Circuits and Bumps in the Eagle

Yesterday (Wednesday 16th April), I drove to Renton airport after work. Dave was already at the aircraft hangar. He had replaced the fuel drains and done some other work with the airplane. I am reading Alan Cassidy's book "Better Aerobatics" which is supposed to be THE seminal book on flying aerobatics. He stated that one should be grateful to find small snags because this is a chance to fix them before they become big ones! Dave certainly follows that philosophy. That means the Eagle will always be in top shape.

This time I did the pre-flight unaided. It is simple really. We do have a checklist, but I think I was encouraged to memorize the checks and use the checklist as a guide for study and for backup.

One thing I messed up was on the ratchet belt. I didn't do the "two handed spring loaded catch hold" to lengthen the belt. The consequence was that I had to strap in, then get back out and do it under Dave's supervision. Here is a picture of the mechanism taken with my cellphone camera.

This time the start was easy - we had forgotten to have the mixture full in when operating the wobble pump to get a fuel flow indication last time. Another thing I learned was that when the engine is cold, the mixture can be full rich for the start. This is different from every other fuel injected engine I've started (including other IO-360s such as on the Cessna 172 SP and the IO-320 on the Citabria 7KCAB). There the standard procedure was to keep the mixture at idle cut-off and push it in quickly when the engine catches.

Dave said that we would go out to the practice area, do some turns to get the feel again the aircraft and then would head back to Renton for some landings. This seemed like a fine plan for me.

Taxiing was the usual S-turns. I was doing too much of the "S-ing" and Dave told me to "lazy out" the S-turns. More about this later.

The first takeoff wasn't too bad. I realized I could lift off at a much lower speed than I am used to in other aircraft. Rotate speed for a Cessna 182 is around 55 kts, whereas stall speed is 44 kts. The stall speed for the Eagle is 60 kts and one can start the rotate at that speed. With its' light weight and lots of power it is accelerating and gets to climb speed even when rotated at around its stall speed.

I was a little stiff on the controls and wasn't letting the aircraft fly itself. On Dave's prompting I released my death grip on the controls and started flying with a light touch. My turns and coordination became so much better! One reason for the grip on the controls was that I had climbed so quickly I almost busted into class B on the extended upwind (its at 3000 ft).

After steep turns, slow flight and a stall we headed back to Renton. This thing can book. At 24 square it was doing 165 kts easily.

The story on the landings was quite consistent. Doing the downwind at 120 kts, base at 100 and final at 90 kts (slowing to 85 kts over the threshold) mades my approaches look good to Dave. The round out and flare were at the right height. Somehow I had good height judgement without the forward view I am used to. I wasn't turning my head like Dave but I was looking from side to side to do that.

What I was also consistently doing was overcontrolling on the rudder. I needed to just think about the rudder. So even after a nice landing I was swerving all over the place. Dave asked me to slow down on my S-turns on taxiing so that I used the kinds of pressures I would use on the rollout. This would fix the forces in my mind and I wouldn't have the tendency to overcontrol. I need to develop some fast twitch muscles on my legs so that I can have fine motor control to the level desired!

Another thing I needed to correct was to get the stick back all the way. I was hitting the buckle of my seat belt with my wrist due to the way I was holding the stick, I had to do a "grip change" and have my wrist rotated to get the stick the last 2-3 inches back.

On takeoffs I was not putting the "stick all the way forward against the tach" like Dave wanted. I need to get a feel for the tail lifting and how to balance the rearward movement of the stick till the liftoff can begin.

On the last landing the sink rate was high and I didn't have the stick all the way back, so instead of landing slightly tail low as before I landed on the mains. I compounded the error by not having the stick fully back after touchdown. We did a nice couple of porpoises! Stick fully back cured it.

All in all a pretty exhilarating ride. I felt for the first time that in a pinch I could land the aircraft without major damage to it if I needed. Of course I need a lot more refinement before I am able to handle the landings with even normal finesse!