Using a drogue chute: impressions from two flights

[Ward Odenwald]

Recently, I started using a drogue chute to lower the glide performance of the LiteSpeed during landing. It’s a WW chute attached to a Moyes matrix harness and as most already know, I prefer landing on my wheels (damaged/old knees) but will use the legs when the grass is long or the LZ is rocky. The Wills Wing manual does an excellent job of describing how to use it and details important safety issues for it correct use. What follows are several impressions and mistakes that may help others:

As you can see from the photos, I should have stowed my towline before deploying. As clearly stated in the manual, loose lines (including zipper lines) can become entangled in the chute lines. I was lucky that this was not an issue during both landings.

The photos also show that I was lucky in another way, in that the keel mounted camera was just far enough back so as not to catch the chute as it moved from one side of the keel to the other. When I attached the camera, the distance to the chute was not considered.

While setting up my final approach, the photos also show that during turns the chute shifts toward the direction of the turn. In other words, after initiating a turn the chute moved from near center or just off to one side to the lower wing side. This does not create a control issue when making low bank moderate airspeed turns. However, if you are using the turn to burn off excess altitude - when you exit the high bank turn your air speed has gone up significantly and so has the drag force or pull of the chute!! As a result, the chute is now pulling your center of gravity/hips toward the lower wing side and a significant amount of muscle plus reduced airspeed is required to level the wings. After a reread of the manual, there was no direct discussion of this. Next time, I’ll deploy after burning off the excess altitude and use wide turns after deploying.

Highland, with its wide-open fields, is a great place to learn how to get the most out of a drogue chute. I don’t plan on using it for all landings but want to become proficient in its safe use especially for approaches into tight XC fields.

I hope this helps,

Ward

P.S. The ordered photos start with a view of my favorite landing location.

[Ward Odenwald]

Last set of five.

[lbunner]

How much VG do you use?

[Ward Odenwald]

Good question Larry! For this landing, way to much (a little more than 1/4). For most landings, I use ~1/8 VG. Reducing the VG before the turns would have helped. Thanks

Ward