“Riding the range once more, toting my old Pitts S-2B…”

Doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it? No matter. It was so nice taking the Pitts up today — I made two practice flights at the Blockhouse, concentrating on the Intermediate Known sequence for the upcoming season. It’s a bit tougher than last season’s sequence. The total K value (difficulty) is about the same, but this year it’s front loaded with harder figures, while at the end of the sequence the K values drop off significantly.

My practice strategy seems to differ from most aerobatic pilots. For whatever reason, most pilots begin by working with individual figures. On the surface this seems like a logical building-block approach. However, I prefer to run the new sequences all the way through until I can do them without any hard zeros. My reasoning is that a beautifully flown sequence is of little value if you zero most of it because you end up going the wrong direction or misread the card. Also, by the time the sequence can be flown properly, it should be clear which figures need the most work.

Let’s just say I have a long way to go before this is ready for public consumption. I’m trying to get ready for the Copperstate contest in Arizona, which will hopefully tune me up enough to benefit from a training camp in Borrego so that when the California season begins at Apple Valley, I will at least have a fighting chance. Last year, I didn’t fly for the whole season. Then I had one practice flight to prepare for the AcroFest. In case you were wondering, I do not recommend that training regime.

Anyway, back to the present. As usual, my 45s are shallow going up, steep going down, and I have to recalibrate my sense of the aircraft’s energy state going vertical. In other words, I keep torquing out of push humpties and other such maneuvers because I’m spending too long on the upline and running out of energy. I’m sure my rolls aren’t centered on the appropriate lines, either.

These things always happen in the off season. It’s almost as if I have an internal mechanism which falls out of adjustment after a period of inactivity. The frustrating thing is, I’ve been flying every day, and flying the Pitts a lot, too. But it’s primarily been demo flights, checkouts, advanced spin training, rides, and other non-competition stuff.

I haven’t even started working on rolling turns or getting my snap rolls back in order. All day long my snap rolls had an extra 200 degrees of rotation before I could get them stopped. But that’s okay. I’m glad just to be up there, zooming through the sky without a care in the world.

In honor of my new focus on not sucking this season, here are a group of pilots who definitely don’t stink: The Four Horsemen. This team still flies, but now it’s down to two Mustangs and they’re simply called “The Horsemen”. This video clip is well edited, and best of all, there’s no narration from an air show announcer. I’m not a big fan of announcers in general, but in this case it would be outright sacrilege. When a quartet of Mustangs is in the air, an announcer — whoever he may be — should just be quiet and let the sound of those Merlin engines speak for itself.

But that’s just my opinion.

Now is this a sweet looking pair of machines or what? A 1993 Pitts S-2B and a 2008 Honda Accord Coupe in matching paint:

I had the opportunity to get back into the Pitts yesterday and when I saw the two of them together I had to take a picture. It’s so rare that both the car and the plane are clean at the same time.

I was out at CNO to take Dan for a flight. His flight review (an FAA-mandated recurrent training requirement) was due and I owed him a favor for ferrying me out to Borrego last fall. I had needed to get out there to retrieve the Pitts after the Acrofest. I was the Contest Director for that competition. And a competitor. And a judge. And… I’ll never do that again. It was a crazy time, even by my standards.

Anyway, Dan wanted to try some advanced spin training as part of his flight review, so we focused on flat and accerated spins modes. After that, I went up for a solo flight to work on the 2007 intermediate known sequence. I’m trying to get an early start on preparing for the upcoming competition season.

The 2007 season was basically missed by all of us at Cloud Dancers because the airplane was undergoing a particularly heavy maintenance interval which lasted for most of the spring and summer. The timing was unfortunate, but after the aircraft came off leaseback it only made sense to get it into good working order. The wings were off, the prop was overhauled, fabric & paint were touched up, the top end was overhauled, and she was cleaned, rigged, inspected, and so on.

When I got back to Chino, I spent some time just shooting landings in the pattern. It’s such a blast to go from 1300′ AGL to zero in about 15 seconds. The airplane pretty much climbs at the same rate. I had forgotten how much sprightlier the S-2B is when flown solo vs. with two people on board. Losing that 200 lbs up front really makes a difference!

I’ve been doing a fair bit of Pitts flying lately, but most of it has been dual in an S-2C owned by one of my recent Part 61 private pilot grads. This airplane was originally owned by a good friend from the aerobatic competition circuit named Reinaldo. The person Reinaldo sold it to installed a wicked six-camera video system and sold it again shortly thereafter, leaving my student as the lucky beneficiary of this upgrade. Here we are preparing to start up during a recent flight:

I think there was a mix-up somewhere and I got this guy’s fortune by mistake.

Bob Miller at Over the Airwaves frequently touts the fact that ‘nobody’ provides spin training anymore. Perhaps my perspective is not typical, but I don’t find this to be the case.

At Sunrise Aviation (KSNA), we have the largest aerobatic program on the west coast. Not only that, but our private pilot students are all required to experience spins in a Decathlon before they solo. We’ve taught thousands of people to fly over the past quarter century using this philosophy. I was trained this way myself.

I can think of several other large operations which provide quality spin training just here in California. CP Aviation in Santa Paula, Attitude Aviation in Livermore, and Tutima Academy in King City.

I rarely have any problem getting pre-solo students to do multi-turn spins on their own (and recover on a specified heading). It’s simply a matter of proper technique when teaching this to students. Easier said than done. Most CFIs learn from instructors who have never done spins. There is no way they will effectively be able to teach it without proper spin training of their own.

Many pilots and instructors who do expose students (and perhaps even more egregiously, non-pilots) to spins introduce them by simply doing one unannounced. That is the worst possible idea. It guarantees the maneuver will simply blur by for the student, resulting in spatial disorientation and motion sickness. It also ensures they won’t learn anything other than to be afraid of flying.

More than any other maneuver, spins come with a long litany of baggage. Horror stories from other pilots. Tall tales of spins that swallow the aircraft whole like Moby Dick. Apprehensiveness about motion sickness. This requires delicate handling by the CFI, but instead it’s often approached with blunt force. “Just do it”.

Wrong approach.

Teaching spins must begin with a thorough understanding of the aerodynamics involved. That means ground training. I start with a review of how lift is developed. Then progress to a discussion of stalls, coordination, wing drops, and finally the aerodynamics of the spin itself. When teaching spins, the best advice for a CFI is: assume nothing. I’ve seen some really weird explanations from spin students about basic aerodynamics. One of the most common errors is a belief that aircraft stall at a specific speed rather than a specific angle of attack. The ground training is the place to get all that stuff taken care of.

In the air, it’s vital that the spins are worked up to slowly, beginning with stalls of various types. Falling leaf stalls are particularly valuable. The student must be comfortable with high angles of attack. Then, spin “drills” are introduced were the spin is started, then stopped within a quarter turn. Once the student’s technique and comfort have reached the requisite levels, a one turn spin can be introduced with appropriate ground reference. From that point it’s simply a matter of allowing the spin to develop through two and three turns while ensuring the student maintains situational awareness.

For the really apprehensive students, I begin the actual spins by having them work only one control, usually the rudder. Once they’re comfortable with that, I switch them to the stick. Then I have them do both, and eventually give them the throttle as well.

I also teach students the difference between a spin and a spiral dive. They are easy to confuse with one another if you don’t know what to look for. For students who take to the spins with more alacrity, I will sometimes introduce aggravated spin modes. Keep in mind these are all pre-solo students with maybe 20 hours of total flight time.

I’ve taught spins to countless students using this method. I’ve never had one get sick. I’ve never had one who didn’t feel more comfortable and confident with spins, stalls, high deck angles, high AOAs, and unusual attitudes afterward.

