Extra 300S:
Patty Wagstaff and her Magic Machine
by
Budd Davisson
If you’ve seen her fly, you’ll never forget it. She’s
razzle-dazzle personified. If you meet her and spend a few moments with
her, you’ll come away with much the same feeling. It’ll
be obvious that the pilot fits the airplane. Or is it the other way
around?
Patty exudes confidence laced with huge amounts of both zaniness and
steely-edged professionalism. This is combined with a very clear-cut
idea of who she is and what she wants. Catch her out of her element,
however, and you’ll find her quiet. Almost shy. But always ready
to flash that trademark smile that is at least as sincere as the woman
herself. Patty is what you see is what you get with not one iota of
pretense.
For well over a decade, Patty’s signature airplanes have been
the sleek monoplanes designed by Germany’s Walter Extra. First
it was the 230, then the fire breathing, one of a kind 260 and now,
the 300S, the single seat version of the 300L
.
Walter Extra himself is a world-class aerobatic competitor so he knows
what he wants in his airplanes and how to get it. In actual fact, full-scale,
un-limited category competition airplanes have a lot in common with
today’s R/C pattern ships. They must roll quickly and have enormous
vertical performance, which requires lots of power but little weight.
Plus they must not break. Of course, the last two points, light weight
and strength, comprise two of the biggest compromises in aviation. It
takes a clever mind to get both.
Extra’s designs are an interesting combination of traditional
technology and edge-of-the-envelope innovation. The fuselages are tried
and true, chrome-moly steel tubing trusses, a concept that goes back
even before Tony Fokker’s use of steel tubing in WWI. The wings,
however, are true composite structures in that the very word “composite”
means more than one kind of material is used. In this case, in some
models, it means plywood ribs are combined with composite skins and
spars to produce wings that handle 10 G’s, plus and negative,
with ease.
The cockpit is quality redefined: Walter Extra builds very well detailed
machines! The seat is reclined just enough to be both comfortable and
offer G-resistance without introducing any kind of weirdness. The visibility
on the ground is great, although straight ahead is totally obscured
by the big Lycoming. The first two-place Extra’s, on which the
300L/S is based had the wing mounted higher, in the middle, of the fuselage,
and the wing effectively blocked all runway visibility during the landing
flare.
In the air, the 300S is basically a bullet. It goes where you point
it and it does it immediately. The ailerons are extremely light with
little or no break-out force, or pressure “notch,” that
self-centers the stick and lets you know where neutral is. A ham-handed
pilot will find he or she is constantly fighting themselves as they
over-control first one way, then the other.
The airplane presents few, if any, limitations, and, in fact, the pilot
is usually the limiting factor. Of course, when Patty takes off, even
that limitation is removed giving the audience the rare opportunity
to see aerobatics in the purest sense of the word.
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