Pre-Solo check ride

May 18, 2009 - I met Don B. at the airport today for my pre-solo check flight with another instructor. Don instructs in the evenings and on weekends. We started as usual with a pre-flight inspection of the Diamond, then we got in and taxiied out to runway 24. There was almost no wind today, no clouds, and great visibility. I took off and headed to the north. After we got to 3000 feet, Don asked me to transition into slow flight. After a little while in slow flight we moved to power on or departure stalls. You reduce throttle, maintain altitude while the plane slows, add in one notch of flaps to the takeoff position, keep holding back pressure to maintain altitude and when you get to around 50 knots go full throttle to simulate a takeoff and continue to pull back on the stick. The nose of the plane is really high and soon the stall warning horn goes off and the plane begins to fall forward. Push the stick forward to get the nose down and establish 78 knots airspeed and begin to climb back to the original altitude. After a couple stalls, Don reduced the throttle to idle and asked me what was the first thing I would do if the engine failed. I said that I would establish a glide speed of 73 knots. The second thing I would do would be pick a proper place to land. There was a large open field off to my left so I turned and glided toward the one end of the field. We continued toward the field until we reached 2000 feet. From here Don told me to level out and maintain this altitude and fly him back to Blue Ash. We were much further east of where I had been practicing, but I saw Kings Island and the WLW tower. I headed south and when we passed the WLW tower I turn southwest to setup for the entry into the pattern. I made all the radio calls and entered the pattern but on my first landing attempt my approach was too high and too fast, I knew I would float halfway down the runway so I decided to go around. Same thing happened on the second pattern, but I did get a side slip in but it was too little, too late. I went around again. Third attempt I was setup much better on final and made a halfway decent landing. I raised the flaps to takeoff, applied full throttle and took off again. Fourth time around I made my best landing to date, it was very smooth. Took off again on another touch and go and went around for the final time. The last landing was also pretty good and I rolled to the end of the runway, turned on the taxiway, and headed back to the tie down spot for the Diamond. I felt pretty good about todays flight and Don must have too because he cleared me for my solo. I'm exited about soloing and I hope to get it in this week. I'm scheduled to go back on Thursday, so lets hope.

Pre-Solo delays

May 14, 2009 - I've had two pre-solo checkout flight canceled so far. First one was for weather and second one was due to a problem with the starter on the plane. I had a flight scheduled with Cameron today that I hoped would be my solo. We decided to fly anyway and move on to the next topic - short field and soft field takeoffs and landings. We started with a 20 minute ground session to discuss the theory behind short/soft field procedures then we headed off to the Diamond. I made a pretty nice short field takeoff, which you basically start off at the very end of the runway, hold the brakes, apply full power, roll out to rotation speed then you climb at the best angle of climb speed which in the DA20-C1 is about 60 knots. After you clear any obstacles and get above the tree line you begin climbing at the best rate of climb speed or around 70 knots in the Diamond. We flew to Butler Regional where I made a short field landing. This procedure has you land close to the end of the runway, raise the flaps and hold back elevator to get more force on the main gear and brake hard to stop as short as possible. I made a pretty good short field landing, taxiied back around and made another short field takeoff, trip around the pattern and another short field landing.

I have another lesson scheduled for Monday with another instructor. Let's hope the all the variables work in my favor.

