Remos G3

Our flying club had the great pleasure of getting to try out a new airplane today. The way the story goes is that I was reading my AOPA Flight Training magazine and came across an article about places to train for the sport pilot rating. The sport pilot rating is a more restrictive license than a private pilot but has some other advantages that offset the restrictions. In the article they named the US Flight Academy in Denton Texas as a place that offered an accelerated course in the sport pilot rating. I had a weekend off (Hard to believe, huh?) and drove up to Denton to check out the facility. While there I was able to sit in one of their Remos G3 light sport aircraft. The weight restrictions for a LSA are that the gross weight cannot exceed 1320 lbs. Our Cessna 150's are a lot heavier than that and have a smaller usable weight than the Remos G3 does. They claim to have a 695 lb usable weight where our C150s have about 470 lb usable weight. When you are as big as I am, an extra 225 lbs goes a long way. If you do the weight and balance on a C150 for me and my instructor, we can put about 5.5 lbs of fuel in and be at gross weight. The Remos can not only take both of us and a full tank but it leaves us over 125 lbs for other stuff.

We gave away a couple of demo rides to club members and both of the lucky winners are still raving about everything from how fast it climbs to the view from the cockpit. I was lucky enough to get one of the rides and I'll be making a trip to Denton soon myself. Below are some pictures from today.

My E-Logbook

I Need Practice

After a grueling month I had to get back into the swing of flying. I knew that March was going to be tough but I really didn't expect it to be as bad as it was. I had one last obligation to my former employer and it was a whole week in Indianapolis. Of course in that business, one week on show site means at least a week of pre-production and then at least a week of post-production. I have a very challenging new job and all of the added stress of finishing this one last task took it's toll on me. To make things worse, I got home on Monday night only to turn around Tuesday and get on a plane to San Francisco for the night, attend a meeting the next day and fly back that night. Enough of the whining.

I finally got back in an airplane on Saturday. I was supposed to go on a cross country but I didn't have time to get with my instructor to adequately plan it. So I didn't get a sign off to fly the cross country but I did go and do some touch and goes just to get the cobwebs cleaned.


I couldn't have asked for a better day (actually I could have but I won't complain). It was in the 60's, not a cloud in the sky and the winds were almost non existent. This is more of a problem than I would have figured. Without any wind, I was carrying just a little more ground speed that I usually do. On my last cross country, when I landed in McKinney, I had about a 10 - 15 knot headwind and when I touched down, my ground speed was so slow that I had to add power to get off of the runway on to the taxiway. That was not the case this time. Several other little small things changed without any wind. I flared just a touch high and didn't get the sink I was used to so I dropped harder than I wanted on my last 2 landings. I knew I was going to have a bumpy landing when I heard the stall warning go off about 3 feet of of the ground. After my 5th landing I asked for a full stop landing and taxied to parking. I did notice that the tower has changed the way they tell us to taxi. When I requested taxi instructions for take off, I got "Cleared to taxi to runway 17 via taxiway alpha." We used to get "Cleared to taxi runway 17." It seems that the FAA wants the taxi instructions to be very clear.

One nice note was that after 5 months, we finally got our damaged 172 back in the air. N737TY is finally flying once again. It has to have 10 hours put on it without touch and goes to get everything seated and then the oil gets changed and can be put back into "full" service. Here is a shot of the first takeoff as a rented airplane.

It will be good to have a choice now to fly on weekends. We are looking into another 172 to buy and if that happens, I may be able to get an airplane on a weekend without having to reserve it a month in advance.

My E-logbook

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