Lesson 2 - Basic Flight Maneuvers

After a day and a half of recovery from my first flight, I arrive at the airport once again. The first item on the agenda for the day is to preflight the aircraft. Last time my instructor went through the pre-flight and explained what he was doing while I followed along with the checklist and asked questions. This time he watched me as I did the preflight. One mistake I made was that I thought I had turned all the lights on the aircraft. As I walked around, because we were in bright sun, it was hard to tell whether or not the nav lights were on. When I got to the light in the tail, I covered it from the glare of the sun with my hand and saw that it was not lit. I explained this to my instructor and he pointed out that I did not turn the nav lights on. A quick glance in the cockpit confirmed that he was right. Well that was easily fixed and now even in the bright sun, I could tell that the lights were lit.

After some ground discussion about power, airspeed, altitude, and mixture for different phases of flight we climbed into the aircraft. My instructor asked if I wanted to work the radios at all that day and I said that I would prefer to focus on the flying for one more day and start worrying about ATC communication next time. With that I tuned the ATIS and wrote down the pertinent info. I then completed the before start checklist and the start checklist and got her fired up.

Similar to last time, I was in charge of taxiing out to the run-up area. I felt much more comfortable with the steering control this time. I still had a harder time turning to the right than the left which my instructor confirmed was due to some issue with the tailwheel. To compensate I used more toe brake when I needed to turn to that side. Once we got to the run-up area I went through the checklist for that and dialed in the tower frequency. We were cleared for takeoff and I steered us onto the runway where we performed a similar drill as last time on the takeoff. My instructor controlled the rudder and power and I took the stick.

We were a bit sloppy on the takeoff which was my fault, of course. First off, I was well aware that you need to hold the stick full aft on the takeoff until we established full power and the airspeed came alive, then I was to let off the stick which would bring the nose into a level attitude. Now, I always imagined in tailwheel airplanes that this would happen well ahead of rotation speed. However, rotation speed in this bird is around 50 MPH and so it doesn’t take long to get up to rotation speed. By the time the nose dropped down to a level attitude, we were already lifting off. Now, where it got sloppy is I wasn’t expecting it to lift off so quickly so I was holding more down elevator then needed and we skipped along the runway a little before I allowed it to leave the ground. This could have been easily remedied had I anticipated that we would reach rotation speed quickly in this light aircraft.

Second sloppy move on the takeoff was my instructor told me to follow the power lines to the bridge. I was doing that but I guess I didn’t realize that following them meant to be over them. I was to the right of them and we got a warning of other traffic from ATC that was coming down into the pattern from across the bay. Once that was corrected it was smooth sailing all the way up to our maneuvering altitude of 3,500 feet.

We went over the hills to the Half Moon Bay side where there was the typical afternoon fog bank sitting parallel to the coast. This was actually really nice because it served as a reference for our 180 and 360 degree maneuvers. We ran the whole gamut of maneuvers starting with changes in the flight regime. We trimmed for straight and level flight and then did climbs and descents using just the power. We also set up low speed cruise which is what you would do in the landing pattern. This consists of setting the engine to 2000 RPM and trimming for straight and level flight gives you around 80 MPH airspeed.

Next on the agenda was steep turns and these went pretty well. On the first one, I started off good but then you really need to drill in the back pressure on the stick to keep your altitude consistent through the turn. I caught this too late and so started to descend a bit. By the time I finished the turn we had lost 200 feet in altitude. Not good enough to pass the check ride but not too bad for a first try I suppose. We then did another in the other direction and this time I overcompensated on the stick and we gained 150 feet in altitude. The next couple saw me nailing them pretty much right on the head.

After steep turns we did power off and power on stalls. One mistake I made here was we started to fall to one side a little on the stalls and I tried to compensate with the ailerons instead of the rudder. The ailerons do not work well in slow flight so you need to use the rudder to stop the turn. We did it a couple more times and I found myself using both the stick and the rudder this time. My instructor even held the stick tight once and he could feel me fighting it. I guess bad habits from the simulator die hard. I did manage to get a few decent ones in though. We also tried stalls while in a turn in which I demonstrated better use of the rudder but now I was being too tentative in pulling the stick back. Also, I was a little slow on the recovery as I was supposed to increase power to full as soon as I felt the buffet and the nose drop whereas I was letting the nose drop to gain some speed and then applying power.

The last item of the day was slow flight. I reduced power to around 1700 RPM and pitched up until we hit 50 MPH. I then kept it at this speed while doing little turns. For the most part, this went relatively smooth. To get out of this attitude we add power and slowly lower the nose. I was slowly lowering the nose but I guess I was too slow as my instructor kept saying; “lower, lower, lower,” then he yanked it down. That is one thing I am still not quite used to in the Citabria. When you are in straight and level flight, you are actually looking at the ground a bit. That is, the pitch is much lower in the Citabria then any other aircraft I have flown in real life or in my simulator. So, I tend to pitch down to what would be straight and level in an Archer or in one of the planes in my sim and it is not enough in the Citabria. It also doesn’t help that the VSI in this old plane gets stuck around +200FPM. I noticed this on the last flight also. When we are trimmed at straight and level, it will often show we are climbing but the altimeter is not increasing at all.

Last item of every day is always the landing. I did the approach and turned to final and we lined up with the runway. The approach went really well, we came down right at the centerline and I pulled back to flare on the landing and then my instructor put full power and we went around. He said I was gripping the stick really tight and he couldn’t make corrections when I flared a little high so we went around. Next time I gripped it with two fingers only and we came in similar to last time only this time we landed on the ground. I taxied off the runway, did the after landing checklist, called ground and taxied back to the ramp.

After we shut down, I felt really good about the flight. My confidence level had come back up and I was starting to feel comfortable flying again. I did not feel overwhelmed this time and despite a few mistakes which I have highlighted, it was a very positive flight. My instructor congratulated me and said that he did not expect to get through all the maneuvers today but that I was doing really well on them so we breezed through it all.

Next lesson is on Thursday but we will just be doing some ground training so in my next blog, I would like to highlight the differences I have observed between flying in a simulator and flying in real life. That will be followed by my next flight on Saturday where, depending on the weather, we will either be doing turns around a point or emergency procedures. Stay tuned for more…