Well, I have now flown in the Sukhoi twice. Turns out the owner was a National Acro Champion a few years ago in a Pitts and is an IAC judge - Jeffery Poehlmann.
The first ride was mostly me as passenger. We did torque rolls up, backwards and with a wheels up whip stall recovery, snap rolls, hesitation rolls on an upline, tail slide w/ the same kind of inverted whip stall recovery, hammerheads, loops, spins, 1/2 cuban eight, and barrel rolls too. The whip stall recoverys were a little disorienting to say the least. I only flew it to and from the practice area and basicly held on during the maneuvers
..... That was the first day -
then YESTERDAY I got to fly it nearly immediately after takeoff and I practiced Immelmans, 1/2 cubans, loops and one turn spins. I kept rolling at the top a little early and using too much rudder.... and on the spins I kept recovering too soon - he figures it's because I'm used to the SD and it doesn't respond to the inputs near as "crisply" ... When he got bored w/ my futzing around and trying to get the basic maneuvers right he said, "Hey, wanna do a torque roll?" and then "how about I show you a rolling turn". The whip stall recoveries weren't quite so weird as I knew what to expect and could anticipate the movements. We were also going to do a Lomcovak but the cloudage and timing wasn't gonna work and also, I think he was waiting to see what my tolerance to the other kinds of "violent" maneuvers is. Today we might get to do a Lomcovak - at the end of the practice time though in case it does affect me badly. But so far I'm hanging in there with it. We pulled +6Gs and -2Gs. That's not much for a practiced flyer but since I haven't flown acro since January and never pulled 6 Gs before it seemed like plenty to me ................:wink2: when you dive for speed before an Immelman in the Sukhoi you dive to 270 as compared to 145 in the SD - Whooo-hooo.
Also, we're going up in the SD - As he said, I love flying these little planes as he patted on her and grinned and then he looked over at me like OOOPS, I may have just insulted her but ya'know he's right - compared to the higher level acro stuff he's used to it's a baby plane. He's going to show me some things he wants me to be aware of before I start practicing alone. It's good to have an expert mentor who is great fun to spend time with too. His stories of practicing w/ Russians are very funny. At one time Svetlana (last name unspellable at this time) the woman Russiona champion told Jeff, "you should get rid of toy plane and get real plane" - The Russians think of Pitts planes as toys.....
I"m going to write all this down in my log book and get him to sign it
If we get to do the Lomcovak I'll let you know............