The importance of practical spin training doesn’t stem from the likelihood of encountering one inadvertently. If proper coordination is maintained (and it’s often not — that is why we have these stall-spin accidents), pilots are not likely to ever encounter one in the heat of battle. No, the best reason for teaching spins is to eliminate the “fear of the unknown”. Once they’ve completed the spin training, students uniformly feel that spins are “not nearly as scary as I thought”.

Personally, I think a lot of landing accidents are caused by a lack of spin training. Students who are afraid of spins will be afraid of deep stalls. It’s only natural to fear the unknown. Those wing drops can be scary if you don’t understand what’s causing them, what will happen if you don’t correct properly, and how the resulting spin entry should be handled. A fear of stalls means they’ll be apprehensive about high angles of attack and low airspeeds. So they approach the runway with too much energy just to be on the safe side, with predictable results.

There are many excellent reasons for practical spin training, but it’s hard to make any headway with those arguments when the FAA proclaims said training as unnecessary. To me, the proof is in the pudding. I see people every day who have had no spin training. It’s usually accompanied by poor rudder skills, limited understanding of the related aerodynamics, and a lack of appreciation for the importance of coordination. The low quality of basic airmanship skills can be quite dramatic.

And besides, just think about all the fun they’re missing out on!

Have you had spin training? If not, find a good aerobatic instructor and get the lead out. You won’t regret it.

I keep meaning to post the Red Bull Air Race broadcast schedule. Better yet, let Red Bull do it. The races are broadcast exclusively on Fox SportsNet in my neighborhood. I believe they’re available on other channels elsewhere. I understand they also transmit the races in real time in other parts of the world.

If you haven’t seen one of these broadcasts, you’re missing out on some exciting stuff. I have to hand it to RB, they really know how to put on a slick show. They’ve outfitted all the aircraft with multiple cameras on the wings, tail, belly, and of course in the cockpit. The aircraft are instrumented to provide real-time telemetry so viewers can see acceleration, airspeed, altitude, and more. They stage helicopters around the course to capture the action from the best possible angles. And the whole production is edited down to show only the best moments.

Best of all, they’ve refined the RBAR format. In past years they simply raced each plane and the fastest time won. Now it runs like an NCAA basketball tournament, with various seeds flying against one another and the winner moving into the next round. The results must make Red Bull pretty happy — they’ve had as many as a million people show up to watch a single race.

Some people think the Red Bull Air Race is too reckless. I’m not sure I agree. The pilots push pretty hard, but they are also well trained for these events. To get into the Red Bull Air Race, you must have recent Unlimited international or world championship aerobatic success on your resume. A surface level airshow waiver is also required. That’s a pretty tall order. It’s not enough to be a great aerobatic competitor OR a big name airshow pilot. You have to be both. And all that does is qualify you to participate in their training camp. It’s not even a guarantee that you’ll be invited to join the Air Race circuit.

While I’m on the topic, the Red Bull Air Race web site is rather addictive. They’re good about updating the site with the latest news and video highlights from the race series.

And be sure to check out the Red Bull Copilot site. It puts you in the cockpit during an actual run around the pylons.

I received an inspirational email from a reader the other day. I hope he won’t mind if I quote a bit of it here, because it brings up a topic which has been on my mind lately.

Even though I got a six-year head start on your ticket, and have even gotten a bit of action in the box (Citabria or Stearman driving), my 300 hours is nothing compared to your 3000! The demands of home ownership and $155/hr rates on 172s put a lot of dust on my logbook, and I let my currency lapse–a dangerous thing, I know, since many pilots never pick it up again once they hangar their medical for the first time.

But thanks to your witty and inspiring blog, I renewed my 3rd Class last week and just today finished my BFR! Yee haw…back in the saddle.

I’m glad I was able to inspire you to get back into flying! The magic never goes away, there’s always something new and exciting in aviation. The trick is just to find it.

Many people fall away from aviation because unless they’re pursuing a professional career as a pilot, once they have the core ratings and certificates, there’s not much of a reason to go fly. You can only eat so many $100 hamburgers before the “new” factor wears off and the cost/benefit ratio starts to tilt in the wrong direction. It’s especially hard if you own a home or have a family. The rising cost of fuel and insurance don’t help.

I’ve found several ways to keep aviation interesting. One was to fly for Angel Flight West. Let me just say it’s the most rewarding flying you’ll ever do; helping those in need while getting your aviation fix can almost be a guilty pleasure. And it will take you to airports you would not otherwise have had a reason to visit. Your horizons will expand in many ways. The direct expenses are also tax deductible.

Another great idea was aerobatics. It improved my experience and skill levels immensely, not to mention bringing me in touch with an amazing group of aviators. It’s also a humbling thing to watch the great aerobatic pilots fly. They aren’t just the Unlimited competitors either. There’s a guy who flies a stock Great Lakes in Intermediate and he’s as entertaining to watch as any airshow. And as you progress through the ranks, there’s always a new generation of pilots coming up behind which need mentoring and coaching.

Aerobatics is a quest for the perfect flight — something which is impossible. Yet we continue to strive for that perfect roll, flawless spin, constant-radius loop, etc. Side benefits include an ability to recover from unusual attitudes with speed, accuracy, and a cool head. This is a boon to overall flight safety.

Formation flying is another burgeoning genre. The stick-and-rudder skills are almost secondary to the sense of camaraderie which develops from trusting another pilot with your life, and having them do the same with you. In formation flying, you’ll often find highly experienced pilots, interesting experimental aircraft, and a higher level of discipline than you might encounter with an average group of aviators.

The cost of flying has been a tough nut to crack for a long time. And it’s not getting any easier. The only thing I can say for sure about the cost of flying is that it will be more expensive in the future than it is today. Ten years from now we’ll look back on what we’re paying today and wish it could be that cheap. Hard to believe, but it’s always been true in the past.

OK, so that doesn’t help you finance your fix. There are things you can do to fly “on the cheap”. One is own an aircraft in partnership. I’ve always been a fan of buying less than you can afford. This is important because you want to own the plane rather than have it (financially) own you. Having said that, a flying RV-3 can be had for ~$25-30,000. That’s a 200 mph aerobatic airplane, and with an Experimental-Homebuilt airworthiness certificate, you can do the maintenance yourself. Split it with another pilot and the indirect costs are cut in half. It’s a little more complicated than sole ownership, but it certainly costs less.

Of course, the cheapest way to fly is to get paid for it. Instruction, banner flying, skywriting, pipeline patrol, towing gliders. There are a lot of great full or part-time jobs out there. Even if you just tow gliders a couple of weekends a month, at least it’s something which keeps you in the cockpit and in touch with the vibrant aviation community.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get off on a dissertation about flying. Well, ok, yes I did. It saddens me to see people leave the flying populace, so it’s a good day when someone writes to say they’re getting back into the game.

You worked hard for your ratings and certificates. You knew it would be a tough endeavor. What nobody told you is that it’s just as challenging to keep that spark going when you’re through. But in the end, it’s well worth it. You’ll see!

I first saw this on the wall in a restroom at Cable Airport. No joke. For reasons I can’t begin to fathom, someone had taped a photo of this aircraft to the wall:

It’s called Turbine Toucan, and it’s just another ho-hum aerobatic biplane, just like my Pitts. Except that it boasts something most modern jet fighters can’t even claim (no, I’m not referring to the paint scheme): a positive thrust-to-weight ratio.