Back in the Air

I finally got back in the air yesterday after 17 days and I did feel rusty. The flight I had scheduled for last Friday 5/1 was scrubbed due to weather. I was scheduled to fly with Ken E. for a pre-solo checkout with another instructor. I flew yesterday with Cameron just to get back in the air and get some landing practice. I started off taking my pre-solo test and although I didn't study much, I knew most of the answers. I was able to look up the ones that I didn't know and discuss all of the questions with Cameron. The flight was just several times around the pattern. The first pass was just a standard traffic pattern to landing. There was almost no wind for the first time and the ground speed seemed much faster to me when I landed. The second pass was going to be a slip to landing with only 15 degrees of flaps. I climbed above pattern altitude and ended up too high on final and I was a little too fast when I tried the slip so the plane actually balloned up a bit. I also was not giving enough aileron and cross rudder input to be effective. I aborted the landing and went around. Third pass I was better at the slip, but I still had carried too much altitude onto final. The Diamond really wants to fly with only one notch of flaps. On the fourth pass I focused on decending at the beginning of the base turn all the way through to final. I had a good slip going on final and you can really tell when you are dropping altitude. The approach and landing were good. Today with no wind and landing with less flaps was really different, I learned that you really have to control the descent or the Diamond will just keep flying. I think I'd like to have 7 or 8 knots right down the runway each time I land.

Next week I'll be flying with Joe W. for my pre-solo checkout.

Sun-n-Fun 2009 The End

Well I'm back home and I wanted to make my last Sun-n-Fun blog entry. After my demo flight I went back to Sun-n-Fun and there was a plane doing some sky writing. There was a great big smiley face in the sky. I then visited the Ultralight area again. I wanted to take a better look at an amphibious ultralight that looked nice. From there I met back up with Brian and his dad, Howard. We stopped over by the Vans tent and I picked up an information packet. I was going to buy the preview plans for the RV7, but I would not have been able to fit them in my luggage, I'll have to order them on the web. We finished up with a walk through the vendor areas outside the hangers. I had not been all through that area yet. Another place I missed all together was the Splash-in area were all the seaplanes flew in.

All in all my time at Sun-n-Fun was very enjoyable. I talked to many people and when they found out I was just starting my flight training, they were very excited and supportive, I heard a great many aviation stories from some of the "Old Timers" including Howard who is now 90 years old.

Most of my pictures are up on the Picasa website, you can access these picture just by clicking the slideshow in the blog or by going to http://picasaweb.google.com/daleccravenoh/SunNFun2009#

Next blog will be my pre-solo checkout flight on Tuesday.

Sun-n-Fun 2009 Saturday

Well it's time to go home. I'm sitting at the gate at Tampa International waiting for the plane. In a few hours I'll be home.

Today I headed straight for Plant City Municipal airport for my RV7 demo ride. Brian and Howard met me at the airport while I was waiting for my flight. It was nice to sit on the bench out front of the FBO and listen to Howard and Brian tell stories of past planes that they had or had flown. I met Rick my pilot when he got back from the 9:00 am time slot flight. Rick is a flight instructor that does transition training for RV aircraft. He has been to Sun-n-Fun for 17 straight years! We took off from runway 10, my first flight in a taildragger, and the RV7 had good visibility. This particular plane had a 160 hp Lycoming engine which is the low end of the hp range for the kit. The plane climbed out quick and felt very responsive. Once we got to altitude Rick trimed the plane for cruise and let me make some turns. It felt very light and felt like it wanted to climb even in the turns. Rick then took the controls and put the plane in slow flight at about 60 knots, the plane was still very responsive to turn inputs. Then Rick demonstrated a power off stall. The RV had a pronounced buffet and stalled straight ahead, I was following on the controls and recovery was quick with just a slight relaxing of the stick. Much more of a buffet then in the Diamond, but that plane is very docile in the stall. After this Rick demonstrated roll rate by banking 90 to the right and 90 to the left then back to wings level very quickly. He also did a wing over and it was awesome to look straight down the right wind as it was pointed toward the ground. It was time to head back to Plant City, so Rick had me fly back to the airport, descend to traffice pattern altitude, and enter the downwind. Rick took over from there and greased the landing right in. We pulled up to the FBO and Rick shut down the plane so I could get out and his next demo could get in. I thanked him and told him that I have a new plane at the top of my short list.

Time to board the plane, so I'll update with pictures again this evening when I get home.

