Bahamas plane debrief

by Graham Email

We went down to the hangar last night and washed and inspected the plane.
One thing to be aware of - landing and taking off in the Bahamas is hard on your prop if you fly a canard pusher. I found a number of small dings on the outboard ends of my prop. Most of them were just nicks in the painted surface, but one leading edge ding had penetrated to the composite core. I will fix that with some flox before painting over it.
While I was on the flight line at Fort Lauderdale, I wandered down to inspect Bill Allen's similar Long-EZ (N99BA) to see if my piloting technique was deficient. His prop appeared to have the same number of dings in it as mine, which suggests that either we're both doing the right thing or both doing the wrong thing...I taxiied with my speed brake extended to reduce damage from surface grit disturbance, but you can't take off with the speed brake extended, so there is a limit to how much you can protect a prop on a canard pusher. The runway surfaces in the Bahamas have a lot of lose grit (mostly small pieces of coral limestone), and this is tough stuff - if it hits your prop you can expect surface damage.
I will be applying a lot of small touch-ups to the prop this weekend...