tonycondon
Gastons CRO (Chief Dinner Reservation Officer)
Well the weather today was gorgeous, sunny skies and winds out of the west at under 10 knots. I needed to do some work on the glider to get ready for a test flight tomorrow. I had just gotten the letter from AOPA verifying my non-owned insurance policy had gone through so I called Matt to ask about flying the flybaby.
He couldnt make it into the airport but briefed me on starting procedure. Ive got experience hand-propping so that was no big deal. Also included were a few gotchas to watch out for, like making sure the back of the canopy was latched and not to bump my knee on the throttle when i was getting in. good advice!
I got it fired up and untied with no real trouble, took a nice slow taxi to the end of the runway to make sure i was familiar with everything and to let the engine warm up. It was a bit cold today, around 50 deg so I let the Continental warm up about 10 minutes before take off. It wasnt hard to re-familiarize myself with the cockpit, as I had put in god knows how many hours helping matt get the thing flying again. Of course not nearly as many hours as he did!
Since Matt started flying the flybaby in July I have had many many hours of conversations with him about how it flew, and lots of time observing him flying it, so I was pretty sure what to expect.
Takeoff was fine. Length of time on the runway was probably comparable to the Super Cub without glider. Climb rate was phenomenal. Before I knew it I was at 500 AGL and headed out to the east to see if I could find Matt and his wife riding their tandem bicycle. After some bopping around, including a few moments of brain fart on how to read a sight fuel guage (yes its true we all have an IQ drop when we get in a cockpit), I found them and waved hello.
Landings went well. I did one to the grass infield and another on runway 31. The sink rate sure builds up with power off! Those flying wires dragging out there I suppose. And even though I had seen matt make many approaches and knew that I had to approach like the STS, I still came in shallow and short. Something to work on next time I suppose. I found ground handling to be comparable to the Super Cub.
I didnt get any pictures of course but just wanted to share. My first single seat airplane!
He couldnt make it into the airport but briefed me on starting procedure. Ive got experience hand-propping so that was no big deal. Also included were a few gotchas to watch out for, like making sure the back of the canopy was latched and not to bump my knee on the throttle when i was getting in. good advice!
I got it fired up and untied with no real trouble, took a nice slow taxi to the end of the runway to make sure i was familiar with everything and to let the engine warm up. It was a bit cold today, around 50 deg so I let the Continental warm up about 10 minutes before take off. It wasnt hard to re-familiarize myself with the cockpit, as I had put in god knows how many hours helping matt get the thing flying again. Of course not nearly as many hours as he did!
Since Matt started flying the flybaby in July I have had many many hours of conversations with him about how it flew, and lots of time observing him flying it, so I was pretty sure what to expect.
Takeoff was fine. Length of time on the runway was probably comparable to the Super Cub without glider. Climb rate was phenomenal. Before I knew it I was at 500 AGL and headed out to the east to see if I could find Matt and his wife riding their tandem bicycle. After some bopping around, including a few moments of brain fart on how to read a sight fuel guage (yes its true we all have an IQ drop when we get in a cockpit), I found them and waved hello.
Landings went well. I did one to the grass infield and another on runway 31. The sink rate sure builds up with power off! Those flying wires dragging out there I suppose. And even though I had seen matt make many approaches and knew that I had to approach like the STS, I still came in shallow and short. Something to work on next time I suppose. I found ground handling to be comparable to the Super Cub.
I didnt get any pictures of course but just wanted to share. My first single seat airplane!
My problem is long legs knocking knees on the panel.
