It’s good to be back in the air
It’s been over 3 month since I flew last time. Work and family obligations plus winter weather kept me off the airport for good. Today tough all things started to click in so I could get to the airport and catch some air before dinner. Except for one thing – no plane. ‘My’ Cherokee was due to annual and club decided that it’s high time to overhaul the engine. So the Cherokee went to the shop and it’s going to be there for at least another 3 weeks.
Fortunately our club has another plane big enough for me and Terry to fly in. It’s ‘63 Cessna C172 with 6 cyl 150HP Continental engine. Everywhere on the Internet you can find opinions that those older Cessnas flying Conti engine are nicer, smoother to fly, generally better. Well the engine sounds different. That’s for sure. Flying characteristics? I wouldn’t be so sure. More on that while the story unveils itself.
Preflight. Nothing surprising here, the usual stuff, things from my previous Cessna came up back pretty fast. Checking out fuel levels present some challenge, unless you are able to localize a ladder. Hangar navigation is one of my favorite topics so this one went fast. I’ll skip detailed description of taxiing and taking off. Nothing interesting happened, things clicked pretty fast. One note though abouth 7717U – although it has only 150Hp it produces much more torque so right rudder is used much more than in previous two planes I was flying.
While flying over our practice area we tried some standard maneuvers to get me used to plane. S turns, climbs, descents, steep turns and stalls – the usual. Again – especially in slow flight torque caused some problems. And although those weren’t my best maneuvers to date considering it was my first flight in this bird I think it wasn’t that bad.
The most interesting part was as you may have figured it out by now when it came to landings. As you remember landing never was my strong skill and although I managed to to about 20 of them so far completely on my own in Cherokee without damaging it I still consider myself novice in this thing. Landing C172 is similar to Cherokee for the most of the time. Real differences between those two show in sink rate and ground effect. While Cherokee prefer crow bar type landings it’s low wing configuration nicely stops you from hitting the ground when it’s time to arrest the sink. Cessna on the other hand glides like an aristocrat slowly coming down and then it almost doesn’t show any ground effect. At least before flare. Then, when you think you should already be on the ground the ground effect fully kicks in and you are floating again.
Anyway, we did three landings and two of them were completely on my own so I think one or two more lessons and I’ll be soloed again. Can’t wait to finally move on to some more interesting tasks.
0.9h/0.0h inst : 3 to/ldg logged
30.4h/0.8h inst : 166 to/ldg total
