Diana
Final Approach
gibbons said:
One of the first things Mike said to me when I got there on Saturday was that he liked my article in Sport Aerobatics. That was so sweet of him!
I wish I could spend more time flying with him; he’s an exceptionally good instructor and humble as well. He understood my need to go at my own pace and was quite accommodating, patient, and pleasant.We almost didn’t get to go because the FBO had sent out the chutes to be repacked. Mike ran and got his parachutes from his Pitts. What a nice guy! I really, really liked flying with him.
Mike asked me what I wanted to work on, so we took it from there. We started with some ground instruction on spins and talked about my little spin problem a few months ago. We also talked about the hammerheads and slow rolls and recovery from botched maneuvers. His description of control inputs in the competition slow roll is exactly like you described it Chip.
We did several three-turn spins to the left and right and then worked on coming out on heading in one-turn spins. It took some experimenting with just when to start using opposite rudder so it took a few times. Starting between ½ and ¾ worked the best for that Citabria at that W & B. There wasn’t time to work out the finer points of the competition spin, but at least I have a little more to go on now.
Hammerheads were next. Apparently I consistently use right aileron as soon as I start pulling up for the vertical. It was nice having somebody with me in the Citabria to catch that. I thought I was straight.
The timing of the vertical and the pivot seemed to be just like I had been doing before and my pivots actually turned out OK according to him. Guess I wasn’t as bad as I thought. Or maybe that ballast in the back helped. I had been hitting my wake going back down the last time I did them at home. Still don’t know the significance of that, but hope it’s a good thing.
The next day we played with different rolls after doing more spins. He demonstrated the competition slow roll and it felt awful in the Citabria, much worse than in the Extra. Had to use full forward stick and that’s quite a reach especially when inverted at –1 G. Mike suggested a very slight “nose up” just prior to the roll; he said just slight enough that the judges might not notice, but enough to help keep the nose from wanting to fall as much when inverted.
After seeing and feeling the competition slow roll in a Citabria, I can say with absolute certainty that I would not have been able to teach myself that one on my own without having experienced at least one in a Citabria. Now I can start working on it. We are going to need a better or additional seat belt in the Citabria if I'm going to be hanging from the belt like that.
We had a crosswind at 25G30KT and I don’t fly the Citabria in those winds, at least on pavement anyway. At my request he did the landing…it was perfect! I was very impressed. The next day the crosswind was at 15G20KT and his landing in the Pitts was perfect too.
That’s all that I recall right now; I know we did more. Oh, maybe that was in the Pitts. What a sweet ride!
I hope they take the hammerhead out of the 2006 Primary sequence. It looks like I won’t be doing hammers anymore in my Citabria because of issues that have come up in the past week or so. But, at least I know how to do them better now if I ever get the chance again.
