F rom another list posting.....

Marc Wiese

Canard AviatorsFriends,

I have followed the Viggen story ever since I saw it fly into Oshkosh for
the first time. When I saw Oly's Viggen, my jaw dropped to the floor and I
was on the phone to Oly begging him to bring it to Oshkosh. I even called
the Sport Aviation magazine editor and asked them to print a cover story on
the plane. To me, that Viggen was one of the prettiest homebuilts I have
ever seen! It is truly a tragety that the plane is lost, but most important,
I'm happy to know that Oly is alive and well and not injured. This is a
testiment to the extrordinary flying skills of the pilot. Very few of us in
his situation would have had the guts to roll the plane at low altitudes to
regain controll of the canard! This is a pilots pilot. (If you want to see
photos of the plane and it's beautiful Mazda engine, please E-mail me off
list and I will send them to you)

To end speculation on what happened, here is a letter Oly send out the
Viggen group:

The airplane is toast. I'll salvage what I can then trash the rest. At the
point of engine failure I was in a nose up climb at full power and had an
abrupt pitch up. Be careful with your Viggen, when the engine failed I could
not get the nose down fast enough to maintain speed & had to roll inverted &
pull down a bit, roll upright then unload to keep flying. I was worried
about stalling. My airplane would not stall "power on" but it would stall
"power off" just like a real airplane. This is contrary to what the
VariViggen manual says.

The thing I never liked about the VariViggen is the
lack of any "down" elevator. You can get lots of "up" elevator pulling on
the stick but when you push the stick forward the elevator retracts and you
get "less up elevator". It doesn't truly give you ANY "down: elevator just
less "up" elevator. I think that's why I couldn't get the nose down. In my
opinion this is a serious design flaw. If I could have got the nose down
quicker I could have maintained a better glide and made the bean field I was
shooting for. As it was I had to spend so much time getting the airspeed
back up that my glide distance was severely shortened & I ended up landing
in the trees short of the field. Fortunately the strong metal main wing spar
took the brunt of the trees and that is what ultimately saved the day.

Keeping things in perspective:

- I walked away from it
- The hunk of metal in my hangar can be replaced
- I have a good wife
- I have good friends
- I have a wonderful guardian angel

Oly

Sent by Joe in Oshkosh