Twice in a weekend slowly

This Canadian thanksgiving weekend has been the best weather in a long time, my wife is off travelling, and I am going to be very busy at work in the next few weeks, so I went flying again yesterday (Sunday).

I did the pre-flight checkout under long-distance supervision... instead of the instructor shadowing me at my left shoulder, I did it "alone". I suspected and expected, and confirmed later, that he was watching from the office. Excellent teaching teachnique.

The new checklists work well. I led the pre-flight discussion on the take-off schenarios... speeds to maintain, flap retraction, what to do and where to go if the engine dies.

Take-off was a mixture of good&bad. We had a cross-wind from 9 o'clock, I got too fast before we rotated, the left wing lifted and so we were rolling along on the nose-wheel and right main. I got the nose-wheel up, the left wing lowered, and we somehow got off the ground.

Tracking out from the runway was great. I managed the yaw 100%, and we ended up right of the runway. The crosswind drift took me north.

On Saturday I thought my my radio calls were mushy and lacked confidence. Sunday's radio calls were pretty good.

The flying time was all slow flight skills: entering slow flight, leaving slow flight, climbing turns, descending turns, with flaps, without flaps.

And stalls. One really has to work to make this airplane stall decisively. We stalled power-off, we stalled power-on. We stalled in climbing turns.

The "floating leaf" was fun. The quick explanation is that you reduce power to idle, then raise the nose until you are in a stall. Upon stalling you don't lower the nose and break the stall, but keep the stick hardback, keep the stick centred, and use the rudder to control the wing-drop and yaw. It feels like tap-dancing on the rudder pedals. It develops a light touch on the rudder, confidence in ability to control the airplane, and a sense of how to respond quickly to a changing attitude.

On my first try I lasted about 4-5 seconds (it seemed like a lot longer) before I failed to control some yaw, the left wing dropped, the nose dumped over and we entered a spin. Somehow, without analytic thinking, I centred the ailerons, pulled full opposite rudder, pitched down and stopped the spin before it was established, after about a quarter turn, then pulled nose up. In the midst of all this I applied engine power -- totally not required when you're already 80 degrees nose down and gravity is doing a wonderful job of providing more than enough acceleration.

The approach to the airport was simple, altitude control was constant in the approach and throughout the circuit. Much better than ballooning all over the sky a few lessons back.

The landing was OK... the wind pushed out my base leg and I was a little pear-shaped on the start of the final, but not extreme. The flare was my best yet -- we were straight and level about 4 feet off the runway. As the speed decreased the nose dropped faster than I raised the nose, and we made a somewhat fast three-point landing. We were going fast enough that Bendon took control and pulled the nose off the runway to show me the attitude for flying along in ground effect and shedding speed.

Taxi back (taxiing is getting routine), de-brief, pay the bill. I had nowhere to go and they had to wait for the C150 to return, so we pushed the Eclipse back into the hangar and closed out the day in idle chatter about flight in general.