EdFred
Taxi to Parking
We were about to eat dinner yesterday at mom and dad's for Father's Day, and also my brother's 18th birthday, and the topic came up that neither my grandmother (who will turn 80 in August) nor my brother had ever been in a small single plane before. Yes, I know, I've had the plane over a year, and they should have gotten a ride before this, but I digress. Finished up dinner and we all head out to the airport. The windsock was limp and there were few clouds at 5,000 - very few.
Grandma was the first to get in the plane, and she hopped right up on the wing and I get her buckled in, and gave her an abbreviated briefing. I threw a couple of forward rolls of the trim wheel before take off. 80mph or so in the Cherokee gets a pretty steep climb-out angle, and I wanted to keep climbs and descents at 300fpm or less for her. She'll deny to her dying day that she wasn't scared, but she was very silent the whole time we were up - and she's never really that silent when you talk to her. So I made sure to have smooth transitions, banks kept less than 15 degrees - even when reentering the pattern, and a very shallow approach path. Not my best landing, it wasa bit on the firm side, but with no balloning and on the center line. It couldn't have been too bad for her though, because the flight closed with "You're a good pilot" and evidently on the ride hom with mom and dad she wouldn't stop talking about it.
Ok, little brother's turn, and time for some fun. Hehe. Trim wheel back to somewhere between a Vx and Vy climbout. Throttle full, 3,900 feet of runway in front of us, and here we go. Climbed into ground effect, and with only 2 people in the plane it just wants to jump off the runway. Not this time. Kept the plane about 5'-8' off the runway for the entire 3,900' length before letting Bernoulli do his thing. 1,800+ fpm on the climbout and he was loving it. Took him up to about 5,000' feet or so. Gave him some steep 2G turns, showed him a power on stall, and a power off stall (w/ no flap extention) so he knew what they were talking about when they said "the airplane stalled" and out of the second stall, I just nosed it over into a dive (within legal limits at least) for some fun, pulled a couple G's on when when started to pull out of the dive and then gave him a version of the poor man's vomit comet at the top of the climb. "Oh, that was awesome I love that feeling." So we did it a couple more times and zipped on back to the field for a perfect landing.
Grandma was the first to get in the plane, and she hopped right up on the wing and I get her buckled in, and gave her an abbreviated briefing. I threw a couple of forward rolls of the trim wheel before take off. 80mph or so in the Cherokee gets a pretty steep climb-out angle, and I wanted to keep climbs and descents at 300fpm or less for her. She'll deny to her dying day that she wasn't scared, but she was very silent the whole time we were up - and she's never really that silent when you talk to her. So I made sure to have smooth transitions, banks kept less than 15 degrees - even when reentering the pattern, and a very shallow approach path. Not my best landing, it wasa bit on the firm side, but with no balloning and on the center line. It couldn't have been too bad for her though, because the flight closed with "You're a good pilot" and evidently on the ride hom with mom and dad she wouldn't stop talking about it.
Ok, little brother's turn, and time for some fun. Hehe. Trim wheel back to somewhere between a Vx and Vy climbout. Throttle full, 3,900 feet of runway in front of us, and here we go. Climbed into ground effect, and with only 2 people in the plane it just wants to jump off the runway. Not this time. Kept the plane about 5'-8' off the runway for the entire 3,900' length before letting Bernoulli do his thing. 1,800+ fpm on the climbout and he was loving it. Took him up to about 5,000' feet or so. Gave him some steep 2G turns, showed him a power on stall, and a power off stall (w/ no flap extention) so he knew what they were talking about when they said "the airplane stalled" and out of the second stall, I just nosed it over into a dive (within legal limits at least) for some fun, pulled a couple G's on when when started to pull out of the dive and then gave him a version of the poor man's vomit comet at the top of the climb. "Oh, that was awesome I love that feeling." So we did it a couple more times and zipped on back to the field for a perfect landing.
