November 28, 2004
First Try at Formation Flights
There is a group of Grumman Tiger pilots which practices formation flight, and they seem to need a 4th, so they asked me. Today I had my first chance to practice, together with a flight instructor and Wolfgang, a member of that group.
I started out as lead on takeoff, and Wolfgang sticking to my left side like a pro. After several frequency changes and some ATC confusion (thank god for hand signals), I passed the lead over to Wolfgang and I tried myself at station keeping. Boy is it hard. Once I got myself somewhat under control, we practiced crossunders and rejoins. These went fairly well. My main problem is simply seeing the changes in time and reacting to them quicker.
Next Saturday, the whole group is planning to get together. Let's see how that goes.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 11:00 PM | Comments (24)
Airsick
Yep. The last time I've become airsick was when I was sitting in the back seat of a Janus glider in the french alps, with the french champion in front optimizing our cross-country trip.
Until today. I really really need to figure out a way to teach coordination, otherwise this is going to be bad. It's the unexpected yaw that gets you.
Otherwise, it was a great day to practice ground reference maneuvres, with a howling wind from the north requiring significant crab angles.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2004
Back Home
... and it's so beautiful... and about 4 knots faster too! Really!
Posted by Christian Goetze at 04:50 PM | Comments (1)
Double Session Today
Today, finally mechancal vagueries and the weather failed to conspire against us, and we got to go on our second flight. We concentrated on pitch control, accelerating and deceletating the aircraft while keeping altitude constant, climbing and descending while keeping airspeed constant and some more "dutch" roll exercises.
We took a lunch break in San Carlos, my home airport. I was able to proudly show off N626FT. We then took off on a Bay Meadows departure towards the coast and did some slow flight exercises. We had an interesting event after cleaning up. In spite of carburator heat being on during all of the slow flight phase, after a short moment of full power to regain altitude and accelerate to cruise, we must have gotten some ice, since the throttle wouldn't retard and the engine ran rough for a moment when I pulled carburator heat on again. We decided to return to Oakland at that point.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2004
No Flying this Weekend
It's a wonderful day, so nobody cancelled their slots on the club airplanes, so no flying for K and me today.
N626FT will be ready this coming Tuesday. I can hardly wait.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2004
Bad Mags
Today was supposed to be K's second lesson. On the run-up we had roughness and a bad mag drop. After multiple attempts at clearing the plugs, it kept going tatata-pum-tatata-pum - sounding like a bad spark blug. So, back to base...
This is the second weekend in a row... perhaps I should call this category "Ground Reports".
Posted by Christian Goetze at 09:40 PM | Comments (7)
November 12, 2004
Wow
This turned out even better than I imagined.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 09:59 AM | Comments (7203)
November 11, 2004
About to become blue
Blue paint is about to be applied
Posted by Christian Goetze at 11:21 AM | Comments (1726)
November 09, 2004
Official Flight Training Provider
So I now am an official flight training provider. This means that evil aliens may now present themselves for category 4 flight training, and I am to take a picture, help them fill out the web forms, add my TSA-provided id number and send it all off - and start providing flight training.
The final touch was a short visit to the local FSDO, confirming my existence and otherwise having a nice chat. Other steps included reading through an online "security awareness" course, with a weird little test.
Don't you all feel much safer now?
Posted by Christian Goetze at 02:06 PM | Comments (558)
N-Number placement
Placement of the N-Numbers...
We'll probably go for white with blue outline, but not sure yet...
Posted by Christian Goetze at 02:00 PM | Comments (2753)
November 08, 2004
Paint Scheme being prepared
The new paint scheme is being taped off. The bottom will be blue. The transition between the blue area and the white area will start with thin white stripes, growing thicker. This scheme is similar to the Rockwell Commander scheme.
The wing tips, elevator tips and rudder tips will also be blue, tapering into the white in the same fashion. Apparently, this design is quite hard to do well, but this is at least the second time that they're doing it on a Grumman Tiger, so it should work out fine.
Posted by Christian Goetze at 12:54 PM | Comments (1343)
November 07, 2004
Tiger being repainted
Our trusty little tiger is getting a new skin:
Stripped
White base
The right step must have touched the ground on some very hard landing in its previous life at the Florida Institute of Technology. There was a big crack in the fuselage, not easily visible, right at the attach point for the step (the flat piece of metal above the bracket).
Posted by Christian Goetze at 03:34 PM | Comments (509)
3 out of 4 C172s down
Boring Sunday, had to cancel flying with my brand new student K today. It would have been K's second flight, but any plane I reserved broke down in that precise instant. Of course, K didn't check his voice mail nor his email and called me asking where I was...
Note to self: brief students to always check their email or voice mail, or better contact me on the evening of every flight...
Posted by Christian Goetze at 03:21 PM | Comments (259)
The First Light of Day
First Post
Well, this took me about 10 minutes to set up, really neat. But configuring it to look the way I'd like it look seems daunting. Let's see what happens...
Posted by Christian Goetze at 02:46 PM | Comments (2)