Last weekend was the fun fly here in Kenora. It was originally going to be in Rainy River (in which I wouldn’t have been able to attend) but due to all the rain their field became flooded so the Kenora club hustled to pull of the event here. On the Friday I was able to get up for a few flights and although I brought my plane out Saturday to get in some flying at the event it was way to windy for me so my plane remained on the ground. As much as I wanted to fly it was still a fantastic day chatting with all the guys and watching planes fly we don’t typically see around here of all sizes. The bigger acrobatic ones were a lot of fun to watch and lit a spark in me as I aspire to be able to build and fly one of them some day!
Unfortunately it has taken me so long to blog about it I can’t recall my learning points, if their were any… and I’m sure their were, from last Friday night. I did get out flying Monday as well where I got in another few flights. Overall it was another fantastic evening of flying; however, I did discover some specific items I need to remember / work on:
- When landing remember to flare the plane right before touch down to ensure I land on my main landing gear (the rear two wheels) by applying a tiny bit of ‘up’ rudder before touching down and then letting the front tire come down. With the way I’ve been doing it, coming in level, my front wheel takes the brunt of the force and could break or cause the plane to nose into the ground if it catches in the grass.
- When banking for my turns I need to make sure my bank angle isn’t to steep for the speed I am at otherwise I am going to stall and plummet to the ground! This especially includes when coming in for a landing with a lower cruising speed; however, I need to make sure I do not cut the throttle and keep as much applied as I can before I get my plane around and lined up for landing.
Pilots get into trouble when manoeuvring for a landing with power at idle when they make steep turns to align themselves with the runway. I definitely made to steep of a turn the one evening when my engine quit as I was to quick, panicked a bit perhaps, and instead of slowly manoeuvring in for the landing I banked hard and pulled around to get in line with the runway which could have easily lead to disaster instead of a save, especially if I wasn’t still on the trainer… and that’s why you start here and build up.
These links explain the issue of slow speed and bank angle as related to stall problems:
http://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/why-does-stall-speed-increase-with-bank-angle/
http://www.experimentalaircraft.info/flight-planning/aircraft-stall-speed-1.php
http://turbineair.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Bank-Angle-vs-stall-speed-2013.pdf
http://krepelka.com/fsweb/lessons/private/privatelessons02.htm