After two months of home duties and sick grandchildren wife and myself, I was
asked to confer with a few instructors on realistic stall training yet still
stay
within the FAA and the Global Air instructor guidelines. I also did a
Powerpoint
for the local EAA Chapter on retaining proficiency.
These instructors have flown with me before and we often work on how to's,
techniques
and many questions on why the plane behaves as it does, and what's that
for's.
By late morning I was able to haul 12AY out of the back of the hangar, wash it,
lube it, service IAW my engine Troubleshooting guide, ground run the
engine/systems
and do a proficiency ride before supper time.
12AY responded nearly as ideal as I could hope. My repair of a delamination in
my classic wing is starting to raise up but is still solidly attached to the
foam underneath. It is an odd issue. Flap rig was slightly off due to
onlookers
at Sun 'n Fun sitting/leaning on my flaps and wings. I bent the flap a bit
and although it was windy, rainy and hot I decided a cool drink and a quick
flight would be within my energy reserves.
I flew a typical profile for me: (See my website techniques section for a paper
on gaining and staying current Power Point is too large for my website and the
matronics attachments.) After a normal takeoff and climb to the working area
I did slow flight, stalls, accelerated and configured, and found I needed to
repeat some of these exercises to get the rust off. I was sloppy and flap rig
was still off. It was cloudy, gusty and very hot and humid, and I only shot two
touch and goes and a full stop. The last one scared a couple of instructors
watching and grading landings, as I made a quick short final nose down and back
up to correct a sloppy glide path. Landings were good but the flaps required
attention. I was burnt out by the time I landed. Today I adjusted my flaps
and repeated the scenario and was impressed how much better the airplane flew
the profile. It was still terribly hot, but the winds and clouds allowed me
to work up about 5000 feet in the cool air. Tomorrow, I have grandkids swimming
in the pool (birthday party) but intend to re-fly again on Thursday to check
a drop of oil on the bottom of the cowl (most likely from the air filter full
of oil and a pesky valve cover gasket) and to get some more short field and
no flap landings dialed in. I overworked my stall warning horn on today's
flight,
and it decided to stop working (the light is working fine but my cheap
Amazon/Chinese piezo electric buzzer died). I have another, but I think I may
add an intercom audio tone or a voice warning circuit. Instead of a buzzer,
I may use an ISD 120 voice recorder/playback and pipe a soothing voice saying
("Oh Pilot, you are stalling, unload, and start doing some of that pilot stuff
to get us out of here.)
During the Zoom meeting Tuesday night I misspoke about Mod 74. It is a Classic
Mandatory mod but at Custom Flight I did this mod for a number of our clients
with XS aircraft that were really heavy as a shop mod (Europa did not want to
do this on the XS fleet but the glider has it as standard due to higher
stresses,
so I considered it as an option for the XS). The XS does not require Mod
74, but if the wing is damaged, I consider it an upgrade worth doing especially
if the owner has a fat Europa with a MTOW of 1450 pounds.
Best Regards,
Bud
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=507470#507470
|