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



Has any determination been made about the cause of engine failure??

Don