This thing weighs 2000 lbs and the turbine engine puts out 3300 lbs of thrust. That’s an amazing 1.65:1 ratio, enough to accelerate in a vertical climb. Indefinitely.

Even fighter jets with positive thrust-to-weight ratios — of which there are few — can’t match Turbine Toucan’s performance in this department. The F-15 Eagle, for example, is about 1.12:1. Even the latest and greatest generation of jets like the F-22 Raptor (at 1.26:1) and F-35 (1.22:1 with 50% fuel) can’t compare.

Among aerobatic aircraft with reciprocating powerplants, only the most pumped up Sukhois and Edges approach the performance of that magical 1:1 ratio. I ran the numbers on the Pitts S-2B and was surprised to find 0.95:1, because it sure doesn’t feel that sprightly on the uplines. Maybe I need to go on a diet?

Eh. More likely it’s due to the high level of drag from the Pitts’ biplane design. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

This isn’t the first time someone’s had the bright idea of putting a big turbine engine on a featherweight aerobatic airplane. Wayne Handley did it back in the late 90’s with his Oracle Turbo Raven. Equipped with a 750 hp Pratt & Whitney PT6A turboprop powerplant, that monoplane sported a 1.47:1 thrust-to-weight ratio. Still not up to the Turbine Toucan standard.

Handley frequently demonstrated a vertical climb where he would stop in mid-air, hover, and then accelerate upward again. I never had the opportunity to see the Turbo Raven in person, but from what I’ve been told it left quite an impression. I think of it has a GA equivalent of vectored thrust. Handley would take off directly into a half Cuban, then perform a vertical half-roll and push over into a steep descent which ended with a landing in the exact same spot he’d departed from 60 seconds earlier.

Sadly, the Raven was badly damaged in a 1999 accident (see video). Wayne Handley was injured but has since recovered and still trains aerobatic pilots at his private airfield in central California.

Being a biplane, I can’t help but wonder if the Turbine Toucan will beat the Turbo Raven’s time-to-climb records. Toucan has a higher thrust to weight ratio, but will certainly be hampered by higher drag. The Raven climbed to 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) in one minute and nine seconds seconds, a rate of 8,560 fpm.

Initial testing of the Turbine Toucan yielded an 8,400 fpm climb rate at about 50% power, but that was based on a sea level climb to 4,500′ MSL. Even with a turbine engine, as the airplane climbs, thrust will decrease. Drag will decrease as well in the thinner air, so I think it’ll be close.

As a biplane owner, I’m going to have to root for the Turbine Toucan. (Sorry, Wayne!)

User fees.  TFRs.  High fuel prices.  Increasing regulation.  A tight insurance market.  It seems everywhere we turn these days, there’s a new challenge for general aviation.  And that goes double for the aerobatic community, which by its very nature has additional noise and public relations issues with which to contend.  IAC membership is down.  Here in Southern California, we’re being relegated to ever smaller and more distant chunks of airspace in which to legally do our “thing”.

How depressing!  There are days when I question whether this avocation of ours will survive.  So it was with great pleasure that I accepted an invitation last month to present a seminar on aerobatics at the Socal RV Rendezvous, a regional gathering of homebuilt RVs.  Fifty seven aircraft and more than 100 people showed up.  The event coincided with IAC’s recent push to be more inclusive of recreational aerobatics, and the RV Rendezvous reinforced in my mind the wisdom of that shift.

According to Vans Aircraft, 5,024 RV-series airplanes have been built and flown thus far.  Thousands more are under consruction around the country, and the rate at which they are achieving flight status is increasing rapidly as the build time drops.

Aside from the 350 RV-9/10 models, every one of those 5,024 airplanes is designed for aerobatic flight.  This represents the largest aerobatically capable fleet in the world.  Compare these 5,000 RVs to perhaps the most ubiquitous competition aircraft, the Pitts.  According to Aviat, approximately 700 factory built and 600 homebuilt aircraft are in that fleet worldwide.  The Extra?  I counted 258 of those on the U.S. registry.

I’ve been involved with the RV community since a friend of mine started building his RV-7 in 2001.  I pounded rivets on his plane and had a chance to watch one come together from the ground up.  My general impression is that these aircraft are quite conventional and well designed.

I’ve flown the RV-4, RV-6, RV-7, and RV-8.  I wouldn’t consider them to be especially well suited for competition, primarily because the clean design, flush riveting, and careful fairing of the draggy bits mean the airspeed will build quickly when pointed downhill.  That’s not to say they cannot be flown in competition.  They can, and they have been.  You’d just have to work harder to ensure the airplane’s limitations are not exceeded.

When you get to recreational aerobatics, that’s where the RV shines.  RVs are light in roll but somewhat heavier in pitch.  Reminiscent of a Pitts, though not quite as heavy in the lateral axis.  A true pleasure to fly.  They actually gain altitude throughout most sequences, something you don’t often see in airplanes with 160-200 horsepower.

Speaking of drag, an aerobatic flight in an RV will open your eyes to just how draggy most of our competition airplanes are!  All that horsepower under the cowl of your S-2B or Sukhoi is designed for vertical penetration.  Speed is, to a certain extent, an enemy when you’re competing.  It will carry you through the box too quickly.  The RV was designed for speed because they are used for cross country transportation.  Put that 300 hp engine in an RV and it will go a lot faster than any Extra 300, Edge 540, or Velox.

I’ve flown a wide variety of Sportsman-level maneuvers in RVs, and they perform remarkably well as long as the energy is properly managed.  Spins, aileron rolls, loops, immelmans, cubans, hammerheads, barrel rolls, and the split s are easily done in an RV within a +3.5/-0G range.  This is well within the designer’s stated design limits of +6/-3G (and ultimate load factors +9/-4.5G).  Airspeed limits such as Vne, Vno, and Va are high enough that RVs can fly through these maneuvers without danger of overspeeding the aircraft.  Throttle management, unusual attitude training, and a clear understanding of the RVs slippery aerodynamics are key to safety in these birds.

Unlike certificated airplanes, RVs come in many flavors.  Different engines, props, canopy styles, landing gear configurations, etc.  Much like a Citabria, Stearman, or Cub, most of them do not have inverted fuel or oil systems, so I will modify maneuvers like the half Cuban by rolling upright as soon as the 45 degree inverted point is reached in the loop.  Remember, we’re just talking about recreational aerobatics.  These guys aren’t going to fly competition in their pride and joy.  They just want to be able to safely perform basic figures.

On the topic of safety, my primary goal at the Socal RV Rendezvous was to encourage RV pilots seek out quality instruction before attempting acro in their aircraft.  This is smart advice for any aspiring aerobat, but it’s especially true with the RV for two reasons:  first, the aforementioned sleekness of the airframe.  And second, builders are often out of the air completely for several years while they focus on construction.  Their Phase One flight testing may have been prepared for with recurrent flight training, but very infrequently does that training include aerobatics.  Yet aerobatics must be included in the flight testing if it’s going to be added to the approved maneuvers in the airplane’s operating limitations.

On the way home, I couldn’t help but marvel at the strength and energy in the RV community.  We could use a little of that in our local IAC chapter, don’t you think?  There are five thousand of them out there, so let’s start recruiting!  And if you have the opportunity to take an aerobatic flight in an RV, don’t pass it up.  I’ll bet you’d be pleasantly surprised with what those little kit planes are capable of.

Aviation legend Bill Kershner, renown throughout the GA community as an instructor and author, has died.

Dog-eared copies of Kershner’s Advanced Pilot’s Flight Manual are on the bookshelves of countless pilots.  He’d been flying since 1945, and by my count, he must have been in his late 70s.

