Friday, August 19, 2011
Becoming The Master
(2)
Back from the fridge with beer #4 at 1515. Sip. Yum! Listening to Mozart Piano Concerto #12, buzzing contentedly. Now listening to Piano Concerto #21. This brings me to the end of pre-planned stuff. From now on we'll just have to see what bubbles up, ala last week. Hmm... Back from the fridge with beer #4, buzzing beautifully. Sip. Ok, I like the 'stream of consciousness' theme about flying airplanes, so I'll continue for a while.
Most of flying is (tap) 'self-taught.' (faint boom). First they teach you how to maintain altitude; then they teach you how to turn. Then they teach you aerodynamic stalls and stall recovery.Then they teach you how to take off and land. Those are the basics. Once you can take off, fly straight and level, turn, and land, they 'solo' you. If you survive, they then teach you the more sophisticated stuff. Learning to fly is learning how not to crash and burn. They teach you a lot of other stuff too, of course, like, for example, what to do if the engine quits (pray). But they don't teach you how to fly upside down. You have to learn that on your own tab. (listening to AntiSemitic Music by Karajan. Naughty.) So, one fine day, when I was a part-time flight flight instructor at Littleton Airport I jumped into our Citabria (5087X?) and climbed to about 8 thousand feet ASL. I 'cleared the area,' accelerated to maneuvering speed (120) in a slight dive, then rolled inverted. Sudden chaos!
Hanging by my seat belt... controls inverted... nose low... very noisy... and then I looked at the instrument panel: Oops. The airspeed indicator was pegged on the red line (160? 180?). I was in control of an airplane which would soon disintegrate unless speed was reduced! I closed the throttle and rolled back to the normal attitude. The stout Citabria hung together through it all and I survived to write this blog. I would later conclude that an airplane with a flat-bottomed wing needed to be flown in a very nose-high attitude (angle of attack) while inverted in order to maintain altitude and airspeed.
But that was only the beginning of my self-taught course in aerobatics. I would eventually teach myself spins, rolls (both 'slow' and 'snap') split-S's, hammerheads, lazy eights, etc. And once I learned all that I stopped, satisfied that I was The Master. And I was. (boom)
Back from the fridge with beer #4 at 1515. Sip. Yum! Listening to Mozart Piano Concerto #12, buzzing contentedly. Now listening to Piano Concerto #21. This brings me to the end of pre-planned stuff. From now on we'll just have to see what bubbles up, ala last week. Hmm... Back from the fridge with beer #4, buzzing beautifully. Sip. Ok, I like the 'stream of consciousness' theme about flying airplanes, so I'll continue for a while.
Most of flying is (tap) 'self-taught.' (faint boom). First they teach you how to maintain altitude; then they teach you how to turn. Then they teach you aerodynamic stalls and stall recovery.Then they teach you how to take off and land. Those are the basics. Once you can take off, fly straight and level, turn, and land, they 'solo' you. If you survive, they then teach you the more sophisticated stuff. Learning to fly is learning how not to crash and burn. They teach you a lot of other stuff too, of course, like, for example, what to do if the engine quits (pray). But they don't teach you how to fly upside down. You have to learn that on your own tab. (listening to AntiSemitic Music by Karajan. Naughty.) So, one fine day, when I was a part-time flight flight instructor at Littleton Airport I jumped into our Citabria (5087X?) and climbed to about 8 thousand feet ASL. I 'cleared the area,' accelerated to maneuvering speed (120) in a slight dive, then rolled inverted. Sudden chaos!
Hanging by my seat belt... controls inverted... nose low... very noisy... and then I looked at the instrument panel: Oops. The airspeed indicator was pegged on the red line (160? 180?). I was in control of an airplane which would soon disintegrate unless speed was reduced! I closed the throttle and rolled back to the normal attitude. The stout Citabria hung together through it all and I survived to write this blog. I would later conclude that an airplane with a flat-bottomed wing needed to be flown in a very nose-high attitude (angle of attack) while inverted in order to maintain altitude and airspeed.
But that was only the beginning of my self-taught course in aerobatics. I would eventually teach myself spins, rolls (both 'slow' and 'snap') split-S's, hammerheads, lazy eights, etc. And once I learned all that I stopped, satisfied that I was The Master. And I was. (boom)
