Southend and more Aerobatics - Sunday 7th July 2013

Southend Flying Club C152 Aerobat

What a great day Sunday. In spite of a little haze, the current period of high atmospheric pressure remained and the weather was lovely and warm with very little cloud. I was headed over to Southend for another aerobatic fix. I soon realised I wasn’t the only one going towards Southend as traffic on the A127 was rather slow to say the least. Door to door it took me about 2 hours to get there. Oh well, on the positive side I was going flying what could be better and the temperature according to my car was 28 degrees coming into the Airport….. Nice!

Pete the flying instructor there is such a top guy. He really is. His style makes you feel completely at ease and I think it pays off for the student. Its relaxed but effective. Once all the checks had been done, off we headed from runway 06 out to the inactive danger area D138. This seems to be the popular playground for these aerobatic  lessons. I think this is due to the fact that people (pilots that is) generally avoid these areas like the plague so it should (in theory) mean less traffic avoidance action required.

Anyway for this session I really wanted to do some aileron rolls so that was the focus for the 45 minute session. I absolutely loved it, I really did and unlike the first session of aerobatics (which was mainly focused on inside loops)I  didn’t once feel in the slightest bit queasy. I had read up on the generic procedure beforehand and it was kind of close to how Pete showed me. Basically, this is roughly how it went on the day (btw – always seek proper instruction from a qualified flying instructor… always!)

• Throttle back to 2100 rpm
• Dive keeping wings level to 115 Kts
• Sharp pull up to about 30 Degrees
• Full throttle
• Neutralise yoke (ailerons and pitch)
• Full left ailerons (left roll)
• Going round it was a little right (top) rudder (keeping the nose from dropping)
• Approaching inverted a little forward on the yoke (as above)
• Coming back to the start position a little left (top) rudder (as above).
• Ease back on the throttle

Of course it takes a few of these to get it going well as like anything it is an unusual attitude (lets be real, you don’t fly around like that you do) and so you have to learn how much pressure to apply through a little trial and error and repetition. For example, its common to apply too much forward pressure when inverted (over enthusiasm I guess in keeping the nose up) which is what I did. I also applied too much (left) top rudder when approaching the start position from being inverted. A couple of tries and climbing back up to 3000 ft thinking about it puts it right though and my last one was really good. Pete seemed very pleased with it anyway.

Coming back to land the landing went well and we taxied back to Southend Flying School. Brakes on, brakes off 12:45 to 13:30. Superb!

HOURS = 48:35 DUAL + 18:50 PILOT IN COMMAND [P1]
Total Time = 67:25