I was accompanied by Alan in his RV3 who flew about 5 minutes behind me as we departed Springbank. The RV3 is faster than the Q2 and I knew this would work out fine for our 41 minute trip to Vulcan. The landing strip is paved and 2950 feet long at a elevation of 3440 feet. My landing went very well and I used about 3/4 of the runway length before turning around and backtracking on the runway. After climbing out of my cockpit on the parking ramp I heard Alan arriving on the downwind approach for landing and was able to watch his nice 2 wheel landing. As we stood talking after Alan shut down we heard a sound similar to a turbine coming into the airport. Not a turbine at all but the exquisite Subaru powered Q2 of Reg Clarke from the Lethbridge area. Reg later noted he was probably going about 150 knots as he flew over top the airfield, what a beautiful sound. He quickly slowed and did a beautiful landing. Reg later explained to me that he has to have a very light touchdown as there is no landing gear shock absorption in his custom landing gear configuration. This is very different to my Q2 in which the full Canard wing is a spring for my landing gear.
We were going to walk across the golf course to lunch in the club house but a local pilot Don was admiring our planes and offered to drive us over. We had a nice lunch with great conversation around the table. We walked back to the airport (15 minute) from the golf course and prepared for departure.
Alan left right away for a meeting back home and Reg offered to do a tandem takeoff with me on our departure. He would give me a comfortable lead and shortly after takeoff he called me up his position and I saw the beautiful yellow Q2 screaming by about 300 feet below in our left turn. This turbo Subaru with an SDS electronic ignition system from Ross Farnam in Alberta is one fine example of a Q2 tandem wing aircraft.
View or trip track at:
https://aprs.fi/#!mt=roadmap&z=11&ts=1498262400&te=1498348800&call=a%2FCGMBK
More coming soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment