Power on, however, it's different, and here pilots have to learn an altogether new technique. For normal flight, the CCW is flown normally. For slow flight, however, the power is reduced. Then, as the plane loses speed, the nose comes up to hold altitude, and power is slowly put back on. It's like releasing the clutch and applying the accelerator on a standard-shift automobile. As the power comes back on, it is not so much now producing thrust as it is lift by sucking the air out of the channels. Slowly the airspeed indicator comes down, past 63, past 60, past 50, past 40 and, on our flight, down to 32, before the nose finally dropped through in a stall.

The angle is steep, even awkward (about 20 degrees), but there isn't any question that this two-ton aircraft will fly well below its power-off stalling speed.

Coming in for a STOL-type landing (it makes normal landings the same way any airplane does), the CCW indicated about 60 m.p.h. at about 300 feet above the edge of the runway then began losing speed and altitude. It was indicating 45 m.p.h. when it touched down, hard but not uncomfortably, about a third of the way down the runway, rolling another 500 feet or so.

In sum, the CCW-5 lives up to its slow-speed specifications, but falls short on the high side. We asked Custer and the engineers about this after the flights, and their answers jibed: The improvements are still on the drawing boards.

Here are some of them:

Both agree on an adjustable horizontal stabilizer, to replace the fixed stabilizer and movable elevator now on the plane. Immersed in the propwash, the trimmable stabilizer would give it greater pitch control, shorter take-offs and, more important, reduce the extreme nose-high attitude during slow speed by half.

The Devore people would like to put spoilers outboard of the ailerons for greater control, especially during slow speeds. The wings stall at the tips first, and the stall works inboard, which was part of Custer's reason for putting the ailerons inboard where the airflow could get at them longer.

Custer, however, is inclined toward stubbier, laminar-flow wings, and eventual elimination of them. ("The Wright brothers put those things on.") He also wants flaps that retract into the fuselage for cruising, and extend into the propwash for almost vertical takeoffs and landings. Devore's engineers see this only for military applications.

Both agree, and enthusiastically, that what the CCW needs most of all for greater efficiency are truboprop engines. This, they claim, will get back some of the high-speed losses, although Devore doubts that it will ever top conventional aircraft with the same power plants. ("When you gain something on the low side, you lose something on the high side. You don't get something for nothing.")

Finally, the ultimate solution, both are convinced, is to build each configuration for specific missions individually. Devore said, "Custer took another plane and put his wing on it, when the plane should have been built around the wing." continue...