Marc Zeitlin
Exalted Grand Poobah
@BJC asked me to write a flight report of the White Lightning that I flew, so here you go. This will be WAY more than you asked for.
A friend/customer with a COZY III apparently has way too much time on his hands and he picked up White Lightning N25WL as a project. When he got it, the plane hadn't flown in about 13 years. He had someone work on the engine to rebuild the top end (I believe - wasn't really clear what was done) and then someone else was supposed to re-assemble it for him. But that guy was really busy and never got to it, and when I was doing the CI on my customer's COZY I mentioned that I might be interested in doing the assembly of the WL for him (be careful what you wish for, he said). He dragged the plane to Tehachapi on a trailer and I set to work.
After learning everything I could and getting copies of all the plans, I put the plane back together, learning in the process that it's a very heavy, weirdly designed airplane, with many parts of the design "borrowed" from the SX-300. I became friendly with an SX-300 expert in TX, getting advice and tool loans for the landing gear.
A four seater only in name, as a 5'6", 140 lb. guy, I could barely fit in the thing even after removing all of the fancy upholstery that my customer/friend had put into it prematurely. I fixed all the stuff that needed it, including replacing all the hydraulic lines that I could reach as well as the fuel and oil lines. New Batteries, new tires and I repaired a bunch of electrical stuff and rebuilt the landing gear and brakes. I eventually got the plane to the taxi stage after maybe 6 months of on and off work and got my test pilot friends to take over checking it out - I'm not a test pilot. They figured out how to deal with the thing until after a few flight hours the fuel pump on the Continental IO-360 went TU, so I sent it off for a rebuild and re-installed it. More test flying and then the plan was to train the owner to fly the thing. It has a reputation as a handful, and the owner wasn't Cthulhu's gift to piloting, having learned to fly late in life (and he knows this - he has no illusions), so there was some question as to whether he'd be able to deal with it.
As it turns out, he did OK, but he and the test pilot CFI managed to break the landing gear (non-catastrophically, as it turns out) twice with not unbelievable hard landings - you'd think an oleo strut LG system could take a bit of punishment, but apparently not. The second time, I installed new links in the LG and got it flying again. At some point after that (March of this year) the test pilot agreed to take me up for a flight in the left seat, so we took off from KTSP (Tehachapi, CA) for a 20 minute familiarization flight.
Now, I'm not a great pilot, but I'm OK - been flying since 1974. I was expecting a ridiculously twitchy and hard to control plane, and it wasn't. Sensitive in pitch, sure, but so are all the canards - this wasn't difficult. It was kind of sluggish control wise when slow and the climb rate sucked until over 120 KIAS or so, even with the gear and flaps up. Responsiveness was better when faster. It was fast, though, even with poorly fitting gear doors and no external drag optimization. Figuring out how to climb and get up to speed took a bit of doing - it really is a dog when slow. I was concerned about the landing, but it was not difficult to land at all - full flaps, a bit of power, and while not a greaser, a perfectly acceptable landing that didn't resemble the tailwheel landings that I had been led to believe I'd think I was performing. Ground handling was fine.
It's not comfortable inside (tiny, both width and height) with non-adjustable seats or rudder pedals; the visibility sucks; the LG/Flaps hydraulic system is a disaster waiting to happen; the landing gear adjustments are well nigh impossible; the fuel system (one tip-to-tip tank INSIDE the cylindrical spar and one tip-to-tip tank in the forward "D" section - WTF?) was designed by someone who had never used an aircraft fuel system before; it's a PITA to move around on the ground with anything less than 80 psi in the tires and you couldn't pay me to take one off of anyone's hands - it's a miserable excuse for an airplane, IMO. It seems to have been designed for one thing, and one thing only, and that's to be very fast with 4 human midgets in it. Which it does. But that point design is not one I have any interest in.
At any rate, the owner was signed off, flew it back to his home base of E14 (go check THAT out if you want to find a miserable excuse for an airport) near Sant FE and used it to visit his family near Denver and Santa Monica for a while. But on a flight back from the Boulder area to Santa Fe, he had an engine failure (reason not determined yet) and put it down on a road. He was slightly injured, but the plane was totaled. I cannot say I'm unhappy about that - in my mind, one less of these things in the air is a good thing.
