Loop the loop

Started the next sortie with some general ground school about the aerobatics manoeuvres we'd be doing before we set off. This flight would consist of some loops and some aileron rolls. Both of which consist of yours truly flying upside down :-)

Before we would go anywhere though, we had to don our parachutes. I was a little apprehensive because of the fact that the parachute has no reserve in it. I've done over a thousand jumps and am not worried about parachuting....because I know I have a reserve if it all goes wrong. But Ed was going on about how the plane was our reserve.....sorry Ed, don't think you quite get it. The parachute is our reserve if the plane is fucked....what happens if the parachute itself fails. Hmmmmm....anyway, I digress.

We took off (actually I did the take-off, yay) and headed off to the training area. Weather was a little better, clouds were higher than the morning. So were were able to climb and get plenty of height beneath us. We did some slipping stalls first, they were fun and I was able to hold the plane in the stall for ages, although my legs were getting tired cause the rudder is a wee bit heavy.

We then decided we'd do some aero's. Ed showed me the loop first. We would descend and pick up speed to 140, then level, then pull hard hard hard and stop, relax the elevators and float over the top of the loop, then pull a wee bit harder again and level when we completed. So it was my turn.

I was a bit apprehesive with the descent at first. Partly because the illusion with sitting so high is that the nose is diving quite considerably, but it's not really. Then I levelled and pulled hard hard hard and relaxed, floated and then pulled hard again and levelled out at the bottom. Good fun. I did anopther one and I realised that I relaxed a bit too much on the float over the top and then pulled a wee bit too hard on the roll back. But it was still good fun.

The next move was the aileron roll. This consists of a descent to 130, pull level, pull nose up 30 degrees and apply full aileron (no rudder input) so that you roll 360 degrees and end back where you started. A few of those had my stomach wondering why it was left behind a few hundred metres back. So I called it a day and we flew home. But a good intro into aero's and Ed seemed at ease with what I produced saying it's just a case of more practice. Sweet!!!