Bill
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2005
- Messages
- 15,104
- Location
- Southeast Tennessee
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I had my first intro acro lesson in the Citabria today, what a hoot. What a fun and fine little aircraft.
We had a pretty good pre-flight ground lesson, discussing the traits of handling a taildragger aircraft, and discussing the maneuvers to be flown. Further talk with the instructor I find he flew A-4's and F-4's in 'nam, with over 1500hrs in the F-4, and was his squadron's carrier landing instructor. After 7 years of this, he flew for Eastern for 10 years, flying 727's and L-1011's. After Eastern went bust, he wanted to go back to grass roots flying and instruct full time. Very nice, well versed, polished guy with lots of experience.
He started me in the back seat today, which I thought to be a bit weird, but other than over the nose view on the ground, I seemed to fly well from back there. After showing me how to strap into the 'chute and plane, we practice taxied up and down the grass strip a few times, letting me get used to "dancing" on the pedals to keep it straight. At first slow taxiing, then taxiing at maybe running pace. Did fairly well, I only felt him correct me on the rudders once.
One annoying problem with the plane: he had new headphone jacks soldered into the audio panel, and they were not functioning. I could not hear or talk thru my headsets, so all during the lesson I either interpreted what he wanted by hand signals, or had to lean forward and lift and ear cup.
The takeoff was a blur (having a direct crosswind and gusty conditions didn't help here), and I'm sure he helped me a good bit. Once off the ground, he was off the controls, and I over controlled for the first minute or two, kind of flying around in a drunken manner. Very sensitive airplane on the controls compared to the 172. On the way to the practice area, he told me to spend every possible minute just monkeying with the airplane. Try turns, climbs, stomp the rudder this way and that, wiggle the stick, just have fun getting to know the plane.
At the practice area, we started with the basics, slow flight, power on and off stalls. I have a new favorite plane to stall, the Citabria stalls like a ***** cat, very easy to keep the wings level with the rudder. Likewise, slow flight was a piece of cake.
Leaf stalls were an eye opener. Being called leaf stalls, I was expecting a nice gentle to and fro like a leaf falling. Yeah, right. A leaf stall is like getting a really drunk person to walk straight. You can corral them in the general direction, but they're still all over the place. An eye opener was how long it sometimes took for top rudder to work, and get the plane started rolling the other direction. Then, of course, if you weren't lightning fast getting the rudder back the other way, it would roll too far the other way. I was working the rudder like a madman, which I guess is the whole point of the exercise. I asked him about the motion, and he said I did well. He said think of the plane as being balanced on the top of a pencil, and it just wants to fall any which way. By using the rudder, your trying to keep it balanced on that pencil.
After the leafs, we went on to 60 degree banked turns, and I did really well at that one, although I'm much better in left ones than right. I tend not to pull back quite hard enough to completely maintain altitude on the right hand ones.
After that, we did two loops, on the first one, I eased up on the back pressure when we were inverted, and he had to help me over. In fact, the engine stopped over the top and then restarted on the way back down. I did the second loop fairly well. He says we'll practice the loop a lot more.
Coming out of the second loop, he demonstrated an aileron roll, and then we headed back towards the airport. Well, headed back in a zigzag line. I was having fun cutting fairly steep turns every now and then on the way back.
The crosswind was still pretty bad (about 15-16kts 90 degrees to the grass strip), so he had me fly the plane to the base-final turn, and then had me shadow him on the controls in for the landing.
All in all, a very good introduction to this type of plane and flying.
I like I like, can't wait for the next lesson.
Ken Ibold, I now understand.
We had a pretty good pre-flight ground lesson, discussing the traits of handling a taildragger aircraft, and discussing the maneuvers to be flown. Further talk with the instructor I find he flew A-4's and F-4's in 'nam, with over 1500hrs in the F-4, and was his squadron's carrier landing instructor. After 7 years of this, he flew for Eastern for 10 years, flying 727's and L-1011's. After Eastern went bust, he wanted to go back to grass roots flying and instruct full time. Very nice, well versed, polished guy with lots of experience.
He started me in the back seat today, which I thought to be a bit weird, but other than over the nose view on the ground, I seemed to fly well from back there. After showing me how to strap into the 'chute and plane, we practice taxied up and down the grass strip a few times, letting me get used to "dancing" on the pedals to keep it straight. At first slow taxiing, then taxiing at maybe running pace. Did fairly well, I only felt him correct me on the rudders once.
One annoying problem with the plane: he had new headphone jacks soldered into the audio panel, and they were not functioning. I could not hear or talk thru my headsets, so all during the lesson I either interpreted what he wanted by hand signals, or had to lean forward and lift and ear cup.
The takeoff was a blur (having a direct crosswind and gusty conditions didn't help here), and I'm sure he helped me a good bit. Once off the ground, he was off the controls, and I over controlled for the first minute or two, kind of flying around in a drunken manner. Very sensitive airplane on the controls compared to the 172. On the way to the practice area, he told me to spend every possible minute just monkeying with the airplane. Try turns, climbs, stomp the rudder this way and that, wiggle the stick, just have fun getting to know the plane.
At the practice area, we started with the basics, slow flight, power on and off stalls. I have a new favorite plane to stall, the Citabria stalls like a ***** cat, very easy to keep the wings level with the rudder. Likewise, slow flight was a piece of cake.
Leaf stalls were an eye opener. Being called leaf stalls, I was expecting a nice gentle to and fro like a leaf falling. Yeah, right. A leaf stall is like getting a really drunk person to walk straight. You can corral them in the general direction, but they're still all over the place. An eye opener was how long it sometimes took for top rudder to work, and get the plane started rolling the other direction. Then, of course, if you weren't lightning fast getting the rudder back the other way, it would roll too far the other way. I was working the rudder like a madman, which I guess is the whole point of the exercise. I asked him about the motion, and he said I did well. He said think of the plane as being balanced on the top of a pencil, and it just wants to fall any which way. By using the rudder, your trying to keep it balanced on that pencil.
After the leafs, we went on to 60 degree banked turns, and I did really well at that one, although I'm much better in left ones than right. I tend not to pull back quite hard enough to completely maintain altitude on the right hand ones.
After that, we did two loops, on the first one, I eased up on the back pressure when we were inverted, and he had to help me over. In fact, the engine stopped over the top and then restarted on the way back down. I did the second loop fairly well. He says we'll practice the loop a lot more.
Coming out of the second loop, he demonstrated an aileron roll, and then we headed back towards the airport. Well, headed back in a zigzag line. I was having fun cutting fairly steep turns every now and then on the way back.
The crosswind was still pretty bad (about 15-16kts 90 degrees to the grass strip), so he had me fly the plane to the base-final turn, and then had me shadow him on the controls in for the landing.
All in all, a very good introduction to this type of plane and flying.
I like I like, can't wait for the next lesson.
Ken Ibold, I now understand.
