This is my Two Cents, considering I haven’t flown my Teenie and most of my time is in Cessna 150/152’s, Taylorcrafts, Aeroncas, and J-3 Cubs…
There are far too many Teenie Twos flying regularly to consider the airplane as a whole to be a bad flyer. It is a small, light, short-coupled, small control movement airplane and even though it is not fast or heavy, it is as this implies, a high-performance ship.
One just should not go from a large-control input, forgiving airplane to a quick, short input airplane. And that is not even considering that all Teenies are built properly. I remember a fellow who said that when building his airplane (he hadn’t flown it yet) that he wanted to make the controls less twitchy so he made the linkages and bellcranks with different dimensions that what was on the plans. But when I looked at what he had done, he actually made the changes in the wrong direction!!!!! And his changes would make the airplane even worse! AND he had a longer throw on the elevator which would make the controls less balanced and not equal in roll and pitch. Try having a half inch of movement for full roll and three inches of elevator movement! Think THAT would be difficult on your first hop?
And what about a Teenie that looks OK but is way overweight? Do you think THAT would have any effect on how it flies, particularly for someone who is unprepared?
So, I think if you were buying a Teenie or any homebuilt that hadn’t flown much, you would need to buy the plans to compare what the builder had done and then correct anything that was done improperly, then finally get training in a high performance training airplane, like a Grumman.
Again, my two cents, and you always get what you pay for! LOL
Over to you...
Kenny
Posted on Feb 20, 2008, 8:15 AM from IP address 63.131.48.35