Saturday, March 13, 2010

Hey mother look... No Wheels!

This title remembers me old times, when I was a boy and use to ride my bicycle. Most of My falls, accidents or bad landings according to aviation, were preceded by: Hey Watch this... No wonder that my grandmother spent a lot of money in band aids and enormous panoply of pharmacy products to rebuild the skins of my knees and arms.

But this time was different, the wheels were really not supposed to be there. Today was my first flight with a retractable gear aircraft. Felt good!

Ground operation is quite normal and compared to a constant speed propeller version Cessna 172, the real thrill starts immediately after take off.

Positive rate of climb: Brakes Apply
No Runway Available: Gear Up!

Wait a minute! Gear what? Here's the new thing, the retractable landing gear!
After take off we proceeded to Cascais bay area to perform some basics of flight, as normal and increased rate turns, climb and descent, turning during climb and during descent and slow speed flight with landing gear down and flaps full down, 30º. After this we went back to the Airfield in order to perform circuit patterns and touch an go maneuvers. One thing that I felt, was the increase of workload during both, take of and landing phases, we need to be more beyond the airplane to anticipate the next step, and with the increase of speed we don't have much time. Nothing to be afraid, with training I can do it!


credits on photo

2 comments:

dani said...

Coitada da tua avó, o que ela tinha que aturar. Eras fresco eras! :p

Filipe Cardoso said...

Nem imaginas. :p

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