Pray for bad weather!

With a nasty combination of pilot availability, instructor availability, aircraft availability and weather, I am still trying to get signed off on my tailwheel complexity for the RV6. Last time, I found out my instructor was off on a three week holiday and not back until 19th May. Well, that was too much, so I contacted the CFI at Cotswold and Phil was astonished that I wasn’t yet signed off and was happy to take up the reins. So I booked three sessions with him, the first on Saturday 10th May.

I am OK with ‘into wind’ landings, so I was looking for a decent wind so we could do crosswind landings. But again the weather was ‘unkind’ – by that I mean it was a lovely, sunny day, warm and without a breath of wind – ideal flying weather, except when you want to do crosswind training!

I bumped into Phil inbound from one of his lessons as I was checking the plane over. He asked if I still wanted to go. I said yes, may as well refresh myself (and demonstrate to Phil) with a few normal landings.

Listening to the tower in the clubhouse I was astounded. The guy in the tower could barely take a breath and there were people ‘stepping on’ each other with multiple transmissions. The circuit was full and people were going around – it sounded like Heathrow on a bad day! What the hell was going on – was it really just the weather? Phil advised me that it was the LAA ‘Young Eagles’ day where pilots volunteer to give youngsters their first taste of small aircraft flying – OK that explains it – hope they still allow us to book out for circuits!

They did and we set off. Unfortunately we were on runway 09, which mans the long march from the apron around to the other side of the airfield – all that with the bubble canopy of the RV buttoned up – so we were getting warm pretty quickly!

We seemed to have hit a quiet patch as I took off for circuits. The take-off was good and we climbed away. With the warmer air and a heavier instructor (my other instructor is quite small and light), I noticed the difference in performance and it occurred to me that this aircraft was very weight sensitive compared to the production aircraft I was used to, where weight seems to make little difference.

My first landing was at the same airspeed as I use with my lighter instructor and the plane definitely had a higher stalling speed this time. Still a good landing, but not so much time to fly level and bleed the speed back. Phil suggested I try for 70kts next time and that worked fine as I held off for longer and was rewarded with another good landing.

Basically, after three good and one (dare I say it) very good landing, Phil suggested we call it a day as I he agreed, I really needed crosswind and wasn’t particularly learning anything in these conditions.

On my final circuit, there was a Robin flying a VERY close circuit (I swear he was flying along the runway centre-line), so with ATC permission, I turned the long way around onto base. As I was joining base, I could see a TB20 on converging course from downwind – so a quick reduction in power and we passed safely underneath him – no drama, definitely not danger close, but could have been interesting if we didn’t have our wits about us.

Good approach and in view of the traffic behind us, I did try to land ‘long’ (which we did), but the runway is still so long and I really needed a slowly taxying aircraft to steer off the end of the runway, that I had to slow on the runway to walking pace. The tower were switched on and gave the TB20 a ‘land after’. This didn’t bother either me or him as the runway is plenty long enough and I was very close to the turnoff.

Well, a good session. What I learned today was that the RV is very sensitive to weight which in turn affects stall and therefore approach speeds. This explains why when flying solo and using the same ‘numbers’, the aircraft still has waaayyyy too much energy. Now we all know that from our flying exams, but it is the first time I have actually experienced it in practice – but then this is by far the lightest aircraft I have flown, so maybe no surprise. I am now confident of nil or into wind landings.

Well, pray for windy weather – next session booked for Monday 12th May after work.