Kersher was cool.  He lectured at the UT Space Institute.  Kershner was old, but not crotchety.  He was modest, yet confident.  AOPA has a page of video clips and article reprints on the man.

We’re in an era when aviation is more synonymous with “money” than ever before.  The flying world tends to pay you little notice unless you’re in a half-million dollar composite SR-22 or Columbia.  Or the aerobatic equivalent, an Edge 540.  Bill Kershner did his thing with an old C152 Aerobat, training “over 600 students, including 45 Army aviators, FAA test pilots, lectured and flew spins at the Navy Flight Test School at Patuxent River, MD three separate summers, and taught aspiring Navy and Air Force pilots”.

That’s what I call “the right stuff”.  RIP, professor.

OK, the 80’s style Jazzercise headbands don’t exactly fit the Top Gun image of a hot shot aerobatic pilot.  This video is impressive nonetheless.

Maybe there’s something to be said for having the prop turning the wrong way.

Conventional wisdom – and statistics — tell us that a mechanical engine failure in a properly maintained aircraft is quite rare.

Engine stoppage is usually caused by the dummy in the pilot seat.  Fuel exhaustion is by far the leading cause.  Engine and fuel system mismanagement are also possibilities.  There’s no shortage of creativity in this department. 

Until recently, I didn’t know very many people who’d ever experienced a mechanical failure of a certified aircraft powerplant.  But at the last aerobatic contest I encountered no less than three people who’ve recently had one (there were also two prop strikes, but that’s a story for another time).  The reasons were varied:  cylinder failure, fuel contamination, and oil pump failure.

The last of these was in a Pitts S-2B — the same kind of airplane I fly.  It piqued my interest because an engine failure in a Pitts is a big deal.  The airplane is not terribly crashworthy, and it comes down like a rock when the engine stops turning.  It’s one of the few airplanes where my first inclination would be to leave the airplane rather than stay with it.

The pilot in question is a great guy named Yuichi.  He’s not only a talented aerobatic competitor but also an active Airframe & Powerplant mechanic.

Yuichi is has saved my bacon on more than one occasion through his willingness to work on my airplane in 100 degree heat after a long day of flying.  Sometimes I’ve even seen him skip his own practice time in the box in order to help someone else solve a mechanical issue so they could compete.

When the phrase “couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy” was coined, it must have been Yuichi they were talking about.

Here’s his story:

As most of you know I had to make a forced landing last Saturday afternoon in Pitts N117PS. I am very happy to be at my desk again and to share my experience.

June 03, 2006. I took off about 1410 local from LVK for routine practice at Mt. Diablo practice area. At about 1435, around 2500ft MSL, I noticed power loss (probably just propeller speed reduction due to loss of oil pressure) after finishing a snap roll. As all you guys do, I have a habit to look oil temp/press gauges as well as performance gauges, especially when changing positive and negative Gs. I saw oil pressure gauge was pointing 0 psi that time.

Reduction in oil pressure is not unusual on N117PS. Whenever there is prolonged 0 G load, like a top of push over humpty, or outside loop, etc. This mostly reduces oil pressure drop to about 20 psi and come back right away. But holding 0 psi for couple of seconds is not normal. I pulled throttle to protect the engine and glided at 95 MPH, and continued to push / pull, and move throttle to recover oil pressure.

A couple of things came into my head as the cause of losing oil pressure.

1) Lost engine oil because of practice maneuver, crack at engine parts, or loosen drain plug.
  (But the wind screen is clean … No oil drops at all)
2) Oil pressure gauge mulfunction. 
  (Ok but it does not explain the RPM drop.) 
3) Oil pump failed. 
  (I think it is the problem.) 
4) Gravity valve stays at inverted position. 
  (Maybe. If it is, I can do someting before I hit ground.)

Unfortunately the pull and push maneuver did not work in this case.  Occasionally the oil pressure came back to 2-3 psi, but dropped back to 0 psi very soon. There was not enough altitude to make it to the nearest airport (Byron). I have no choice, so I decided to do a off field landing down there.

I picked up a straight road (Empire Mine Road) running east to west through the box. There was no traffic. There was also a grass field right next of the road would be perfect alternative. I made a mayday call to LVK tower and 121.5, before I got too low.

Now it was easy, just do routine landing I used to. On final approach, I saw white SUV turn onto the road which would have been on a collision course with me. I could not blame the driver, because the road was not blocked at entrance, they even don’t know what happened in the air. I switched my landing site to grass field just south of the road and landed. At first landing roll was perfect, I thought “wow, this is my one of best landings I ever made!!”. But 5 second later, the landing gear caught the muddy surface and the plane then flipped over inverted.

I was so lucky, the airplane stoped after just half flip and did not tumbled. The bad thing was now the airplane was upside down and the canopy was held by the ground. I realized that I was trapped inside the airplane. I picked up my cellphone and dialed Attitude Aviation front desk. A cell phone is great tool in this situation.

I was sitting there upside down for a while, when suddenly a gentleman called me. “Are you OK?” I told him to lift the tail up and now the airplane was standing on its top wing. I got about 2 ft clearance opened the canopy and then I dropped on the ground.

The gentleman said, “I am so glad you are OK.” I looked at his car .. It was the the white SUV that I saw on short final. Soon, we saw emergency crews turned on the road, then he said “I guess you are OK. Take care!”. He was exactly like a hero. I hope I said “Thank you” to him. I wish I will find him again.

Post emergency landing review: 
(1) I asked myself why I did not try complete inverted flight, not just shaking the airplane. If the cause of problem is gravity valve, I might have some oil pressure while I was at inverted.

(2) Some people suggested to me that I jettison the canopy before touch  down. That way I do not have the risk of being trapped in the airplane. The load meter in the cockpit said I had negative 6Gs at least when the airplane flipped over. I checked my seat belt before touch down, and I had 1 inch clearance between the canopy, but I still hit canopy because my body stretched a little at the time. This means that if I had jettisoned the canopy before impact, I might hit my head somewhere. The canopy protected me from rocks and mud. I do not say to keep canopy is best idea, but the pilot has to be able to break the canopy at least. I will carry a knfe (not a small folding knife, heavy duty survival knife prefered), or axe in the future. I also have a idea how to open biplane canopy even upside down without outside help. However, I have no chance to test this technique until next time…

(3) Preview your practice area if low altitude practice is needed. 1500ft AGL is not enough to make airport in most situation. I was so surprised that practice area has many hills and power lines.

I think Yuichi’s a little hard on himself.  Even if the gravity valve was at fault, priority #1 is fly the plane, #2 is find a place to land, and then you can troubleshoot.  From 2500 AGL, I’m not sure he’d have had much of a chance to get to it. 

In this case, “any landing you can walk away from” really is a good landing.  I believe the airplane is a total loss.  The damage doesn’t sound that bad, and I’m sure it’s fully repairable, but once the airplane goes over on its back, the steel tube airframe gets bent.  At that point, the ship is probaby worth more as a collection of parts than it would be after the restoration, so the insurance company writes a check.

It’s worth noting that all three engine failures I heard about at Paso Robles were in high performance aerobatic airplanes.  When these engines are installed in normal airplanes, pilots take great care to make gentle throttle movements and generally be as nice to the engine as possible, cooling it down slowly at the end of a flight and helping it live a low stress life.

Install the same engine in an aerobatic airplane and we rapidly move from full throttle to idle and back again, over and over.  Short flights, high climb rates with little cooling air.  Lots of cycles.  We torque the prop and put tremendous stresses on the crankshaft, pulling enough Gs to move the entire engine several inches on the mounts.

When you think about all that, perhaps the real surprise is that these failures are not more common.

