An unreal ride in a Pitts Special
Today was a special day in my flying experience: I performed aerobatics for the first time.
I have wanted to experience airborne acro for quite a while, in fact, that was the original reason I went on a bi-plane ride a few years ago, but the acro didn't work out for that flight.
However, today was an entirely different story.
I had picked up a flier for aerobatic rides in the flight school a month or so ago and knew I had to do it. There is an Air Force A-10 pilot, Jim Varden, that has his personal plane based at Williamsburg: a Pitts Special. He flies various air shows around the country in the A-10 and his plane. Check out his site to see the details.
I showed up at the airport just before 10 this morning and found Jim's hangar. He was busy working on a new video recorder system to see how it might work out for our flight. We had some trouble with getting it setup, so unfortunately we were not able to take it with us. Additionally, my camera turned out to be too big to safely take up so we left that behind as well. I had worn cargo pants with the hope that my pockets could be used to stow the camera while I was flying, but the camera was just too large. That was the only thing that didn't go well. I didn't get to 'document' my flight at all. I hope to get a copy of another flight of his some day to at least give me an idea of what the video looks like from the cockpit.
After we played with the camera for a bit, Jim asked me about my flight experience. I told him and he said it was likely I wouldn't have a problem with most of the maneuvers, but that if I did, he'd hand the plane over to me and let me reset my internal "gyros" for a bit before we went on to the next "stunt".
He started walking me through the maneuver line-up using a small model airplane. We went over how rolls, loops, spins, cuban-8's, tumbles, hammerhead stalls, and torque rolls would work. I started getting a little nervous during that conversation, since it really sunk in that those maneuvers are based on control inputs I learned to avoid in my training. But that is the point for the flight: to feel what it is like to push plane and pilot to their limit (or, I should say, push ME to the limit - certainly not Jim and the Pitts).
When performing acro dual (with two people) you are required to wear parachutes, so Jim walked me through that and how to egress the airplane if the stuff really hit the fan. He showed me how to enter the cockpit (the passenger sits in the front seat) and how to use the belts to get nicely cinched into the plane. This is really important when doing acro because there are plenty of times that you have negative G's - you don't want to be hitting your head on the canopy. In fact, a few times during the flight I needed to re-cinch the belts as I settled into the seat more.
Jim hopped in, started the engine after a quick hand-turn to get the prop past its compression stroke, and we were taxiing out to the runway. Since this is a tail dragger we performed S-turns to allow us to see in front (the cowling blocks the view directly in front). After the run-up engine check and waiting for a 172 to exit the runway we were off on 31. We climbed out at 100-120kts to 4500' and headed to the SW to the area over Melville, a small grass strip runway across the James River. Jim let me get a feel for straight and level flight and 45-degree-bank turns. The controls are wonderfully sensitive. The tiniest little bit of input causes a reaction in the attitude of the plane. Even though Jim told me it wouldn't take much input, I still spent about a second over-steering in my first time on the controls. The rudder was especially responsive - I ended up not using it consciously - I would just think about putting in rudder and I'd end up with enough. :)
He then introduced me to my first acrobatic maneuver - the roll.
He smoothly pulled up to a 20-degree pitch, then brought in a bit of left roll and we started rotating. Before I knew it we were upside-down, in the middle of a barrel roll, still feeling 1G of force - and a moment later we were back upright. The grin on my face was instant. I loved it. It was a very smooth maneuver, and a whole lot of fun to see the entire earth rotate up over my head and then back down below. I came into the flight thinking I'd have a good time, but it was even better than I had guessed.
Jim did a few more, working up to a near max-roll-rate roll on the 4th one. We did an aileron roll or two and then a 4-point roll where you pause after each 90-degrees of roll. When we would pause at the inverted position the tightness of my lap belt was tested - I was hanging in it. All of them were a blast and, since I was doing OK, we decided to move on to a few other maneuvers.
