Gracie is back in action after a long break to get her carburetor overhauled and an annual inspection completed. I took her out for a run and she is purring nicely. I had lost my currency in the three months of not flying, so it was time to get it back.
First up, we headed to the practice area for some much needed refreshing on basics. Steep turns (always fun), stalls (never fun at first) and basic heading/altitude holding. A lot of rust can build up in three months, but I felt comfortable pretty quickly. Gracie can be very very tough to stall, especially with power on. Just hanging there with your nose about 35 degrees in the air and sinking at nearly 500 feet per minute with hardly anything on the airspeed indicator is not really a great feeling. Add in the complete lack of aileron control and a sluggish rudder and you get the idea of what it is like to fly a damp brick. After backing off the power to about 60% I gave up and pushed the nose over and tried again with less power. A few nice stalls later I went back for some touch and goes at TSTC. My favorite tower controller was on duty. She is very professional, but also very nice with the occasional “Good job,” or “Nice landing,” after a tricky move. I think she gets tired of all the TSTC pilot students and likes to see a fresh plane now and then.
I did about five landings, maybe three of which I thought would be good enough to have a passenger in the plane with me. The other two were OK, but not very clean. I put Gracie back in the barn and came out the next morning for gas and a few more rounds and then came out for a little night flying later.
Flying at night is fantastic. You just have to ramp up your trust in the instruments a great deal when you can’t see the trees at the end of the runway. But physics works just as well at night, and climb means climb and you don’t hit the trees. The country is all inky black with little man made stars are shining down there in the darkness. I buzzed over to TSTC for three full stop landings after asking for permission from the tower. Same nice controller again and no problems with the full stops on the runway. Usually you aren’t allowed to do that and you would have to turn back on the taxiway and reposition for a takeoff. TSTC’s main runway is really huge and I could probably take off and land twice on it, so no problems for me. Flying at night means there isn’t much other traffic, so the controller let me play on the runway. The runway looks amazing at night, all lights and blackness. You can’t see the pavement until you are almost on the ground, so it looks like you are about to fly into a stargate or a black monolith or some other great sci-fi image.
I got my three full stops, said good night to the nice controller lady and went to put Gracie to bed for the night. I tried to make a short final to the runway, but was way high and too fast by the time I could see over the trees at the end of the runway to the end lights. Any time you don’t like the set-up for landing, you should go around, but doubly so at night. You are a lot closer to the ground than your eyes tell you so pulling the flare to land needs to be under control. I didn’t like it at all, so I called a go-around and got a very nice set up the second time. Cool night air also gives you lovely control, so the landing was as smooth as silk. Or as smooth as silk on a bumpy grass strip, anyway. I rolled her into the hangar, gave her the customary kiss on the spinner and said good night.
Thanks for being a good airplane, Gracie! It is good to be current again.