Aerobatics - Lesson 4.5

Fourth full lesson on aerobatics. The weather didn’t look too clever. Fully overcast, but not too low. Before setting out, I estimated cloudbase at anywhere between 3000’ and 3500’, so could be marginal whether I fly aerobatics or not.

Turned up and saw Max. He said the cloudbase was 3400’ and probably rising as the day wears on, so we should be OK – so out to check out the plane. Filled to just over ‘one tick’ on the gauge (four ticks is full). I checked with Max and he confirmed that with us two larger guys, that would be ideal. Usual start-up, taxy and take-off. Again headed to the ‘aerobatics playground’ to the north-easy, not far from Evesham. Base is at 3600’ but opoor horizon as it is fairly ‘high pressure murky’. Usual HASELL check and off we go.

Rolls
First one not so good, but I think due to a mis-understanding. He had told me earlier to pull up to 45 degrees and that is what I was doing checking the wing angle against the horizon. In fact it should be 30 degrees. Tried again with much better results. Now flying alternate left and right rolls so I don’t become ‘handed’ and always favour one side. I am feeling pretty comfortable with simple ballistic rolls now.

Loops
I am now flying all aspect of the loop, including judging when to pull the power. First loop was not great – I saw a clear roll angle relative to the horizon in the inverted. Max thought I had not pulled straight, apparently a common fault. Next loop was better, but we only just ‘got around’ as I didn’t pull hard enough at the start. It was also interesting as at the top of the loop we entered some cloud! The rest of the loops seemed OK. I think I am starting to get there slowly on these.

Stall Turns
First couple were Max doing the throttle and aileron and telling me when to hit the rudders. They went fine. Then as I hoped for, my turn to do the lot, including deciding when to reverse the rudder.

Off we went. Hard pull up to the vertical, full power then centralise pitch. Check vertical by reference to the angle of the horizon (such as it is) against the wing. Feed in more right rudder as the slipstream coils tighter around the fuselage with reduced airspeed. Am I out of right rudder? What’s next? Oh yes, hard reverse rudder to full left and simultaneous right aileron. Looking for the point at which the aircraft is horizontal (called ‘knife’), before pulling off the power and centralising controls for the vertical dive back down, then…...

……..WHAP!

I think the aircraft was coming around to ‘knife’ when very suddenly the ground and horizon did something very peculiar as it took a second or so to register with me – all I could think is a rather feeble ‘this isn’t normal!’. The aircraft had stalled part-way through and flicked onto it’s back and in a heartbeat we were nose straight down picking up speed. Before I could figure out what was happening and manfully chicken-out with a ‘you have control’, Max stepped in with an ‘I’ll take it’ and recovered.

OK – interesting that one!

Max explained that he had done so many stall turns that he found it fairly hard to deliberately cock them up to show students what to do when it goes ‘pear-shaped’, so he thought the best way was to give me a go! Well any time you want help screwing something up Max, just let me know – I’m your man!

Max explained that what had happened is that I was late in reversing the rudder and not quick enough in the reversal. As a result the aircraft had become too slow and had stalled part way around, flopped over on its back and headed vertically down. Max simply closed the throttle and carried out a standard pull to horizontal. I would probably have got there, but not before the aircraft ‘red-lined’!

OK, learned a lot there! I was thinking too hard and running what I was about to do through in my mind first causing me to be too leisurely about the whole thing. I am somewhat comforted by the AOPA book saying that the stall turn was probably the toughest of the basic moves. Well, I have a lot to learn yet, but got some valuable experience from that one.

On the 15 miles back to the airfield, the fuel light started to blink menacingly. Max was fine with it but did say when it went solid red, get a straight in approach and land immediately. As it happened, we were given a standard overhead join as the scheduled flight to the Isle of Man was landing. Max had me carry out a flapless landing what went pretty well, except that the Robin really does not have much room between the relatively slight nose-up flare required and scraping the tail protector, I can tell you!

Again, another good lesson from my point of view, not my performance you understand, but what I have learned.