that is close to the Cirrus in terms of ergonomics and performance. With 3 adult men and full fuel (92 gallons), we climbed 1500fpm and steadied out at 190mph IAS. Then we throttled back to form up with Erik in his S1C Pitts; at 5Kft 150mph and 15"/2400 we were sipping 7 GPH (nice!).
Cockpit layout was ok, although the instrument panel was too low (or the seat was too high). the stick felt too short but that's because I fly a Pitts, and because Wheeler's aileron forces were pretty high. Definitely a two-fisted airplane for doing steep turns or dutch rolls. Stall was uneventful with a right-breakoff and plenty of warning buffet. In general I overcontrolled the airplane, not because of control authority, but because of the long feedback period. In other words I'm used to an airplane that reaches steady state conditions 40 nanoseconds after control inputs, whereas the Wheeler definitely takes 5 seconds (depending whether it's pitch, roll, yaw). Super wide landing gear makes landings a piece of cake, although the brakes in this one were overly soft (I was suspecting the use of nylaflow lines somewhere)
All in all a nice cross country machine with an awesome useful load, and IMHO a more ergonomic interior than the Lancair 4, great performance on a fixed gear.
More info: http://members.eaa.org/home/homebuilders/selecting/kits/Express.html ( Jun 06 2005, 07:46:20 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]