Anyway, I hope this is as close as I’ll ever get to re-living Yuichi’s experience.  I love how he casually states that he won’t have a chance to test his new technique “until next time”, as though it’s a foregone conclusion that this won’t be his last engine failure.

You’re probably thinking, “How about hoping there won’t be a next time?”.  The thing is, as pilots we have to plan for it anyway.

Sport Aerobatics is the monthly magazine for the International Aerobatic Club.

It’s a pretty good read.  Of all the magazines I get — and there are quite a few of them – I like this one the most.  It’s the smallest, but the content is right up my alley.  “Let’s talk about aerobatics!”.  The magazine is also one of the things IAC is trying to improve upon because it serves IAC’s two constituencies: competition pilots and those who fly aerobatics recreationally.

The magazine has a pretty, glossy cover.  But don’t be fooled, the total membership in IAC is only 4,500 people.  I’d be surprised if they print more than 6,000 copies of each issue.  It’s a small club, unfortunately.  I say unfortunately because a few vocal people out there that hate airplanes and would be glad to see aerobatics banned.  Our only sure defense relies on strength in numbers.

Anyway, every month they print a “personality profile” on one pilot.  Guess who’s in the June issue?

Fellow IAC36 competitor James Pratt borrowed a digital video camera and made this video of his practice session in the Super Decathlon today. This is the aircraft I flew last season before moving into the S-2B.

Speaking of which, the video is interesting because there’s a lot of talk about video systems right now. A two camera system is being installed in the Extra 300, and we’re interested in putting a two or three camera system into the Pitts. Combined with the smoke system, it will make a great addition to the demo flights we do in that aircraft.

Anyway, back to James’ video. He should be flying in a higher category and move up from the Super D, but the cost gets prohibitive. Quickly.

You’ll see him run through the sequence twice. The first time, the camera is pointed at his face. Despite appearances, this is not (always) due to vanity. No, it’s so he can see where he’s looking. If a maneuver is not working out well, it is often because the pilot is not looking in the right place at the right time. Plus it’s funny to see yourself get scrunched down in the seat by the Gs, and as we all know, the ability to laugh at oneself is important — right up there with putting your video online so we can all giggle at it.

The second time through, the camera is pointed straight ahead. Believe it or not, this is one of the least useful angles for aerobatic training. In general, I think looking out at the wing, back toward the tail, or across the aircraft will be far more enlightening than looking straight forward. The wing view will reveal common flaws with vertical lines, 45s, departure from the X-axis track during looping maneuvers, and so on.

The video was taken at the Blockhouse, an unimproved area of south Orange County that we use for aerobatic flight. It’s one of the only places left around here that meets the requirements of 14 CFR 91.303. Comprised of three closely spaced, parallel north-south valleys, on any given day you’ll find as many as four airplanes using this space at one time. It requires a high level of situational awareness. It think this pays off, though, because I’ve noticed that folks who practice over featureless areas or open water have a harder time managing their position in a marked aerobatic box.

During the video, you’ll hear the Pitts (N1191) make a call inbound to the Blockhouse. James is in the central valley. One of the other Decathlons (N5535K) shifts from the east valley to the west valley to make room for the Pitts. We keep the S-2B in the east valley as much as possible for noise abatement. This Blockhouse ballet is pretty amazing when you step back and look at it.

Sometimes I think about the hundreds of pilots who have trained — and trained others — at the Blockhouse. I would not be surprised if this was the most active aerobatic practice area in the country. Unfortunately, the Blockhouse is at risk as developers build homes ever closer to our practice area. I am hopeful that a serious slowdown in the housing market will allow this aerobatic haven to flourish for a while longer.

As they say, supplies are running out. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Alternative titles:  ”A Place Called Vertigo”, or perhaps ”How to Dismantle an Atomic Pitts”

An F-14 has nothing on this baby.  Speaking of which, isn’t it ironic that the Tomcat has been retired while the Pitts Special – a 1940’s design! — is entering it’s sixth decade of production?

There’s just no end to the cool photography one can generate when you’ve got an airplane like this.  A 20″ wide glossy print of this photo is being framed right now.  It’s going to be the centerpiece of my home office.  The composite image shows the runways of the old El Toro Marine Corps Air station in the background.

What would make this even cooler?  Well, future plans for the aircraft include reinstalling the smoke system and putting in a video system with multiple cameras.  Great for demo rides, debriefing aerobatic training flights, and plain old everyday fun.

The 2006 aerobatic season is underway.  In fact, fully one-third of the California contests are already in the books.  I finished in second place at the Borrego MiniFest and a distant sixth at Apple Valley.  I haven’t written anything about it as yet, mainly because I’ve been too busy flying to write about flying.

This is a good thing.

But let me back up and talk about how I got here.

As I wrote in December, my career in aerobatics was at a crossroads after last season.  I wanted to move up to Intermediate, but couldn’t do so in the Super Decathlon.  After running the financials, and thanks in no small part to the experience of owning Tweety for several years, I bought into a partnership in an Pitts S-2B.

I’m sure you’ll all want to see the art work before I drone on about the mundane details of aircraft ownership, so here are some photographs that were taken at the L.A. Gold Cup competition last month:

In the words of George Costanza, “Yeah, she’s a sweet ride”.  This is true as much because of the circumstances as the actual airplane.  See, this isn’t just any S-2B.  It’s an aircraft which is on leaseback where I work.  It’s available for checkouts and solo rental — one of the few Pitts Specials that you can fly solo, I might add.

The rarity of solo rentals has made N1191 very popular.  We have folks who regularly come from as far away as Japan to fly it.  The leaseback revenue has been high enough that it keeps the partners cost extremely low.  Much moreso than I’d be able to swing with any other partnership, let alone if I were to buy an aircraft outright.

A partnership also made sense because it’s unlikely any friction will develop between the owners about who takes the plane for the weekend.  A Pitts is not a good cross country aircraft.  It’s cramped, noisy, and uncomfortable.  It was designed for one thing:  aerobatics.  As such, when it leaves the area, it’s probably going to be enroute to a competition.  And all the owners will be going, too.  So where scheduling is concerned, our desires are nearly always aligned.

Finally, as anyone who’s been in an aircraft partnership will tell you, these arrangements are akin to a marriage:  you’re attached financially and personally to the other owners.  So you better get along.  And the partners in this aircraft were already a known quantity to me.  I’d spend time with them at competitions, seen how they treated the airplane, and knew we’d be a good match because we’re already friends.

I also like the fact that the airplane isn’t moving to a new home.  It’s been based at SNA for more than a decade.  The maintenance and upkeep will be done by the same people who’ve managed it since day one.  I don’t have to worry about where to hangar the aircraft (it’s already got one), how much the insurance will cost (the same as it did before I owned it), and what the tax consequences will be (there are none).

Of course, there has to be a down side, right?  Nothing’s free.  In this particular arrangement, what I’m giving up is the freedom to fly the plane whenever I want.  We have a scheduling system that everyone, even the owners, must use.  If I want to fly it tomorrow morning and it’s already booked, I’m out of luck.  But at a total cost of operation of $85/hour, this is a limitation I can live with.  I just have to plan my flights a little further in advance, that’s all.

If I learned anything from owning my other aircraft, it’s that the purchase price is a small piece of the financial puzzle.  An engine overhaul or airframe repair can easily blow your budget wide open, no matter how much money you hold in reserve.  Case in point:  the canopy on the Pitts has been lost before.  One time it wasn’t latched properly.  Another time the jettisoning mechanism had worn beyond limits and the canopy fell to the ground after a flight.  This is a $5,000 part.  An engine overhaul is in the $30,000 range.  Prop overhauls are more than $2,000. 

