Sunday 14 October 2012

My love/hate relationship with a certain plane

There are 3 potential planes I can fly from my flight school. They each have their own little quirks and none of them are perfect. There are 2 “S” model 172s and a “P” model. The “S” models are slightly more powerful.

RTH prefers the solitary “P” model because that’s what he did most of his flight training in. I, however, find it a bit sluggish compared to the others. Out of the remaining two planes each has its plus and minus points.
I usually fly SAR, and that’s where the love/hate bit comes in. I love the fact that its seat goes that fraction of an inch further forward so I’m not reaching for the rudder, I love the fact that it has pockets at the front that I can drop my clipboard and sunglasses case into.

I HATE the fact that it has delusions of being an Apollo rocket! I don’t know why this plane thinks it is special, JPM doesn’t do it, but the second that thing gets airborne it wants to head straight up. I find it a bit disconcerting on take off to have to force the nose down, I find it bloody nasty on an overshoot (where you may well be trimmed for a nose up attitude to start with) to have to wrestle the thing down.
I’m sorry SAR , you are not designed for space flight, live with it. Let's just accept the fact that neither of us is detsined to get to the moon any time soon and move on.

2 comments:

  1. A simple phrase - trim is your friend. Trim likes lots of attention, a soft hand and some gentle stroking. It will reward you by taking away all that nastiness the plane wants to throw at you. As you have said previously, planes that look the same on the outside are very different once you get them into the air. The secret to getting them all to behave nicely is trim. The problem with trim is, the mass replicated flight manuals all tell you that the takeoff trim setting is in exactly the same place for each of these similar looking aircraft. Please discuss this with your instructor first, but try winding on less nose up trim in SAR than you would in JPM when you are going through the pre-takeoff checks. Start with about half a turn of the wheel and see if that makes a difference.

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  2. That thought had occured to me. I don't think Bob (my instructor) feels the difference that I do. My husband reckons I'm right though.

    I'll give it a whirl.

    The other reason I don't like SAR is that it only has a step on one side to check the wing fuel tanks.

    So I need two milk crates to get up there!!!

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