We used every bit of daylight on this 3-day trip, since rain and winds kept us off the runway for many hours.
We are testing with the extended rudders and elevators, and the aircraft nose gear to raise the nose and provide toe brake steering during taxi. This is to be able to take off at lower speeds, and to have more control during that last portion of the take-off roll before liftoff.
We also changed the nose wheel to a castering aircraft nosewheel to allow the new toe brakes on the rudder pedals to give steering input for the vehicle during taxi testing. For production vehicles we are using a steer-by-wire system taken from the automotive industry, but just to get the flight testing going, we opted to use toe brakes and castering nosewheel.
TESTING UNTIL DUSK
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