More Laps Around The Patch

After flying with other people for the last couple of weeks, I finally found time to go for myself. I needed to use Richard to help knock off the rust. I really needed the day I had for confidence. After watching everyone else fly, I learned a thing or two. We went out to do some short field take offs and landings, plus a couple of soft field landings.

As usual, while flying 7TY, I started sweating. Maybe it's because it is July and we have had 21 days this year over 100 degrees, but I digress. It seems that the vent on the left seat side doesn't blow very well compared to the right seat side. I know from experience lately that the right side, works well. Maybe I should have written this up. Before this airplane got it's new engine, the vent was making a noise like the stall warning makes, except it made it all of the time. While it was down, it was "fixed". I sure hope that the fix wasn't to just limit the airflow. You know how us fat people like our air.

We got out on the runway and did a short field takeoff first. We used the Charlie taxiway as our 50 ft. obstruction. On a short field takeoff, you want to rotate and use the best angle of climb (Vx) which is about 62 knots in 7TY. This allows you to climb quickly but can cause heating to the engine pretty quickly. So the idea is to climb over the obstacle using Vx but change to Vy (Best rate of climb, which is 74 knots) after you clear it. This gives the engine some air to cool it properly. Treat you engine right or suffer the consequences. The short field landing process is supposed to clear a 50 foot obstruction just off of the end of the runway and then put it down quickly and stop quickly. I hope I never have to do this but it is good to know I can do it.

The soft field landing is for landing on a soft surface. You want to keep the speed as low as possible, the touchdown to be a smooth as possible and keep the nose wheel ooff of the ground for as long as possible (the airplane doesn't need any help flipping itself). My first soft field landing didn't quite go as planned but the next ones were the best I have ever done. It felt good, despite all of the sweating, to finally get this down. I actually had quite a bit of wind today and it helped. I needed to get the crosswind components down better and it kept changing from the left of center to right of center so every landing had a different wind to battle.

I'll see if I can find another video to post but I can't do it right now. I'll update this post later.

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