What a beautiful day to be in the air. The 152 starter repair was complete by 9:30 and I showed up at the hangar for my preflight at 10:30. Fletch and I were taxiing by 10:50 and enroute to Hana by 11am. It was an absolutely perfect day.
I kept my hand on the throttle until we got to Opana Point, and as soon as I took it off, Fletch pulled carb heat and reduced throttle to idle and told me to let him know if I need the power back. I did my ABCs and picked a suitable field. The field I chose had a gulch running up the middle of it, but we would have glided uphill and into the wind and I think we might have walked away, unlike my first exercise there.
I'm glad we're doing these so much.
As we proceeded toward Hana, we practiced slow flight and managed to hold heading and altitude at 55KIAS, very good. More dutch rolls on the way out, those were looking better than the last flight too.
Fletch told me we're polishing now. I was encouraged.
We flew wide of the Hana airport to make a standard 45° downwind entry, announcing our position. The first landing was a full stop on RWY 8 so I could run in and use the potty ;)
We were sharing the field with a brand new Blue Hawaiian AStar helicopter that was practicing autorotating into the grass. Kind of eery to watch a $4 million helicopter just plummet out of the sky. Their vertical speed is probably over -2500fpm all the way to the last 50' where they flare and arrest the descent.
We waited for a little squall to blow through then took off to practice the pattern. Had an excellent day of practice with all kinds of variations. I flew my first engine outs in the pattern, and learned a very valuable lesson. As we were on the downwind leg at 800' I saw Fletch pull carb heat and chop the power. No problem, from 800' I have the field easy. I pitch for 60KIAS and aim for the numbers, keeping my airspeed at 60. As we get to the numbers, I am a little low and make turn to final too sharp. The result was a near 30° bank at 55KIAS 100' off the ground. That was very, very stupid.
The lesson that was learned is this: if you're 60KIAS and no power, you're coming down. There's no sense risking your neck to fly your (emergency) approach across the threshold. Turn early and set up high and use as much runway as you need. It doesn't matter if you touchdown 1200' down the (2500') runway. If you're way high, full flaps at 60KIAS will bring you down like a rock.
We did 2 more and I landed the last one nicely. It was a good lesson.
Next we did approaches to land with no flaps. It was really pretty cool...you pitch for airspeed (which is a little faster with no flaps) and slip to get down. This is a cross controlled maneuver, where you bank into the crosswind and apply opposite rudder to maintain the centerline. This brings so much of the side of the airplane into the relative wind that the drag is HUGE. You come down as if you had full flaps on, even though the airspeed stays relatively low.
8 landings and then we headed back up the coast to Kahului for a touch and go on runway 5 followed by a full stop on 5.
8 in 2.0
Posted by johnpeace at December 12, 2003 05:59 PM