On Sat, 8 Nov 2003 22:33:14 -0600, "JJS" jschneider@REMOVE THIS SPAM
BLOCKpldi.net wrote:

:This Velocity was purchased just over one week ago and was being flown
:by a co-worker and personal friend of mine. He did not build the
:airplane. The pilot was picked up by a farmer, (also an acquaintance)
:who saw the airplane was in trouble and went to investigate. My
:friend was medi-flighted to OKC. He suffered broken ribs and severe
:facial injuries, and will lose his left eye. He lost a lot of blood
:and was extremely lucky to have survived. It is a miracle that there
:was no fire, as he and the immediate vicinity were soaked in fuel. He
:smelled the fuel, crawled out of the airplane and lost consciousness.
:Then he regained consciousness and stripped his coat and shirt and was
:stumbling around a wheat field in frigid weather trying to use his
:cell phone to summon help when the farmer drove up. He faces another
:surgery Monday and possibly many more reconstructive surgeries
:afterwards.
:The pilot was practicing slow flight to familiarize himself and get a
:better feel for the airplane. It pitched up instead of down and
:entered an unrecoverable stall. He tried varying throttle position
:and tried rolling out with aileron but the airplane came down flat
:with little forward momentum from about 4500 feet agl. It did not
:spin. According to my friend the main wing stalled. The canard must
:have kept flying? I believe one of the original prototypes may have
:been lost in the same way, with the test pilot surviving? I believe
:that this may have been an early kit without aerodynamic improvements.
:
:I would appreciate any information those of you in this group could
rovide on the early Velocities and their development history. This
:airplane did not have vortex generators installed on the canard.
:Would that have helped or made the situation worse?
:
:After the initial investigation and with approval, we loaded the
:wreckage onto a trailer behind my pickup and hauled it to WWR today.
:It was a very sobering experience that hasn't ended yet.
:
:Please, please, be careful out there.

Vortex generators on the canard would not have helped. They might
have contributed to the problem, by keeping the canard flying to a
higher angle of attack.

It sounds like a CG problem. It's possible that the plane needed
balast in the front when flown solo - 4 seat canards often do. It
could be that was exaserbated by your friend being lighter than the
previous owner/pilot. The main wing of a canard aircraft will not
stall *provided* that the CG is within the envelope, and the angle of
incidence of the main wing and canard are correct. There are also a
few other oddball situations - picking up a lot of contamination or
ice on the main wing, but not on the canard, could cause the main wing
to stall first. But usually it's an aft CG. The pitch up makes it
sound like aft CG is the cause.

Try to find and keep track of the WB chart from the airplane.

IIRC, early Velocities, like early Vari EZ's, tried drooped cuffs on
the outboard ends of the wings. They were later replaced by
vortilons, sticking out from the main wing LE's. There were two deep
stall Velocity accidents that I know of. The one that was ridden into
the ocean was (I'm told) testing a gap seal on the elevator. The
other had removed the ballast from his nose, and got turned upside
down by a DC-10 wake.

See http://www.ez.org/cp76-p2.htm

Richard (the Berkut builder, not the Velocity builder) Riley.