28 years, 9000 hours

On Mar 2, 10:11*am, Jay Maynard
wrote:

A friend who's evaluated a LOT of the LSAs out there, and flown a nontrivial
number, tells me the CT has a very abrupt stall, and if you encounter that
on landing and drop the aircraft in from a few feet off the ground, the gear
has a nasty tendency to break off - at which point Bad Things happen.


I'm just a student pilot, but I am doing my training in a CT. I
haven't flown other airplanes, so I can't compare the CT stall, but as
a student pilot I haven't found the stall to be difficult to handle at
all. You get buffet so you can tell that you are about to enter the
stall. And I have certainly banged the airplane down pretty hard a
few times on my clumsy newbie landings. So far, nothing has fallen
off.

I do find the CT difficult to land, and I have heard that it is
tougher to land than some other LSAs. For me, I suspect a lot of it
is just my inexperience. But the airplane is relatively short-
coupled, and it has a very high-lift wing. I think those two features
combine to make it very twitchy in pitch on landing. It is really
easy to flare too much and float up on landing. And since it is so
light, it loses speed pretty quickly as you are floating up, so you
can stall it too high pretty easily. I think that may be where the
issue of dropping it on from too high comes from.

On the new CTLS they have lengthened the rear fuselage so it isn't
quite as short-coupled. That should make the airplane easier to
land. And they put beefier composite main gear on it as well.

From what I have read from other pilots flying the CT, once you get
used to the way the airplane responds on landing, it isn't a problem.
It's just a question of learning the right technique for this
airplane.

Phil