The weather behaved again this weekend - just. I rocked up at the airfield watching nice big holes in the cloud disappear and wondered if we were on at all. Checked out G-BGBA, the Robin 2100 and climbed in with my instructor.
We took off from runway 22 at Gloucester and again headed for his favourite training area, the ‘bends in the river’ just south west of Gloucester.
There were no decent sized holes in the overcast, but it was higher than it looked. The Robin climbed gamely on at a stately 500 fpm as we climbed past 3000’. ‘Go for 4000’ if the overcast will let us’ Max said. At 3500’ it was clear that we would have the room and I levelled off at 4000’ with probably a couple of hundred feet to spare – phew!
On the menu today? Well, the basics again – ballistic rolls, loops and stall turns. Max’s way of teaching is to really cement things in and ‘layer’ things on as your confidence and experience grows.
First I do a ballistic roll to the left. I didn’t have enough of a climb angle and pay for it with the ‘sacred circle’ being just below the horizon. So I try again with a much better result. I do a third as Max wonders if it was a fluke, again with good results – I think I have got it, I really do.
The onto a couple of loops. First with me doing everything except pulling the power back crossing from inverted. He wants me to see when to do this. I spot it, it is basically when the nose of the aircraft passes back through the horizon into the green. We do another the same way. Then we do a third with me pulling the power back. On the last loop there was the distinctive 'bump' as we pulled back up to level flight of the aircraft going through it's own wake - I must be doing something right! I think I am not far from ‘getting’ the loop and feeling more comfortable with it.
Then we do some stall turns. I do the pull up and fly vertical, then Max takes over and talks me through and hand back control for me to recover to altitude. I can feel what he is doing and I think I understand it. I don’t do one myself this lesson, but I think I will be able to next lesson as the control movements are becoming clearer to me.
All too soon, we break off and Max give me a good tip – never charge back into the circuit immediately after aerobatics, give yourself 5 or 10 minutes to collect your thoughts and let the adrenaline come down a bit.
Standard overhead join for 22 as I fly the circuit and do one of the characteristic flatter landing in the Robin so as not to tailstrike. The attitude and method is very similar to the floatplane I flew in Canada earlier this year, a bit like a ‘three-pointer’ attitude you might fly in a taildragger. Good landing and taxy back.
I feel I am making progress and that Max will ‘layer’ more on and get me to do more ‘fine tuning’ on the basic moves. If the weather is good next time and we can get to 5000’, maybe some spins!
This aerobatics stuff really is huge fun – I find myself grinning like an idiot all the way home in the car!
