The Rosarita Beach Café

I SOLOED THE 150 SATURDAY!!!

Phil says I was ready to months ago, but I kept procrastinating on my pre-solo written test, and he couldn’t let me go up until his paperwork was in order (stoopid FAA), as much as he may’ve wanted to. But I finally finished it and went up, and it was great!

Speaking of Phil, I have the best flight instructor in the world! His family owns a business in San Diego, and recently they purchased a Debonair to make the trips back and forth easier and cheaper… and last Wednesday, he needed to fly over to pick up his dad, so he called me up and asked me if I wanted to go along.

I, of course, didn’t. He twisted my arm…

Unfortunately, we didn’t make it all the way out to San Diego; it was fogged in and he’s not IFR current. So, we flew out to IPL in El Centro and his dad met us. It was a beautiful flight, most of which I flew… His doesn’t have dual yokes, but he flipped the yoke over to my side for cruising, then back so he could take off and land.

Then, Tuesday, he flew over to KAEG in Albuquerque to check out a Pitts and, again, asked me if I wanted to go! Best guy EVAR. And this time he put me in the left seat. And I totally flew the whole leg back home, from takeoff to landing. And KAEG is not only a towered airport (only my second experience at one), it’s within Albuquerque Int’l’s Class C airspace. It was pretty intense, between flying a high-performance/complex airplane, working the radio with 5 different facilities and trying to pay attention to his instruction while hand-flying through some turbulence over the hills between there and here (he didn’t let me use the autopilot while he was teaching… the bastard). But it was a very satisfying challenge, especially when I made a pretty nice landing when we got back home. And let me just say that when you’re approaching at 70-80 kts and managing power, mixture and prop settings, along with gear and flap extension, things happen fast!

Anyway, I really enjoy this airplane. It has a very solid feel to it, handling-wise (a characteristic Phil says is shared by all Beechcraft, from the little trainers on up the the big turboprop twins) and is very comfortable. In fact, it’s a lot like a Cadillac… heavy, fast and a smooth ride. All it needs is some fuzzy dice and it’ll be perfect.

Aww, yeah!

And only 2 months late… I’m getting better.

Anyway.

First impression: This is a Real Airplane^tm, in it’s most basic form… No electrics, no flaps, basic instrumentation, a big stick coming up from the floor and rudder pedals that must be used (and with authority!).

Second impression: Hand propping an airplane is difficult if your ribs have been subject to a month of bronchitis… I never was able to get it started (which was embarrasing).

I must say, I was surprised at how difficult it was to get the tail off the ground during the takeoff roll… I expected it to be a simple matter of releasing back-pressure on the stick and letting the tail fly itself up, but the Aeronca tail is heavy! It really takes an authoritative shove on the stick to get a proper takeoff attitude; and when you don’t do it properly, you wallow off the ground more than take off from it (my second embarrassment of the day :). One thing that is nice about that heavy tail, though, is that it made it much easier than I anticipated to handle on the ground; plenty of authority for the tailwheel. Of course, not having to S-turn all over the taxiway to see where you’re going helps with ground handling too (the visibilty in the front seat of the Champ is incredible; better than the 150, even).

Now, for the actual trip report:

Wake up early for the hour drive to my instructor’s airport… Fog everywhere. By the time I get there, still fog, but only around the airport. I started thinking someone had it in for me. After waiting around for a while, most of it had burned off, except for a thick bank to the north (which is where we where headed). So my instructor said “Let’s go up and see how far that bank stretches… maybe we can fly over it”. So we did. And we did. Turns out it was just a strip of fog about 5 miles wide, with most of it sitting over a huge dry lakebed; so we figured we’d be safe enough flying over it. So, my first taildragger flight was also my first experience flying VFR on top… It was quite pretty.

After waiting for the fog to burn off, we didn’t make it to the fly-in in time for breakfast (though I did get a doughnut), but it was still a great day… We hit another airport on the way back home, so I got about 2 hours of flight time out of my “1 hour intro flight” birthday present.

I’m going to stick with the 150 to finish my PPL; it’ll keep things simple, plus it’s cheaper than paying for the instruction and plane rental. But the first thing I’m doing after I get my certificate is getting my tailwheel endorsement in the Champ (and I’ll probably go up a few times more for fun before I finish my PPL, just to break things up).

So, the other day I got to ride in a time machine.

This thing is AWESOME. And forward slips in an open cockpit are quite an experience.

And for my birthday, I received a certificate for an hour of tailwheel instruction in an Aeronca Champ that my instructor recently aquired, which promises to be all kinds of fun.

I’d love to give you some details on the plane, Sunni.

50672 (no letters in our N-Number, which is boooring) is a 1969 Cessna 150J. She’s powered by a four-cylinder, 100-hp Continental O-200-A. Cruise is about 95kts (~110mph)… That’s airspeed, of course; winds can cause huge variations in groundspeed.

It’s a two-seater, with an empty weight of, I think, 1065 lbs, and a gross weight of 1600 lbs. After filling the tanks (26 gallons @ 6ish lbs/gallon), you’ve got about 380 lbs usable (down here, we’ll probably rarely run with full tanks, because most places we’ll be flying aren’t that far away, and heat and altitude both affect performance, due to the thinning of the air… density altitude is a bitch).

Anyway, we should be flying soon. We haven’t been, even though he’s owned it for over a month, because as soon as our mechanic inspected it, we had to sink a bunch of money into it (actually, my dad had to sink a bunch of money into it ), and the joint that rebuilt some of the non-functioning instruments has some ridiculous lead times). But it’ll be a nice little airplane when the work’s finished… And anyone who wants to come visit will be welcome to a ride.