Steep Turns

I'm finally out knocking the rust off of my skills. I went flying with Richard on Sunday. As an added bonus, we took my boss's son and her husband with us. Luckily I was flying N733NB because it can carry a lot more weight and I could feel the difference a couple of hundred extra pounds in the back made. The one good thing was that I didn't need quite as much back pressure on the yoke while doing the steep turns because I had so much weight that far back. The farther back you go with weight, the more tail heavy the airplane gets. That also means that the nose gets a little lighter and easier to pull back on the yoke. Just don't go too far. That is part of the weight and balance equation and you don't want to get out of the envelope.

After we took off, we headed east then north. We got out to an area where we could do some high altitude (4000 feet) work. I did some steep bank turns at 45 degrees. After you get past 30 degrees you start loosing lift so you need some back pressure on the elevators to maintain altitude. Once I rolled past 30 degrees, I added the back pressure to maintain altitude. My requirements were to roll out within 10 degrees on the heading and no more than 100 feet either way of my starting altitude. This was a lot harder that I thought it would be. Once I got the hang of it, I had to be careful of overdoing it because of my 2 passengers.

Next we headed off to Sherman to do some touch and goes. The first one was OK but the second one sucked so we headed over to Grayson county to do a couple more. Both were mediocre at best. I guess that means that we'll be back doing touch and goes for the next time out.

Finally we needed to head back to McKinney so we made a dash south. when were were about 10 miles out, we called the tower and announced our intentions. I got to do an approach I have never done before at McKinney. Since the winds were out of the north we were landing runway 35. The normal traffic pattern for 35 is right hand traffic, which puts all of the traffic east of the airport. Since I was coming in from the northwest, I was given a left hand approach (over town). No big deal because we do right and left hand traffic all of the time but it was just a different picture I had never seen before. We landed and got off of the runway quickly then taxied to parking on the north ramp.

Both passengers seemed to be OK but didn't like the steep turns. It was bumpy also but that still wasn't as bad as the steep turns. I guess it is all a matter of perspective. I kind of liked the steep turns, but I also had the yoke in my hands.

Update:

I ran across this on YouTube. It is a really good piece on Harrison Ford. I loved the line "I'm just another Pilot".

My E-logbook