As the saying goes, a few thousand here, a few thousand there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Speaking of mishaps, I can already recount a Bad Day I had with N1191.  It was at the last competition.  I was in a hurry to refuel the airplane after my flight and get over to the judging line.  Everything was fine until I reached into my pocket to grab the fuel strainer.  I couldn’t find it.  Turns out that I had left the strainer in the fuel hose extension (where it is stored), and when I put fuel in the plane, the pressure of the 100LL going into the tank had dumped the fuel strainer into the tank as well.

You should have seen the look on my face when I realized what had happened.  I spent the next two minutes cursing myself with the most colorful idioms.  From what I’ve been told, it was quite entertaining.  I figured that the competition was over for me.  And the other partners.  Nice way to join the group, don’t you think? 

In the end, the day was saved by the fuel truck driver.  He somehow managed to fish the strainer out of the tank using nothing but an 18″ spring loaded claw, flashlight, and one of those magnetic doo-dads that are used to pick up washers and screws from hard to reach places.  I don’t know how he did it.  If you look at a photo of the Pitts, you’ll see that the acro tank filler cap is only a few inches from the bottom of the top wing, leaving very little space to even get your head in there and see what’s going on, let alone fishing something out of the tank.

I could have hugged him.  But instead I pulled out my wallet and said, “I don’t know how much is in here, but whatever it is, please take it!”  He wouldn’t hear of it, but I at least managed to buy the guy lunch.

One of the owners later told me that years ago, something similar had happened.  The difference is that when they went about retrieving the fuel strainer, they didn’t find one in the tank, they found three.

Good times.

I’ve got about 25 hours in the plane now, and my impressions are generally good.  It’s certainly a higher performance bird than the Super D, but I sometimes fail to account for the tremendous drag presented by the airframe.  On the way back from Apple Valley, I flew in formation with the Extra 300 and had to apply full power to keep up with it.  The Extra was running at about 15″.

I wish I’d have learned that lesson sooner.  I zeroed a figure at that competition because I fell out of an inverted lay out after a vertical roll.  And I had entered the maneuver at nearly Vne!  The high drag and wing loading are especially apparent during any attempt to “glide”.  I use the word in quotes because a better adjective might be “fall”.  It comes nearly straight down.  On an extremely tight downwind, if I pull the power abeam the runway numbers, I barely make the runway from 1300′ AGL.  They should consider using the S-2B to train shuttle pilots…

I have a high level of respect, maybe even a little fear, of the Pitts.  Oh, not because of spins.  I’ve spun it every possible way and it exits even the most aggrevated spin mode beautifully.  No, I’m talking about the structure.  The structure is extremely light.  I don’t see a whole lot of crashworthiness in the plane.  Combined with the poor glide ratio, high landing speed, and landing gear configuration, it certainly must give one pause when thinking about engine failure scenarios.  When Gray and I ferried the Pitts and Extra out to Apple Valley in marginal VFR last month, I asked to fly the Extra because flying at 2000′ AGL for any length of time in the Pitts just made me very uncomfortable.

In closing, I will note that the Pitts has a legendary reputation as an unpredictable and highly difficult airplane to land.  From what I can tell, the reputation is undeserved.  The Pitts, like any other airplane, will do what you tell it to do.  I found the transition to be easier than moving into the Extra 300.  Once you get the sight picture down and can roundout low enough, it’s no different than any other aircraft.  Get the nose straight.  Stop the drift.  And when it’s on the ground, keep it going straight.

Now, if you never learned how to do those things in other aircraft, the Pitts is certainly capable of teaching you a lesson you won’t forget.  But it’s not a machine that will disobey pilot input.

So that’s it.  A new adventure begins!

Now.  Who wants to go for a RIDE??

When I start teaching aerobatics to a pilot, one of the first things we discuss is when and where aerobatics are allowed.  Or, more accurately, where they are prohibited.  As anyone who’s familiar with government regulation will attest, the Code of Federal Regulations doesn’t tell you what you can do.  It only tells you what you cannot do.

One of the places aerobatics are prohibited is “within the lateral boundaries of the surface areas of a Class B, Class C, Class D, or Class E designated for an airport.”  Anyone who flies acro should know this.  And, to me at least, the definition of a surface area was always crystal clear:  it meant airspace that extended down to the surface of the earth.

What other meaning could there be?

Apparently, for about seven years, the FAA has been operating under a different definition of “surface area” than the rest of us.  Their interpretation meant that the lateral boundaries of B, C, D, and E airspace were, for all intents and purposes, extended down to the surface of the earth everywhere.  If you saw controlled airspace on a terminal or sectional chart, aerobatics were prohibited anywhere within the lateral boundaries, regardless of altitude.

This definition makes no sense.  We refer to the dashed magenta lines on a VFR chart as defining a “class E surface area”.  The charts actually use an abbreviation, “SFC”, to represent surface areas in class B and C airspace.  Finally, there’s the issue of class E airspace.  This is airspace that, while controlled, is usually not directly depicted on a sectional or terminal chart.  If all class E airspace were to extend to the surface when aerobatics is considered, aerobatics would prohibited absolutely everwhere.  No matter where you stick your finger on a chart — any chart – class E airspace exists at some altitude in that place.  It may start at the surface, 700 feet, 1200 feet, 14,500 feet, or some other arbitrary altitude, but it exists there.  Extend it to the surface, and the entire face of the earth becomes a “no fly” zone for aerobatics.

Is it possible someone at the FAA didn’t think this through?

Class E issues aside, the FAA would have been busting pilots left and right for violating this regulation if that definition were enforced.  Aerobatic pilots practice out over the water southwest of Long Beach harbor (between, but not on, V8-64 and V21) all the time.  It sits directly underneath a shelf of class B airspace that extends from 8000 to 10,000 feet MSL:

The good news is that an EAA member from Minnesota didn’t just blindly accept this interpretation.

The issue “re-surfaced” late last year when Robert Hucker, EAA 443420, Lakeville , Minnesota , filed a petition in advance of the Minneapolis (MSP) Class B airspace expansion slated to go live February 16. That expansion increased MSP’s Class B radius from 20 nm to as much as 30 nm in some areas, including over an aerobatic practice area 25 miles southwest of the airport used frequently by many local aerobatic pilots. Hucker used EAA’s 1998 petition as a basis for filing his petition.

“The (1999 FAA) explanation to EAA’s petition didn’t seem right to me,” Hucker said. “Plus use of the term, ‘surface area,’ was inconsistent, so I decided to put together some facts and file my own petition.” During his fact-finding process, Hucker discovered EAA’s 1998 petition at the MSP Flight Service District Office (FSDO) and used that as the basis of his argument.

In a March 7 letter, Rebecca MacPherson, FAA Assistant Chief Council, Regulations, wrote in a letter to Hucker, “Upon review, we conclude that the EAA was indeed correct in its understanding of ‘surface areas.’ In responding to your inquiry, we concluded that our 1999 interpretation was inconsistent with the term ‘surface area’ as used by Air Traffic Organization (ATO) airspace planners to describe only airspace that touches the surface of the earth.” 

I’m glad someone has been pursuing this.  I didn’t even know this interpretation of “surface area” existed, and I’m a very active instructor and competition aerobatic pilot.  I read everything I can get my hands on.  Accident reports, newsletters, aviation forums, FAA publications.

It leaves me wondering what other interesting FAA interpretations are lurking out there.

