MORE PRACTICE IN THE STEARMAN

Sunday 30th January 2011

A long weekend at the beach and a chance to go up in the Stearman again.  Instructor Pete put me back in the front seat for this flight after my little mishap the last time.  After Friday night's storm the weather was now fine but a bit breezy with a 230º, 15 knot wind on the surface and 20 knots at 1000'.  Not much of a cross wind then but any gusts could be interesting.
We got a clearance over to Matakana Island for a bit of handling practice.  My take-off wasn't too bad - fairly straight and remembering to put on plenty of right rudder but I did drift off the centre line on climb out due both to the wind and my relative inexperience (I was concentrating on holding a nose attitude for 65 knots and keeping balanced and didn't notice the drift).  Once over Matakana Pete got me to do a lot of medium turns - 360 left then right and after that a series of 180s left then right.  I thought I was doing a bit better than before but was losing and gaining a bit of height in some of the turns.  I could blame the gusty wind for some of that but that's no excuse, really.  I should aim to be as accurate as possible.  (The view was superb, too, and that could be a distracting factor).
After so many turns I had lost count we were back to the airport for a few circuits.  Again, a bit better than before but my legs are still on the lazy side.  That should bet better with practice, though.  By the third circuit my (injured) right calf was aching significantly and I was pleased to hear Pete call for a full stop.  Thanks Pete, a pretty good workout and I hope to do better next time - in two weeks, weather permitting.

Sorry, folks, no photos this time as I had no camera with me.  A shame, because there was a Trojan at Classic Flyers which would have been great to get a snap of.