More than you asked for, I'm sure...
A friend/customer with a COZY III apparently has way too much time on his hands and he picked up White Lightning N25WL as a project. When he got it, the plane hadn't flown in about 13 years. He had someone work on the engine to rebuild the top end (I believe - wasn't really clear what was done) and then someone else was supposed to re-assemble it for him. But that guy was really busy and never got to it, and when I was doing the CI on my customer's COZY I mentioned that I might be interested in doing the assembly of the WL for him (be careful what you wish for, he said). He dragged the plane to Tehachapi on a trailer and I set to work.
After learning everything I could and getting copies of all the plans, I put the plane back together, learning in the process that it's a very heavy, weirdly designed airplane, with many parts of the design "borrowed" from the SX-300. I became friendly with an SX-300 expert in TX, getting advice and tool loans for the landing gear.
A four seater only in name, as a 5'6", 140 lb. guy, I could barely fit in the thing even after removing all of the fancy upholstery that my customer/friend had put into it prematurely. I fixed all the stuff that needed it, including replacing all the hydraulic lines that I could reach as well as the fuel and oil lines. New Batteries, new tires and I repaired a bunch of electrical stuff and rebuilt the landing gear and brakes. I eventually got the plane to the taxi stage after maybe 6 months of on and off work and got my test pilot friends to take over checking it out - I'm not a test pilot. They figured out how to deal with the thing until after a few flight hours the fuel pump on the Continental IO-360 went TU, so I sent it off for a rebuild and re-installed it. More test flying and then the plan was to train the owner to fly the thing. It has a reputation as a handful, and the owner wasn't Cthulhu's gift to piloting, having learned to fly late in life (and he knows this - he has no illusions), so there was some question as to whether he'd be able to deal with it.
As it turns out, he did OK, but he and the test pilot CFI managed to break the landing gear (non-catastrophically, as it turns out) twice with not unbelievable hard landings - you'd think an oleo strut LG system could take a bit of punishment, but apparently not. The second time, I installed new links in the LG and got it flying again. At some point after that (March of this year) the test pilot agreed to take me up for a flight in the left seat, so we took off from KTSP (Tehachapi, CA) for a 20 minute familiarization flight.
Now, I'm not a great pilot, but I'm OK - been flying since 1974. I was expecting a ridiculously twitchy and hard to control plane, and it wasn't. Sensitive in pitch, sure, but so are all the canards - this wasn't difficult. It was kind of sluggish control wise when slow and the climb rate sucked until over 120 KIAS or so, even with the gear and flaps up. Responsiveness was better when faster. It was fast, though, even with poorly fitting gear doors and no external drag optimization. Figuring out how to climb and get up to speed took a bit of doing - it really is a dog when slow. I was concerned about the landing, but it was not difficult to land at all - full flaps, a bit of power, and while not a greaser, a perfectly acceptable landing that didn't resemble the tailwheel landings that I had been led to believe I'd think I was performing. Ground handling was fine.
It's not comfortable inside (tiny, both width and height) with non-adjustable seats or rudder pedals; the visibility sucks; the LG/Flaps hydraulic system is a disaster waiting to happen; the landing gear adjustments are well nigh impossible; the fuel system (one tip-to-tip tank INSIDE the cylindrical spar and one tip-to-tip tank in the forward "D" section - WTF?) was designed by someone who had never used an aircraft fuel system before; it's a PITA to move around on the ground with anything less than 80 psi in the tires and you couldn't pay me to take one off of anyone's hands - it's a miserable excuse for an airplane, IMO. It seems to have been designed for one thing, and one thing only, and that's to be very fast with 4 human midgets in it. Which it does. But that point design is not one I have any interest in.
At any rate, the owner was signed off, flew it back to his home base of E14 (go check THAT out if you want to find a miserable excuse for an airport) near Sant FE and used it to visit his family near Denver and Santa Monica for a while. But on a flight back from the Boulder area to Santa Fe, he had an engine failure (reason not determined yet) and put it down on a road. He was slightly injured, but the plane was totaled. I cannot say I'm unhappy about that - in my mind, one less of these things in the air is a good thing.
More than you asked for, I'm sure...
