Although I can’t remember exactly which beach—it may have been Copalis or Ruby, both on the Washington coast—from which a friend of mine and I took off and landed
behind the point where we took off. A strong, and steady headwind off the Pacific Ocean combined with his highly-STOL-modified and terrifically over-powered Cessna 170 allowed us to take off nearly vertically, drift backwards from the takeoff point and set down 30-40 feet behind the takeoff point. This was in 1979 or early 1980.
The airplane, that the owner, Tom, called a “Cessna 170 BXP,” had a power-modified Continental TSIO-360 engine taken from the front of a Cessna 337 Skymaster, big drooped wingtips, and STOL flaps and ailerons modifications. The STOL mods included various aerodynamic seals between the wing skin and control surfaces and, most significantly, an aileron droop mechanism where the degree of droop was linked to the degree of flaps deployed to vastly increase the low-speed effectiveness of the ailerons.
It was on big tundra tires.
(Edits: various idiotic-grammar fixes)
The airplane, that the owner, Tom, called a “Cessna 170 BXP,” had a power-modified Continental TSIO-360 engine taken from the front of a Cessna 337 Skymaster, big drooped wingtips, and STOL flaps and ailerons modifications. The STOL mods included various aerodynamic seals between the wing skin and control surfaces and, most significantly, an aileron droop mechanism where the degree of droop was linked to the degree of flaps deployed to vastly increase the low-speed effectiveness of the ailerons.
It was on big tundra tires.
(Edits: various idiotic-grammar fixes)