A CPA member found a video I saw years ago and haven’t been able to find since.  It’s a great clip from a BBC television program about Robert “Bob” Hoover, one of the world’s all time greatest pilots.

Click on the photo at the right to view the video.  It shows Hoover shutting down both engines and then performing an aileron rol while pouring a glass of iced tea.  Naturally, he doesn’t spill a drop.

Don’t be fooled by the genteel look of a kindly older man.  Hoover was a World War II figher pilot who went on to be Chuck Yeager’s backup on the X-1 project.  He had a long career as a test pilot, racing champion, and airshow performer.  In fact, Yeager himself called Bob Hoover the greatest pilot he ever knew.

For me, it’s a close call between Hoover and Jimmy Doolittle for the title of all time greatest.  Doolittle engineered the launch of B-25 bombers off of an aircraft carrier, set many speed records and won numerous air races, and carried out the world’s first instrument flight, so he’s always had my vote.  But I suppose it’s worth nothing that Doolittle also called Hoover the greatest stick and rudder pilot who ever lived.

Anyway, in this clip, Bob Hoover talks about his energy management routine.  Keep in mind the airplane he’s flying is not designed for aerobatics — it’s a business aircraft not designed to withstand the rigors of such activity, so there was little margin for error in his routine.

I just got home a few minutes ago, exhausted after spending two long days in an intensive class studying the finer points of judging competitive aerobatics.

My employer sponsored this seminar, better know as a “judges school”, where those of us who are involved in the sport can satisfy one of the requirements for becoming an accredited IAC aerobatic judge.

I came away impressed once again with the two dozen aerobatic pilots I’ve come to know over the past year.  They’re an intelligent, well-considered group who take flying upside down seriously.  People who’ve invested — and continue to invest — their time, money, and attention in this fine sport.  People who take the risks seriously, countering them with world-class training and a dedication to following the rules.

I also came home to some bad news on the AP newswire.

ROSEVILLE, California (AP) — A single-engine plane that appeared to have been performing an aerobatic stunt lost control and crashed into a suburban home Sunday, killing at least two people and sparking a fire that gutted the house, police said.

The crash left a gaping, smoldering hole in the two-story house it directly hit and set fire to an adjacent house, damaging the garage and attic, said Roseville Fire Marshall Dennis Mathisen. One body was visible in the wreckage.

The plane — which the FAA identified as a 1996 Glasair II — appeared to be doing an aerobatic maneuver when it crashed just before 11:30 a.m., Roseville Police spokeswoman Dee Dee Gunther said.

“The pilot appeared to be coming down low for some kind of maneuver that brought him to within 500 feet of the rooftops,” she said. “And then he appeared to lose control and crashed into one of the houses.”

Rick Wurster, who lives about a half mile from the crash, saw the plane attempting to make a figure eight.

“He couldn’t pull up because he didn’t have enough altitude,” Wurster said. “I saw him do two spins and then go over the tree line. A second later, I heard two booms.”

This is the other side.  Reckless behavior exhibited by the unqualified.

I firmly believe aerobatics are a safe activity, assuming they’re performed in a safe location by a properly trained pilot.  The investigation into this one is just starting, but this Glasair crash may be another case of massive error in pilot judgement.  I say “may” because initial media reports after an accident are often inaccurate.  Even preliminary NTSB reports often contain errors.

Nevertheless, I can say with certainty that no one should be performing aerobatics over homes.  It is both unwise and highly illegal.  I’ve seen footage of the crash site, and it’s definitely a congested area.

In fact, 14 CFR 91.303 prohibits aerobatics in six places:

• over any congested area
• over an open air assembly of people
• within an airport surface area
• on an airway
• below 1500 feet above the ground
• when in-flight visibility is less than 3 miles

Since we’re on the topic, it’s worthwhile to define aerobatics.  For the purposes of 91.303, it refers to “an intentional maneuver involving an abrupt change in an aircraft’s attitude, an abnormal attitude, or abnormal acceleration, not necessary for normal flight.”

Now I wouldn’t put too much stock in an AP news story, but if the reported eyewitness accounts are anywhere near reality, this pilot was way out of line.  He shouldn’t have been flying at 500′ over those homes, even in straight and level flight, unless he was in the process of taking off or landing.

So how dangerous is this kind of thing?  Well, there were about 1,200 general aviation accidents last year.  According to the Air Safety Foundation, “Low-level maneuvering was the leading cause [of accidents] again this year, as it has been for the last five, holding steady at about 25 percent of fatal accidents.”  Low level maneuvering is a synonym for low level aerobatics, something 99.9% of the pilot population has absolutely no business messing with.

By the same token, Sport Aerobatics magazine reported that 2005 saw only 10 airshow or contest-related mishaps, the second lowest total in the past two decades.

Ten accidents.  Is that a lot?  I don’t know.  But I do know this:  airshows are one of the most popular events on the planet.

In the 1990s, airshows were the second most popular spectator sport in North America with over 18 million people attending more than 400 airshows annually. In 1998, airshows drew nearly twice the attendance figures of NFL football.

These airshows consist almost entirely of hard core, low level aerobatics.  A year with only 10 mishaps sounds pretty good to me, especially when compared with 300 low level maneuvering accidents among the greater general aviation community.

The inescapable conclusion is that unless one has received appropriate aerobatic and  spin training from a qualified instructor, aerobatics should be avoided.  Though I’m undoubtedly talking to a brick wall, I’ll say it again:  low level aerobatics are especially deadly.  They should only be attempted by extremely experienced, highly trained aerobats flying purpose-built equipment under tightly controlled conditions.

If pilots would stick to this simple rule, fatalities would drop by 25%, the largest single killer of aviators would be eliminated, and this beleagured avocation would avoid further damage to its public image.

Wake up, people.

Well, it had to happen. Sooner or later, everyone who flies loses a friend to an accident. I’ve been lucky — since 1998 there hasn’t been a single person I can think of who’s been killed in an aircraft — but that changed recently when an odd mechanical failure claimed the life of Marta Meyer.

I was in Las Vegas when I heard the news. Or should I say, read it. I received an email from IAC entitled “Memorial Service for Marta Meyer” and involuntarily yelled “What??”. That was a strange day. It was the same day that the Jet Blue flight landed at LAX with the nose gear malfunction. It was also the day that a crazy guy intentionally ran down a dozen people with his car right outside my hotel on the Strip. For hours, the Strip was closed to traffic, the fountains at Bellagio were turned off, an the center of Las Vegas was eerily quiet.

Anyway, Marta and I were not what you would call close friends. I didn’t know her extremely well, but she was the first person I ever encountered at an aerobatic competition, and the first one to make an impression on me. I will always remember the way she’d crack jokes at the early morning pilot briefings, making people laugh and helping wake everyone up.

Marta was inspirational. Chief engineer for NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, aircraft builder, A&P-rated mechanic, Unlimited category aerobatic pilot, highly regarded aerobatic judge, and member of the U.S. National Aerobatic Team. She was also one of only two women to have flown in the SR-71 Blackbird. Yet Marta was also down to earth, friendly, always smiling, and never too busy to lend a hand or talk to you. You’d find her out in the box, painting markers, setting up tables, and pitching in just like a first time guy (that would be me) paying his dues.

There are few women in aviation, and fewer still in competitive aerobatics, so Marta was something special for many reasons. The community is small enough that her loss is felt all around the world. For my part, when I look at Bob and Marta Meyer, I see the kind of aviator I strive to be. Knowledgeable, experienced, safety-oriented, friendly, and low on ego.

