Anyway, as luck would have it, the weather at Marham was pretty damned good today. My partner in G-AVKI, Adam, said he was taking her up, so I thought I'd join him. We met up early in the afternoon at the fuel bowser and I'd arrived just in time to take her straight off his hands - perfect!
I taxied down 19, pulled off to the hold and completed my pre take-off checks, and then watched the gliding club chipmunk make a bouncy landing which he wisely decided to go-around from. Finally lining up on 01, I opened the taps and headed skywards. Well, it was certainly thermic, I got bounced all over the sky up to about 3000', although things smoothed out from there.
Thermalling gliders meant I couldn't practice aero's in the overhead so I headed for a blue patch of sky 2 miles to the west. After the obligatory HASELL check, I did a quick loop to get my eye in, and then had my first attempt at a reverse half cuban, which is a roll, from which you pull a loop once you're upside down. It didn't go badly at all, but I could have done with a line feature to check as I kept coming out all 'skew wiff'. It was exactly the same story with the standard half cuban (pull a loop and then roll off the top). Outstanding fun though!.
I did this for a while and then thought I'd have another go at a stall turn... Oh dear! I don't know what I did wrong, but it all got horribly out of shape, so I did the 'unusual positions' recovery; chop the throttle, lock the stick and rudder and let things sort themselves out.
I landed after 45 mins with a huge grin on my face! Time was on my side, so after a sit down and drink I had another go. This time though there was more cloud about, so my manoeuvres were done in any gap I could find! This was a great 'chuck-about' flight; loops, rolls, chandelles, half cubans and reverse half cubans, as well as yanking and banking through the cloud valleys. Just brilliant! I did my usual side-slipping power on descent to land. Amazingly this flight was just 30 minutes, but it felt like longer, what a blast!
It looks like AVKI's engine problems have been well and truly put to bed and I now have real confidence in the machine. That, combined with warmer weather and longer days means that I really feel I'm making progress.
I've no doubt that to the trained eye my manoeuvres look ragged and poorly co-ordinated, but what the hell - I don't think I've ever had so much fun in an aeroplane! Roll on the next time (groan...).
I'll try to sort out my camera mount SOON(!) so I can take some footage; in the meantime, here's a picture of AVKI all wrapped up after 4 flights today.
The organisation that had been in our hangar has moved out, so for the moment, we're all on our own with loads of space - very nice it feels too.
Here are some diagrams of the half cuban 8 and reverse half cuban 8 taken from RD Campbell and B Tempest's excellent book - Basic Aerobatics.
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