grattonja
Line Up and Wait
I took a day off yesterday and finished knocking out my "conventional endorsement". Yep, me and the Champ are buddies now, sort of.
It took several trips up to get used to the Champ, and it's handling qualities. Truly, it is amazing to fly a plane that has not had some of the less benign handling qualities engineered out. "Whow, THAT is what adverse aileron yaw feels like". For example. Leading a turn with rudder, and ending a turn with rudder. Stalling without a stall warning horn, in a plane that the CFI very carefully said "no aileron correction in stall, all inputs MUST be through the rudder". He had a scary experience in a Champ at one point, apparently swapping ends in an incipient spin. I found stalls to be benign, but maybe I was just having a good day. Tracking the runway, on take offs and landings, in a plane that requires constant rudder inputs. Upon landing, I heard repeatedly a phrase that I had never heard before. "Walk it out". And that really is what you do. Your feet do a dance on the rudder pedals and you must be constantly on top of the airplane. Also surprising to me was how uncordinated I have been flying. You feel, and I really mean feel, any yaw that you are not correcting for. The plane goes around a turn and the nose shoots off to the outside of the turn. And you really see it. Even in cruise flight, you get a definite sense of what you are doing with the controls, even without the giant slip ball in the center of the panel.
Landing a tail dragger, now there is a test for a fairly low time, trike pilot. I picked up 3 point landings fairly fast, once I figured out not to flare 2 or 3 feet above the runway, but rather right down pretty much on it. Wheel landings, now they are another thing. I had gotten a couple of passable wheel landings on grass on the last training session, but could not seem to duplicate them at first this time. Finally, through some sort of osmosis, I figured out that I really do need to fly the plane all the way to the ground, until the mains are pretty much there, and I really do need those few extra knots of speed to make it happen. Then, gee, I really do need to get that d----d stick all the way forward or I am going to keep bouncing.
After an hour or so, I finally got to the point where I could do touch and goes on the mains on the tar. At that point, I got my sign off, and he sent me out then so that I could demonstrate a few 3 pointers in the grass, to prove I can fly the plane without the weight in the back seat. I seem to have a genetic predisposition to NOT pull the stick all the way into my lap once the plane was on the ground. I am not sure that I have absolutely scared that out of myself yet, but I am pretty close.
On the whole, the training for conventional has been great. I am controlling rudder with way more finesse than I ever did before. Talk about confidence building for time spent in the much more docile trike planes. And, I can now keep working with the Champ, improving my pattern work and flying skills, in a plane that provides real challenge for me. Who could ever imagine that an aircraft that is so SIMPLE could kick one's butt so hard?
Also, it was good to spend time in a plane with so little excess power. With CFI and myself on board, and a full 13 gallons of fuel, we climbed in density altitude of 1500 feet, with something like 250 to 300 feet per minute, tops. I have seen Smoketown from low horizon angles now that I have never looked down from before. The greenhouses off the departure end of runway 28 don't look like much in the skyhawk. When you are climbing out in the Champ though, and looking UP at them, that is different.
I would HIGHLY recommend that any trike pilot without tailwheel time spend some time in a machine like a Champ. It's sheer simplicity, coupled with it's light weight, make it a challenging machine to fly, and a machine that really conveys to you directly what it is doing, and how. Crosswinds? You feel them, you have to compensate for them, you have to handle them with great care. And it is possible to both over and undercompensate for them. Which was new to me. In the skyhawk, I have seen what undercompensation can be like, but have never really seen the aircraft get tippy from overcompensation. That great big fabric wing wants to go, seemingly, everywhere but where you want it to go.
It didn't hurt the day either, that I got to take the cutlass over the Perkiomen Valley for avionics, fly a 152 back, and take a bit of multi training while moving an aztec from one airport to another. 4 airplanes in one day, two of which I had never flown before...
I need more vacation days like that!
Jim G
It took several trips up to get used to the Champ, and it's handling qualities. Truly, it is amazing to fly a plane that has not had some of the less benign handling qualities engineered out. "Whow, THAT is what adverse aileron yaw feels like". For example. Leading a turn with rudder, and ending a turn with rudder. Stalling without a stall warning horn, in a plane that the CFI very carefully said "no aileron correction in stall, all inputs MUST be through the rudder". He had a scary experience in a Champ at one point, apparently swapping ends in an incipient spin. I found stalls to be benign, but maybe I was just having a good day. Tracking the runway, on take offs and landings, in a plane that requires constant rudder inputs. Upon landing, I heard repeatedly a phrase that I had never heard before. "Walk it out". And that really is what you do. Your feet do a dance on the rudder pedals and you must be constantly on top of the airplane. Also surprising to me was how uncordinated I have been flying. You feel, and I really mean feel, any yaw that you are not correcting for. The plane goes around a turn and the nose shoots off to the outside of the turn. And you really see it. Even in cruise flight, you get a definite sense of what you are doing with the controls, even without the giant slip ball in the center of the panel.
Landing a tail dragger, now there is a test for a fairly low time, trike pilot. I picked up 3 point landings fairly fast, once I figured out not to flare 2 or 3 feet above the runway, but rather right down pretty much on it. Wheel landings, now they are another thing. I had gotten a couple of passable wheel landings on grass on the last training session, but could not seem to duplicate them at first this time. Finally, through some sort of osmosis, I figured out that I really do need to fly the plane all the way to the ground, until the mains are pretty much there, and I really do need those few extra knots of speed to make it happen. Then, gee, I really do need to get that d----d stick all the way forward or I am going to keep bouncing.
After an hour or so, I finally got to the point where I could do touch and goes on the mains on the tar. At that point, I got my sign off, and he sent me out then so that I could demonstrate a few 3 pointers in the grass, to prove I can fly the plane without the weight in the back seat. I seem to have a genetic predisposition to NOT pull the stick all the way into my lap once the plane was on the ground. I am not sure that I have absolutely scared that out of myself yet, but I am pretty close.
On the whole, the training for conventional has been great. I am controlling rudder with way more finesse than I ever did before. Talk about confidence building for time spent in the much more docile trike planes. And, I can now keep working with the Champ, improving my pattern work and flying skills, in a plane that provides real challenge for me. Who could ever imagine that an aircraft that is so SIMPLE could kick one's butt so hard?
Also, it was good to spend time in a plane with so little excess power. With CFI and myself on board, and a full 13 gallons of fuel, we climbed in density altitude of 1500 feet, with something like 250 to 300 feet per minute, tops. I have seen Smoketown from low horizon angles now that I have never looked down from before. The greenhouses off the departure end of runway 28 don't look like much in the skyhawk. When you are climbing out in the Champ though, and looking UP at them, that is different.
I would HIGHLY recommend that any trike pilot without tailwheel time spend some time in a machine like a Champ. It's sheer simplicity, coupled with it's light weight, make it a challenging machine to fly, and a machine that really conveys to you directly what it is doing, and how. Crosswinds? You feel them, you have to compensate for them, you have to handle them with great care. And it is possible to both over and undercompensate for them. Which was new to me. In the skyhawk, I have seen what undercompensation can be like, but have never really seen the aircraft get tippy from overcompensation. That great big fabric wing wants to go, seemingly, everywhere but where you want it to go.
It didn't hurt the day either, that I got to take the cutlass over the Perkiomen Valley for avionics, fly a 152 back, and take a bit of multi training while moving an aztec from one airport to another. 4 airplanes in one day, two of which I had never flown before...
I need more vacation days like that!
Jim G
