What is important is that during this flight I have reached 100h total time and as such I have entered the famous ‘Killing zone’. Apparently pilots between 100 and 250h total time are the most risky ones, the think they know it all already and tend to make mistakes which due to lack of experience are often deadly. I’m quite sure I do not know it all. Even more – to mitigate the risks I’m just starting my instrument training. Adding IR to my ticket seems to be good risk mitigation technique, don’t you think?

0.7h : 1 to/ldg logged
100.5h : 413 to/ldg total

But if it was for the weather this flight wouldn’t ever make this column. But, as it happens, many (if not most) CFII tent to teach that we should operate constant speed propellers in a ‘squared’ manner. Some even say that you should never operate aircraft engines with manifold pressure (in inches Hg) higher than RPMs (in hundreds). Hence the famous 23 (or 24) squared meaning 23″ of manifold pressure and 2300 RPM. Being an engineer myself I always question such strong statements (always/never) especially when engine manufacturer’s manual clearly shows that the engine can be operated in other ways. Over the last few weeks I was reading some materials on the Internet. I especially like John Deakin’s column at AvWeb. His arguments make a lot of sense in my precise brain and I agree with (almost) all he says. One of the things he teaches is that whenever it’s possible we should fly WOT (wide open throttle). So knowing that I’ll have 0.5h each way to (literally) burn off I prepared myself and decided to try what John Deakin teaches in practice.

Main principle in his theory is that the air is free and any operations when the throttle is not wide open (unless it’s of course warranted by other flight conditions) it’s basically just a waste of time, speed and ultimately money, as the airplane engine with closed throttle is not as efficient as at WOT operations. So following John’s advice I took off and left the throttle wide open. As you may remember Green Castle lies below Cedar Rapid’s class C airspace so quick communication ordeal was in order. After having squawk assigned I kept climbing at rather brisk pace and quickly reached 5500ft. Somewhere in between I started to slowly back retard propeller handle and got RPMs down to about 2300 and my destination altitude. At that altitude the engine was getting only about 25″ of manifold pressure. Preparing for this flight I’ve checked Arrow’s POH and Piper allows to operate it’s engine about 4″ oversquare so my 2″ were right within allowed range. I kept waiting for any negative symptoms of such operations but couldn’t find any. The engine was humming and pulling me along. The airplane was flying around 130KTAS smooth and happy. Next time I had to touch the throttle was wen I started the descent to Ford Madison. One OWT (old wives tale) put to bed. Operating WOT will now became my modus operandi.

During that flight I did one more thing I’ve read in John’s articles – for the first time I did ‘the big pull’. So for the most of the flight my quadrant looked like this:
. But that’s a material for another story, when I get more data in.

But I needed not to worry. As I pushed Cherokee out of the hangar everything started to coming back. By the time I finished the preflight I felt no anxiety at all, just pure excitement. Like our cat when he sees me walking with fish on his plate. Anyway I did runup and took off. Flew in general direction of practice area just to remember myself how this thing works, then came back and did three landings. I know, I know. Nothing really exciting when you read it. But very exciting when you’re up there after two months of being grounded.

When, just mere 40 minutes later, I was closing hangar doors I made my new years resolution. This year I’m going to fly more often. Not necessarily more in total time, but often – those short 0.5h jumps in the air charge my batteries more than anything else.

0.6h : 3 to/ldg logged
72.5h : 338 to/ldg total

It was over three months since I flew last time. For all that time either weather or schedule did not cooperate but today the weather was almost perfect and I really needed something to take my mind completely off of everyday problems. So I went to the airport and did the preflight. When the time has come to pull the Cherokee out it turned out that grass is so soft that there is no way I can do it on my own. Fortunately I had another Cherokee with me that one equipped with nice 10500 pound winch up front. So I used one to pull out the other.

After that it was just a regular thing. I was pleasantly surprised that after all those months of siting on the ground all my landings were soft enough to qualify them as almost greasers Looks like when you really focus on what you do and keep watching the airspeed everything comes up nicely almost by itself.

I was running low on time so I did only two touch and goes. After third landing I taxied back to the parking spot and again using my other Cherokee pulled the Piper back in.

it was really good to be back in the air. Even though it was just 0.4h it made me to completely switch off my ‘regular’ brain and turn on my ‘flying’ one. I’m very fresh pilot and flying still demands 100% of my brain to do it safely. That king of ‘distraction’ from my regular routine works wonders. And the nicest thing – I’m current again!

0.4h/0.0h inst : 3 to/ldg logged
68.1h/3.1h inst : 330 to/ldg total