My lovely wife got me a first training lesson at a local flying club. It's quite impressive timing that our day was so calm for having been blowing +20mph for the past two weeks... We stayed at 2500ft and flew locally in the SFZ north of Washington DC. Having flown general aviation so infrequently and only at uncontrolled airports, it was interesting to actually have to file a flight plan. But it wasn't that bad actually.
Once getting to know me a bit, my instructor-for-the-day Oren walked me through the pre-flight checklist and we taxied to the runway. I was interested as I got a good walk-through of the engine run-up, hearing how to use carb heat and what to look for with the instruments. We taxied out and the takeoff was a piece of cake. It's funny how temperatures in the 30's helped the performance. We were at 2500ft in no time. Oren said "alright, plane is yours" and I avoided the rookie mistake of trying to do anything. Heh, new RC pilots have the same tendency of immediately jamming a stick to the side when given the controller for the first time. So I basically let the plane fly itself. It's stable, why do anything?
It has been a while since I flew, but it was easy to pick back up. Oren asked me to do some turns and fly to headings. Not bad. It's a lot to remember, watching airspeed, keeping track of altitude, remembering to glance for my heading... not hard to keep the plane in the air though. That was apparently easy enough, Oren suggested doing some slow flying. He put in some flaps, had me pull the throttle back (whoa cool, I moved the throttle!) and I worked to figure out the new pitch attitude to maintain airspeed. A couple gentle turns got me some feel of the difference of flaps being down. Well, time to pull them back up and go back to the airport. I got to put us in the pattern, but then it was back to the pro for base and final.
Not bad for a random snowy day!
From the perspective of Goat, I have no fears that I can pick up the skills. I'm thinking of doing the same in a glider and making sure to request some good stalls and spin recovery to get familiar with the entries in particular. Welcome back motivation!
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Flight training time
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3 comments:
Airplane flying is good training, but those Cessna ailerons are built not to require much rudder help in turns. The Goat is a "real" stick and rudder machine, you will not turn effectively unless you use the foot pedals generously. Using just right ailerons on a Goat will bank the wing to the right, but will push the nose slightly to the left. The yaw string is the instrument that will regulate control coordination.
Dan,
Hope all is well. We miss your ultralight building adventures...when are you going to update us on your progress? Your contruction photos are outstanding.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks Wally for the encouragement. I just bought a house (in paperwork process thereof) to have some more room for building the wings next :-)
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