Next we did a loop. This had us pushing down to get 180kts, pulling up to around 3G's and bringing it over the top. With 3G's in I could feel my cheeks sliding down over my teeth. At the top the G's are pretty light and I leaned my head way back to get a view of the ground "above". In quite a few maneuvers I would just lean my head back - there was a cushion of some sort back there. I soaked in the view of the sky and earth swapping in and out.
After the loop we moved on to the cuban-8. This is basically using 2 loops to scribe a figure 8 in the sky. You start on the first loop and when you are on the down side of it you roll 180-degrees and setup to do a loop in the opposite direction. We did 1 or 2 of these and it was time for a reset and belt re-tightening. The reset was for me to get my wits about me again - all the over and under was a little dizzying after a bit - and the re-tightening was needed because I had settled into the seat cushion a bit.
After I felt back to normal again (which was accomplished with about 15 seconds of straight and level flight while looking at the horizon or the ground right below me) we started on the Hammerhead stall.
The Hammerhead stall is one of my favorites to see at air shows. I always like the low speed maneuvers when I have seen them from the ground in the past. I was excited that I was finally getting to see one from inside the airplane.
We started up into the vertical; pulling a few G's to get there. We came up to 90-degrees of pitch and let the airplane slow to around 40 or so kts. Then Jim kicked in the left rudder and we pivoted on the center-of-gravity until we were pointing straight down at the earth. After gaining a little speed it was a few G's back to straight-and-level flight. I loved it. During the pivot Jim had me look over to the left to see the reference instrument off the wing (I am not sure what it is called - update thanks to Tim P.: it is a "sighting device") that helps you line up on the horizon. From that direction there was a terrific view of the earth coming around to get in front of the nose as we pointed straight down.
Next were the torque rolls. This one it starts like the Hammerhead, except we let the speed drop so low at the top that the torque of the engine takes over a starts causing the airplane to roll (without us telling it to with the ailerons). We let it roll for a few turns as it starts to sink into a tail slide and then Jim put in the inputs to kick the airplane nose over, allowing us to start flying again. When the nose kicked over it was fairly abrupt - we went from pointing up to pointing down in a half a second or so.
Next we did a spin. This was one I definitely wanted to do since I have never been in a spin before. We pulled up, slowed down, induced the spin and started a spiral descent with at least 30-40 degrees nose down toward the ground. I was surprised by the rotational speed and how low the nose was. But with the correct input (idle throttle, opposite rudder) we came out of the spin instantly and pulled up to level flight. We did another one, this time "aggravated" (meaning the wrong inputs were put in during the spin to intentionally cause it to speed up).
For the grand finale, we did a tumbling maneuver (kind of like this one). This one Jim called the right-right tumble. For this we went vertical and as we slowed Jim put in forward stick and right aileron with right rudder. This caused us to tumble (not completely nose over tail, a little bit flatter than that) in such a way that I had no idea which way was up and which was down. I think we started the tumble by falling backward and then around to a right-side-up attitude, but there was so much attitude change there was no way I could keep track. It was incredible - very dramatic.
Once or twice during the flight we'd pause for a bit for me to regain my "balance" and reduce any dizziness. After the tumble (or maybe 2 of them) I let Jim know I was bascially finished. My eyes were cross-eyed for about 3 seconds after we recovered from the tumble.
I really wanted to do more but my body was telling me that was enough.
We started heading back to the airport, but I couldn't resist asking to take over to do another 6 or so rolls on the way back.
Entering the traffic pattern with Jim back at the controls, I was focusing on the ground in the distance to settle my stomach. At one point though, I glanced back at the instrument panel to see what our airspeed was. All of the sudden I realized I had just automatically swallowed hard to stop a little breakfast from coming up. :) I was glad we were done for the day because another maneuver surely would have made my stomach fully rebel.
Jim ended the flight with a super tight traffic pattern and a slip down to about 5' AGL before touching back down on 31. The slip was to provide for a good view of the runway beside the cowling.
We taxied back to parking and when the canopy opened the fresh air had me feeling all good again (though not good enough to go back up right away).
It took me about 5 hours to totally recover - both from the mild nausea and, far more importantly, the exhilarating high of my first time experiencing aerobatics.
