IMPULSE Flights

[Dan Curtis]

Due to Mike's generosity and trust, I was able to get a flight on his new
Impulse today.  I thought I might add a few comments to his thread on the
flight characteristics to this point.  Keep in mind that this is a very new
plane and a very new engine that is still running pretty rich.  The plane is
light in weight and it flies "light".  The controls are pretty sensitive but
can be controlled with throws set up for personal taste.  The roll rate is
somewhat dependant on airspeed as is the usual case.  Elevator has a very
nice feel but it did take a bit more push for inverted flight than I am used
to.  With that said the plane does not show any other tail heavy tendencies
at this point.  

 

Uplines were straight and had a pretty nice locked in feel, downlines were
dead on, without the usual throttle to elev. Mix, at least to this point.
Small amount of mixing with rudder to elevator for a pitch to belly in both
rudder directions, very little if any roll coupling was noticed today but
that will be checked out a little more thoroughly in the next few days.
Rolls at this time seem to be pretty darn axial, but this too, will be
looked at more closely.  Snaps and spins were tinkered with today but they
will need some fine tuning in the set up.  Plane would spin with the current
cruise controls but would not really snap, so conditions will need to be
set.  We had some crosswind this afternoon but not in the strong range.
Without getting into the "weathervaning" banter but for lack of a better
word, the plane did like to weathervane into the crosswind, but being a
light, wide and deep bodied plane that is not surprising at all.  The rudder
is pretty powerful on this plane and it will take some flights to get the
cruise set up right and to the feel of the rudder.  Slow and point rolls are
very easy with this plane and should only get better with some additional
trimming.

 

The Impulse is a very constant speed type plane; the addition of throttle
does not really speed the plane up very much but certainly will sustain an
upline.  Downlines are not dead slow but they are slow and constant and do
not seem to increase very much in an extended line.

 

That is about all I can say with only the one flight on the plane at this
time.  It does appear to be a quality flying aircraft and with proper
trimming and set up for individual preferences I can see this plane being
very competitive and well received.

 

Hardware and construction:

 

The craftsmanship on the kit is very nice, not perfect by any means but
certainly up to and surpassing most of what has been available to us lately.
The trend the past few years has been to save as much weight/cost as
possible in the cowl and canopy areas.  This one is no different in that
respect.  The cowling is large and pretty flimsy.  It needs reinforcement
right out of the box.  One kickback from a DZ or one little over zealous
hand on the nose during start up can crack this puppy real fast.  The
firewall and motor mount combo seems good at this point.  The CF spinner is
a bit of a pain.  It does not take much for the back plate and the prop to
loosen their grip with each other with the prop becoming loose and the
spinner cone loosening.  This can happen to the point of the back plate
twisting to the nose and binding on the nose of the plane.  I am not sure
how long the spinner will hold up to the use of an electric start either.
As seems to be the case of the imports, the spinner is an odd size to us.
It is large with a 3.5" tru turn being a bit small as well as a bit
expensive:-).  I think this fit could be managed with a bit of work around
the aircrafts nose, which would allow an aluminum spinner and would avoid
the CF spinner problems.

 

I don't know if any of this rambling has been helpful or informative but I
hope it has been.  Several people have wanted to get some kind of flight
report on this model so Mike and I thought we would get out as much as we
have at this point and time.  I think the plane is a good one and the
outlook for it is pretty bright, at least after one flight:-),

 

Dan Curtis

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