Still sorting out my 180. The consensus on the fuel fluctuations is that it's the flow meter, so that's on the to do list. Can you guys with 180 time share some of the settings you've used? Ours is a 1954 with the Sportsman leading edge, flap and aileron seals and a stone stock O-470. The 58 year old POH has numbers but I'm wondering what sort of VX/VY numbers get used with the Sportsman cuff? Thanks.
FZ

Check on www.steneaviation.com they are the ones selling the sportsman kit now. They list vx and vy numbers for the 180 and some of the other cessnas on the site. The speeds go down quite a bit. My new vx with the sportsman on my 170 is 48mph.

Thanks Rob, I took your advice and looked at Steins numbers and then went home and dug through the paperwork and discovered that it's a Horton cuff after all. I have a VG kit for it but haven't put them on yet. Wing extensions are somewhere in the future. For now I'll keep trolling for others experience and sorting things out. Again, thanks for the reply.
FZ

Maybe, AKT will chime in. He had a horton on his 180 before he put a sportsman and wing-x on. Flyngnr also has a horton on his 180 so maybe he could offer some advice.

Hopin'.......

Mine actually has a Mid America STOL kit. It was installed back in the 1970's after the last wreck. It is essentially a Horton knockoff though, with the stall fences and mild cuff. I haven't been able to find a technical performance supplement or found that the book numbers are that far off, honestly. It might break a few mph slower than stock, but that is based on some pretty crude 3 leg GPS measurements - the pitot system isn't very accurate that slow. Vy seems pretty much the same speed, wouldn't know how to accurately determine a new or different Vx.

Flynengr

My mistake, I saw the stall fences and assumed it was a Horton.

flynengr, my POH is in the plane and I am, sadly, at work, but as I recall, the 1954 POH is a little vague and doesn't define VY and VX as such. It also seems to say that take offs are shortest with 20 degrees of flaps but climb out is best with no flaps. What are you actually using for VX and VY and what do you do with flaps for TO and climb? I have now wrestled about 8 hours of 180 time out of the schedule and really like it but clearly have a lot to learn about Skywagons! Thanks!
FZ

Do some timed climbs to a certain altitude with various flap setting. I did that with my 170 and found it climbed much better with 0 flaps as opposed to 10 or 20. My normal takeoff is with 20 flaps to get off the ground shorter than I start milking them off once I'm airborne and accelerating to vy and 0 flaps for climbout.

Zebra-

I can tell you that the Horton with the VG's is a great set up! I keep hearing conflicting reports with them on the Sportsman. Ask one person and they think they are great, ask another and they want to remove them.

The older model 180 with the Horton and VG's was awesome. I am going to try them with my sportsman here sometime soon.

As for VX/VY - You can take off about 5 mph or so for VX (Sportsman) and VY was/is about the same I believe for both.

Suggested best glide with the Sportsman is 70 and the Horton was 75

Stall speed with the Horton and VG's was about 48 (Things also change if you have the various gap seals)
Stall speed for my Sportsman and WingX is coming in at about....40 (or so) really starts to buffet at about 38) Still playing with it...

I think the Horton takes off about 5-8 off the stock and the Sportsman takes off about -8-12 or a bit more depending on the various configurations. I have also played with my angle of incidence a bit to create the best STOL configuration (Prior to STOL kits the old timers would do this)

Go fly your bird and play with slow flight. Honestly, I dont spend much time thinking about VX/VY. Climbing out I like airspeed and landing I like to come in a slow as possible.

I always depart with 20 degrees flaps. It does depend on where I am departing as to whether or not I am applying flaps on the roll or presetting them prior to departure. One other thing I always do is a J turn roll out for departure. P factor (the 4 left turning tendencies) is pulling a constant so I like to use it to my advantage when applying power. By the time I am on the straight portion of the J I am almost at speed. Maybe its more a L shape as its not a full hook like a J. Make sense?