I have wanted to experience airborne acro for quite a while, in fact, that was the original reason I went on a bi-plane ride a few years ago, but the acro didn't work out for that flight.
However, today was an entirely different story.
I had picked up a flier for aerobatic rides in the flight school a month or so ago and knew I had to do it. There is an Air Force A-10 pilot, Jim Varden, that has his personal plane based at Williamsburg: a Pitts Special. He flies various air shows around the country in the A-10 and his plane. Check out his site to see the details.
I showed up at the airport just before 10 this morning and found Jim's hangar. He was busy working on a new video recorder system to see how it might work out for our flight. We had some trouble with getting it setup, so unfortunately we were not able to take it with us. Additionally, my camera turned out to be too big to safely take up so we left that behind as well. I had worn cargo pants with the hope that my pockets could be used to stow the camera while I was flying, but the camera was just too large. That was the only thing that didn't go well. I didn't get to 'document' my flight at all. I hope to get a copy of another flight of his some day to at least give me an idea of what the video looks like from the cockpit.
After we played with the camera for a bit, Jim asked me about my flight experience. I told him and he said it was likely I wouldn't have a problem with most of the maneuvers, but that if I did, he'd hand the plane over to me and let me reset my internal "gyros" for a bit before we went on to the next "stunt".
He started walking me through the maneuver line-up using a small model airplane. We went over how rolls, loops, spins, cuban-8's, tumbles, hammerhead stalls, and torque rolls would work. I started getting a little nervous during that conversation, since it really sunk in that those maneuvers are based on control inputs I learned to avoid in my training. But that is the point for the flight: to feel what it is like to push plane and pilot to their limit (or, I should say, push ME to the limit - certainly not Jim and the Pitts).
When performing acro dual (with two people) you are required to wear parachutes, so Jim walked me through that and how to egress the airplane if the stuff really hit the fan. He showed me how to enter the cockpit (the passenger sits in the front seat) and how to use the belts to get nicely cinched into the plane. This is really important when doing acro because there are plenty of times that you have negative G's - you don't want to be hitting your head on the canopy. In fact, a few times during the flight I needed to re-cinch the belts as I settled into the seat more.
Jim hopped in, started the engine after a quick hand-turn to get the prop past its compression stroke, and we were taxiing out to the runway. Since this is a tail dragger we performed S-turns to allow us to see in front (the cowling blocks the view directly in front). After the run-up engine check and waiting for a 172 to exit the runway we were off on 31. We climbed out at 100-120kts to 4500' and headed to the SW to the area over Melville, a small grass strip runway across the James River. Jim let me get a feel for straight and level flight and 45-degree-bank turns. The controls are wonderfully sensitive. The tiniest little bit of input causes a reaction in the attitude of the plane. Even though Jim told me it wouldn't take much input, I still spent about a second over-steering in my first time on the controls. The rudder was especially responsive - I ended up not using it consciously - I would just think about putting in rudder and I'd end up with enough. :)
He then introduced me to my first acrobatic maneuver - the roll.
He smoothly pulled up to a 20-degree pitch, then brought in a bit of left roll and we started rotating. Before I knew it we were upside-down, in the middle of a barrel roll, still feeling 1G of force - and a moment later we were back upright. The grin on my face was instant. I loved it. It was a very smooth maneuver, and a whole lot of fun to see the entire earth rotate up over my head and then back down below. I came into the flight thinking I'd have a good time, but it was even better than I had guessed.
Jim did a few more, working up to a near max-roll-rate roll on the 4th one. We did an aileron roll or two and then a 4-point roll where you pause after each 90-degrees of roll. When we would pause at the inverted position the tightness of my lap belt was tested - I was hanging in it. All of them were a blast and, since I was doing OK, we decided to move on to a few other maneuvers.
Next we did a loop. This had us pushing down to get 180kts, pulling up to around 3G's and bringing it over the top. With 3G's in I could feel my cheeks sliding down over my teeth. At the top the G's are pretty light and I leaned my head way back to get a view of the ground "above". In quite a few maneuvers I would just lean my head back - there was a cushion of some sort back there. I soaked in the view of the sky and earth swapping in and out.