Sun-n-Fun 2009 Friday

Today when I got to Sun-n-Fun I headed straight for Paradise City, the ultralight and light plane area. They were doing manufacturer's demos and would have one of the light planes takeoff circle and land while the announcer told the crowd about the aircraft. From here we started to head toward the rotorcraft area and realized it was a very long way away at the end of the airport property. We cut back toward the flightline and walked past the seaplane area to the warbird area. I am stll amazed by how many aircraft are here. Brian assures me that Oshkosh is even larger. We continued on toward the main runway and entered into the homebuild area. Here we got a chance to get an up close look at many different kit and plans built planes. I'm even starting to recognize several of them. There were a bunch of RV's, Mustangs, Sonex, and many others all lined up in groups. It seemed like just a short time and it was lunchtime aleady. We grabbed some lunch and much needed sit down time then headed back over to the vendor hangers then back out to the homebuilt area. Just before 2:00 pm we were asked to move back behind the main fence because the airshow was about to start. They started with the warbirds as the announcer gave a great history presentation of the time between WWI and the events leading up to WWII. I really enjoyed seeing Ol' 927 a B-24A making the passes around the field. It is hard to get a photo of a plane as it's moving right overead, but I finally got a good snapshot. After the warbirds the aerobatic planes took the sky and man can thoses pilots really wring it out! We went back into one of the food areas to get something to drink. There were some guys at the table we sat down out and we struck up a conversation. I told them that I had just started my flying lessons and they gave me all kinds of advice and encouragement. I even got some hints about making perfect landing, pretend the runway is hot acid and you don't want the tires to touch it. After our break my friends were heading out and I decided to find the tram that went out to Choppertown. Since the airshow was still going on they were not flying, but I got to walk around and see the Gyroplanes and helicopters. I did want to see some of the Gyroplanes taking off and landing, maybe tomorrow if I have time.

My schedule for tomorrow is to head out to Plant City Municipal airport for a demo flight in an RV-7A. This plane is right at the top of my short list after this week. If I have time after the flight I'll head back to Sun-n-Fun, but I've got to get to Tampa for my flight home tomorrow around 4:30 or so.

Here is a link to an article about yesterday's runway overrun. There is also a lot more news and photo albums from Sun-n-Fun on the Lakeland Ledgers main site

http://www.theledger.com/article/20090423/NEWS/904235091

Here is a link to an interesting YouTube video that was shot onboard the plane that had the engine out emergency.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U1lhDMZZD8

Sun-n-Fun 2009 Thursday

I uploaded some more pictures. The first few are from the runway overrun accident in the morning. I did not hear anything about this accident today, but I did hear that there was an engine out emergency at the beginning of the week and the pilot landed the plane on the highway nearby. I guess anytime you have this many planes in one spot something is bound to go wrong. I went to a forum on building a RV. The speaker has built 4 or 5 RV's from the RV3 up to the E-LSA RV12 he is working on now. The format of the forum was based on how the construction and kit quality has increased over the years. The RV12 kit even has predrilled holes in the skins AND the ribs. I met up with Brian, his dad, and his dad's friend for lunch. Brian's dad is who we are building the Zenith Aircraft Corp CH701 for. The first place we went after lunch was to the Zenith area to take a good look at the 701 and it's construction. I took a lot of pictures to help us with some of the assembly later down the road. We then walked through many of the vendors areas in the hangars and out near the flight line. We ended up going through the production airplane areas and took a good look at what I call my "Lottery Planes" For only $4995.00 a month you to can have a new Cessna 400 Corvalis Turbo. Not sure how many months the terms are for. I ended up at the Diamond display and ended up talking to the sales rep that covers the Ohio area.

At around 6:00 pm I had had enough and I headed back to the parking area. I couldn't be in Florida this close to the Gulf without getting my feet wet, so I headed to Clearwater Beach to see the sunset while standing in the Gulf of Mexico. What a beautiful ending to the day.

Tomorrow I'll be at the show again all day, but Saturday I have a demonstration ride booked in an RV7A in Plant City. I'm going to try to head back to Sun-n-Fun after my flight but it will depend on timing because I'm flying back home out of Tampa around 4:30 pm.