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.

Initially the plan was to go to Dubuque (KDBQ) but as I was unable to confirm that the airport cafe is still in business we’ve decided to go to Prairie du Chien (KPDC) instead. Preflown and gassed up we took off at 12pm sharp and headed north west. I rehearsed my lines to Cedar Rapid’s controller several times before (communication is still my weak point) so the initial exchange of formalities went smoothly and we went on course.

We had a bit of a headwind so I wanted to stay low, but that quickly turned out to be a very bad idea. The spring has come recently, but the grass and crops did not turned green yet. Which meas a lot of exposure area and extreme thermals. Every few minutes someone on the frequency was requesting climb to higher altitudes, and so did we. Initially at 3500ft we quickly ended up at 5500ft just below the clouds.

It wasn’t smooth up there either, but at least it was bearable. Thanks to Arrow’s speed the flight was relatively short, and we were on the ground in Prairie du Chien. Unfortunately our favorite burger place was closed for lunch so the $100 burger turned into hibachi grill lunch. Tasty and funny to watch.

With full stomachs we headed back to the airport and took of on our way back home. This time we climbed to 6500ft without even checking what is going on down low. Nice thing was that with the amount of tailwind I was seing groundspeed in areas of 150kt. That brought us back to Green Castle in just a little over 30 minutes. Not bad.

Interesting thing happened on our way back though. Our track was going through Cedar Rapids’ class C and their controller requested that I fly exactly over the top of the airport at altitude no lower than 3000ft. I understand that was to keep me out of their approach and departure paths without having me to fly around in huge circle. Nice idea, and nice that they want to save use some time and money too.

After this flight my current complex logged time is 8.3h. I need just 1.7h more to be able to fly it on my own. Yuppie!

P.S. Iza was taking pictures during this flight. If you want to see some more click on the one above and head out to her blog.

1.8h : 2 to/ldg logged
84.3h : 380 to/ldg total

IFR flights map

The original plan was to fly on Saturday but due to weather conditions including very gusty winds and reported turbulence we switched to Sunday. Today winds were way lower and the weather was generally nicer. We took off around 12 and headed for Pella. The beginning of our trip was simply awful. Location and configuration of the Green Castle Airports makes take offs very challenging when the wind is blowing from the headings between 160 and 210 degrees. As you already figured out it was 180 degrees today. Flying is still a stressing experience for Iza so I tried to make it as smooth as I could. Yet today it was still very turbulent. I tried to escape it climbing up as soon as possible and in fact just after passing 3000 ft. MSL air became very smooth. One can’t get everything so for a bit of smooth air we had to pay the price in 30 knots headwind. Well it was worth it. The rest of the flight was very uneventful and even the descending through turbulent air below and landing were quite nice.

Pella which is also called as small Holland in the middle of Iowa is a small town with a climate. It’s best known for it’s Tulip Time festival that happens every May. Fortunately it’s climate stays in the town even when tulips are gone.

The brick building on this photo is the airport terminal. Inside is even better:

It more resembles home than airport terminal. Friendly guy at the counter loaned us their courtesy car and we headed downtown to find something to eat. It turned out that here we had to pay another price of switching days. As it happens in many small town in rural Iowa almost all businesses are closed on Sunday. We managed to find one open local restaurant. There were some other chain places open, but we didn’t fly so far to eat in place we have around the corner, did we?

After lunch and small walk during which Iza shot one of the best HDR pictures I’ve seen lately:

we headed back to the airport. Short preflight with a bit of posing time:

and we headed back home. The air was just a bit nicer to us in lower layers, and the wind was now blowing from the back so our short hop home became even shorter 28 minutes. For comparison Google Maps says that it would take us 1h56m if we went by car. WOW!

On a very positive note Iza is slowly getting used to flying and we already have some nice places lined out within her current time aloft limit of 45 minutes one way. And I can get needed XC time for my instrument rating.

1.7h/0.0h inst : 2 to/ldg logged
67.2h/3.1h inst : 326 to/ldg total

To add even some more to the excitement we were going to fly the Skyhawk. “My” Cherokee was rented out for the whole weekend so I had no choice but to get familiar again with Cessna. I flew it for about 6h back in March and never really got a hold of it (it was more or less in the middle of my training then). So I decided that it would be wise to do some pattern work with it to get myself familiar with it again. I spent 5 minutes on the ground studying POH to get all needed speed, left Iza on the ground and departed. It quickly turned out that it was wise decision indeed. First two approaches were completely botched. Used to Cherokee’s brick like characteristic I was cutting base way to close to the runway and ended way up both times. The next two tries were quite OK. I landed without much trouble. But when I just started to think I got it, fifth approach came way too high again. Doh! After sixth approach I landed and taxied back to pick up Iza.

Here the fun part begins. We took off and I instantly knew she wasn’t very happy. But she hold herself together. We flew south around Kent park, a little bit east to show Iza North Liberty, Coralville and Tiffin from the air. Then we climbed out and headed west for few minutes. It was less shaky up there and I could see Iza was very, very slowly relaxing. After about 20 minutes of flight she had enough so we headed back to Green Castle. Landing was one of the worst I’ve ever done in Skyhawk, fishing for the runway for quite some time, but I managed.

Back on the ground Iza asked me if I’m not disappointed that we didn’t go anywhere because of her. I wasn’t. I knew more or less how it’ll end up, and I have to say I’m very proud of her for the determination to stay up there as long as possible. It was 40 minutes this time, it’ll be much longer next one. I’m sure we’ll be going places in no time.

1.3h/0.0h inst : 4 to/ldg logged
65.5h/3.1h inst : 324 to/ldg total