After the loop we moved on to the cuban-8. This is basically using 2 loops to scribe a figure 8 in the sky. You start on the first loop and when you are on the down side of it you roll 180-degrees and setup to do a loop in the opposite direction. We did 1 or 2 of these and it was time for a reset and belt re-tightening. The reset was for me to get my wits about me again - all the over and under was a little dizzying after a bit - and the re-tightening was needed because I had settled into the seat cushion a bit.
After I felt back to normal again (which was accomplished with about 15 seconds of straight and level flight while looking at the horizon or the ground right below me) we started on the Hammerhead stall.
The Hammerhead stall is one of my favorites to see at air shows. I always like the low speed maneuvers when I have seen them from the ground in the past. I was excited that I was finally getting to see one from inside the airplane.
We started up into the vertical; pulling a few G's to get there. We came up to 90-degrees of pitch and let the airplane slow to around 40 or so kts. Then Jim kicked in the left rudder and we pivoted on the center-of-gravity until we were pointing straight down at the earth. After gaining a little speed it was a few G's back to straight-and-level flight. I loved it. During the pivot Jim had me look over to the left to see the reference instrument off the wing (I am not sure what it is called - update thanks to Tim P.: it is a "sighting device") that helps you line up on the horizon. From that direction there was a terrific view of the earth coming around to get in front of the nose as we pointed straight down.
Next were the torque rolls. This one it starts like the Hammerhead, except we let the speed drop so low at the top that the torque of the engine takes over a starts causing the airplane to roll (without us telling it to with the ailerons). We let it roll for a few turns as it starts to sink into a tail slide and then Jim put in the inputs to kick the airplane nose over, allowing us to start flying again. When the nose kicked over it was fairly abrupt - we went from pointing up to pointing down in a half a second or so.
Next we did a spin. This was one I definitely wanted to do since I have never been in a spin before. We pulled up, slowed down, induced the spin and started a spiral descent with at least 30-40 degrees nose down toward the ground. I was surprised by the rotational speed and how low the nose was. But with the correct input (idle throttle, opposite rudder) we came out of the spin instantly and pulled up to level flight. We did another one, this time "aggravated" (meaning the wrong inputs were put in during the spin to intentionally cause it to speed up).
For the grand finale, we did a tumbling maneuver (kind of like this one). This one Jim called the right-right tumble. For this we went vertical and as we slowed Jim put in forward stick and right aileron with right rudder. This caused us to tumble (not completely nose over tail, a little bit flatter than that) in such a way that I had no idea which way was up and which was down. I think we started the tumble by falling backward and then around to a right-side-up attitude, but there was so much attitude change there was no way I could keep track. It was incredible - very dramatic.
Once or twice during the flight we'd pause for a bit for me to regain my "balance" and reduce any dizziness. After the tumble (or maybe 2 of them) I let Jim know I was bascially finished. My eyes were cross-eyed for about 3 seconds after we recovered from the tumble.
I really wanted to do more but my body was telling me that was enough.
We started heading back to the airport, but I couldn't resist asking to take over to do another 6 or so rolls on the way back.
Entering the traffic pattern with Jim back at the controls, I was focusing on the ground in the distance to settle my stomach. At one point though, I glanced back at the instrument panel to see what our airspeed was. All of the sudden I realized I had just automatically swallowed hard to stop a little breakfast from coming up. :) I was glad we were done for the day because another maneuver surely would have made my stomach fully rebel.
Jim ended the flight with a super tight traffic pattern and a slip down to about 5' AGL before touching back down on 31. The slip was to provide for a good view of the runway beside the cowling.
We taxied back to parking and when the canopy opened the fresh air had me feeling all good again (though not good enough to go back up right away).
It took me about 5 hours to totally recover - both from the mild nausea and, far more importantly, the exhilarating high of my first time experiencing aerobatics.
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