People debate the flaps and speed for landing as well. I like 80 on downwind -and 10 degrees. 70-60 on base to final and apply 10 more degrees. I go full 40 for all landings (even crosswinds) and touch down at 40/45 always. Roll out is limited to conditions. Generally around 200-300 feet at best. Obviously with a bit more wind you can get it to feel like a helicopter. If its gusty I am extremely cautious and always carry a bit more speed.

What else?

Hope this helps. These are purely my numbers that I can think of. You need to find what feels good for you. I flew with a guy once in his Skywagon that he had for years. He did not want to go below 70 ever. I also dont think he flew his plane often. I felt like he was spooked by the plane.

Good luck

AKT

flyingzebra wrote:Still sorting out my 180. The consensus on the fuel fluctuations is that it's the flow meter, so that's on the to do list. Can you guys with 180 time share some of the settings you've used? Ours is a 1954 with the Sportsman leading edge, flap and aileron seals and a stone stock O-470. The 58 year old POH has numbers but I'm wondering what sort of VX/VY numbers get used with the Sportsman cuff? Thanks.
FZ

I have no useful contribution on this subject. I just thought I'd mention that us experimental aircraft pilots sometimes forget how old of airplanes you cert guys fly! The casual mention of the 58 year old POH brought this to mind

No disrespect at all meant, in fact it is obvious that they are great designs to be still performing so great a half century and more later. I think the general non flying public would also be blown away by the antiquity (??) of the gen av fleet, it'd probably scare them! I know I got a real kick out of and a sense of pride and a maybe somewhat displaced sense of security out of the '46 T-Craft I had. Keep ' em flying guys!

FWI the Rans S-7 design I fly has been around since 1987, with multiple upgrades and changes of course, but still a pretty long time in the homebuilt world.

My manual is at the hangar as well. I will get back to you on specific numbers, but my recollection is that they had a speed associated with obstacle clearance (Vx) and one for max performance climb (Vy).

The following isn't meant to be anything other than a response to your question regarding what I use for speeds on a similarly equipped plane. Kevin and Rob can both fly circles around me. I am by no means an expert Skywagon pilot. The most important thing I think anyone can do when starting out is to learn a safe technique, know their limits with it, then keep experimenting in very small incremements to find what works best for you. With practice and an airfield you can put cones out on, or use the center stripe length with Google maps, you can start working toward optimizing your skills. I still want to get to a point where I can land consistently within the proverbial football field, but I am still a bit outside those limits with zero wind.

My bird's airspeed is in knots, but it is typically off the ground for good at 50 kts tail low with 20 deg flaps on T/O. If it is really gusty and length isn't an issue I will typically roll it a little more nose down and she will fly off at 60 knots indicated. I always use flaps 20 on takeoff, and drop them when it feels good. The flaps do limit max performance climb. Once cleaned up she climbs well at 80 - 85 Kts with not much loss on the VSI and not a crazy deck angle that something closer to Vy delivers.

For landing, I typically wheel land at 30 deg flaps if length or xwinds aren't in play, with three pulls on the trim wheel from full nose up. 60 kts down final, 55 over fence, and touch around 50 seems to give me the most consistent success. For short work I use 40 deg flap and reduce everything by 5 Kts. It requires a higher power setting, and is essentially how I was taught to 3 point, only instead of fully stalling it push it over on the mains and pulling the power right before the tailwheel hits, killing the lift. When it works, it works great. If it is gusty/thermally, or the timing is off, it can be an abrupt arrival. For really gusty or crosswind days, I go flaps 20 and use my wheel landing pattern speeds, plus a couple knots but no more than 5.

Not sure if this is helpful, but I will get some book numbers for you if you still need them.

Flynengr

Thanks all for the feedback. It's all helpful. I know the bottom line is that I need to fly the thing and tapping into your experience helps give me some targets to shoot for while I'm sorting out how it all works. Scraping time out of my schedule to fly shouldn't be so difficult but the struggle doesn't seem to change much. I've been on a 25 hour a year flying starvation diet for about 7 years now and am trying to force that to change. The 180 is too much fun to let sit! More thoughts are better if you got them to share!
FZ