Speaking of safety-oriented, I don’t know exactly what happened on her last flight, but it appears to have had something to do with a failure of the canopy. The IAC web site noted the following:

Marta was practicing for the upcoming US National Aerobatic Championships. After about 5 minutes of practice, including several vertical maneuvers, Marta pulled vertical to do a hammerhead and the canopy departed the aircraft. No further control inputs were noted and the Giles crashed just off the airport property. Speculation is that Marta was rendered unconscious at the canopy departure. The canopy was located and found locked, with the pins also in the locked position. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

The NTSB preliminary accident report, which is available online, says basically the same thing.

I’ve always thought of competition aerobatics as a relatively safe sport, but after my excitement at Paso Robles this summer and this unexpected accident, I’m rethinking that opinion. The airplanes are very tough, and the pilots well trained, but we’re pushing these aircraft hard and mechanical things do break.

My last memory of Marta is from the Delano competition which took place last month. More than one person told me that without the Meyers’ efforts, that contest would never happen. At the awards ceremony on Sunday night, she sort of MC’d the banquet, handing out trophies for Delano and the 2004 California state championship, and having a grand time. Marta finished in first place in Unlimited at Delano, and I recall her posing for a photo with a kiss with Bob. She seemed happy, celebrating a successful contest with friends, savoring a victory, and hamming it up a bit. That’s how I’ll remember her.

I’m not sure there’s anything that can be learned from the accident. But there’s much to be learned from the legacy she leaves behind.

Farewell, Marta, and thanks for the memories.

This is my newest ride! What do you think? Sunrise needs another Extra instructor and I draw the lucky straw.

I started getting familiar with this baby today. The cockpit checkout was interesting; it’s far more sparse than other Extras I’ve flown. This aircraft is one of the older 300 models (no -L or -S suffix, just a plain old 300), and the main difference seems to be the mid-wing.

The visibility looks perfectly fine to me, especially after occupying the front seat of a Pitts S-2B, but I can see why they shifted the wing to the bottom of the fuselage in subsequent models. Not only does it improve the viz, but it’s a bit easier to get in and out of the aircraft as well. I’ve been told that the mid-wing is better from an aerobatics perspective, but at this level the opinions may be a bit subjective. On the other hand, the Edge 540 is a mid-wing design, so there’s probably something to it.

Anyway, if I can make the financial end work out, perhaps I’ll be flying this in intermediate next season. It would be nice to move into an airplane that I could take all the way to unlimited. An S-1 would be cheaper to operate, but I’d eventually be faced with another transition, something that’s time consuming and expensive.

The Pepsi and Sunrise logos on the airframe are sort of hokey, but they do impart that sense of flying in the big leagues. Those guys have logos on everything.

I should probably be a little nervous about flying this thing. There aren’t any cheap parts on it. One guy I know had to replace the canopy on his 300L and the glass alone was something like $18,000. It might have included the canopy skirt. Either way, that’s a lot of coin. On the other hand, at solo weight the Extra 300 can be stressed to +10/-8g. It’s hard to put a price on that.

So I recently got back from my third aerobatic contest, the Northern California Aerobatic Challenge at Paso Robles. I finished in second place, a nice surprise considering some serious obstacles were encountered along the way.

After the Apple Valley contest (where I finished in sixth place), the plane developed a crack in the right fuel tank. Replacing this tank definitely falls into the “heavy maintenance” category, as it includes removing the wing from the aircraft, ripping open the top of the wing, replacing the tank, recovering the wing, doping and painting it, reattaching the wing and flight controls, and a thorough test flight.

The general consensus, based on previous wing tank replacements in this airplane, was that there was virtually no chance the plane would be done in time for Paso Robles. The lead time for even getting a new fuel tank was estimated to be several weeks.

There was some talk of flying a standard Decathlon or trying to work out a deal to use one of the northern California airplanes, but nothing ever came of it. Which was fine with me, becase after flying the Super D in the high density altitude at Apple Valley, I want more power, not less.

Paso Robles was pretty much written off in my mind until a week or so before the contest, when I heard that not only did we have a tank, but it had already been installed in the wing and the maintenance department was preparing to reattach it to the fuselage. Within a few days, the plane was back on line and ready to go.

As usual, I ferried the Super Decathlon to the contest. It’s always a nice change from instructional flying, because I don’t have to do anything but fly the plane and enjoy the view. Oh yeah, and navigate. The Super D has no navigational equipment of any kind on board, so I get to fly cross country using nothing but a compass and sectional chart. In an era of $300 GPS receivers, this kind of pilotage is something everyone learns in primary training but typically never uses again on non-local flights.

A persistent stratus layer along the coast made the navigation somewhat challenging. Many of the typical waypoints were under the clouds and I was left with a homogenous mountain range to find my way up to PRB. But find it I did.

So things were looking up on Thursday. The weather was great. The plane was in good shape. And I had a coveted early time slot reserved for practicing my sequence in the aerobatic box (every competitor gets 15 minutes of practice time the day before the contest starts). I took off around 10 a.m. and ran through the sequence once just to shake off the rust. I was pretty happy with how it went, and felt good during the climb back up to 5,000 MSL.

I came into the box a second time and pushed the nose over to gain speed, wagging the wings good and hard as you’re supposed to when starting a sequence. It was on the third wing wag that the stick froze — and I mean it locked up tight.

Initially I didn’t realize that it was only the ailerons that were immobilized. All I knew was that the airplane was 45-50 degrees nose down, approaching Vne, and some very important bits were not working properly. There had been no grinding, binding, clicking, or anything else in the control system. It was perfectly smooth and normal right up to the point where it froze.

They say time slows down when something like this happens. I wish. I’m sure there was a moment of denial on my part, but it didn’t last very long. I pulled the throttle to idle and was moving my hand down to the elevator trim slider when I realized that the stick would still move back and forth, just not laterally. It had stuck so firmly that I initially thought both elevator and aileron control had been lost.

The relief didn’t last long, becase it was about this time that I realized that the ailerons were deflected and the aircraft was rolling right at about 10-15 degrees per second, slow by aerobatic standards but more than enough to get my attention now. As I raised the nose, I instinctivly glanced at the outboard sections of the left and right wings, but there was no apparent abnormality with the control surfaces.

By this point the Super D had rolled about 40 degrees to the right. I started to use ever increasing force on the stick, hoping to overpower whatever obstruction was in the system, but it was to no avail. I used both hands. No good. Then I made a fist and whacked the stick from the side as hard as I could. Nada.

Time for plan B, the only alternative: full left rudder, which I had already started to feed in while working on the stick. Thankfully it stopped the roll. I added in some throttle to increase airflow over the tail, which improved rudder authority enough to overcome the deflected ailerons and return the airplane to a semblance of level flight.

So there I was, slipping through the sky without any idea of where I was headed. Lord only knows what the folks on the ground were thinking. I took a moment to catch my breath and then keyed the mike to let the starter (the contest equivalent of an air boss) know there was a problem.

Eventually the stick came free on its own after a couple of minutes of me just sort of slopping through the sky trying to figure out how I was going to land it like that. When I got it back on the ground, Bill and I pushed the plane into the hangar and spend the next eight hours taking it apart. Every cover came off, the seat came out, the carpets and floorboards were removed, the bellcrank tunnel came out, the stick boots were pulled, the wingroots were pulled off, the whole nine yards. We inspected the airplane below the floorboards (where the cables run) from the tailcone to the firewall with flashlights, mirrors, and more.

Eventually we found an unused 2″ pop rivet near the wing root aileron pulley. If you’ve never seen one, pop rivets have a long metal shaft that is used to drive them. We had one of the competitors who is also an A&P look at it and he was able to duplicate the jam using the pop rivet. My theory is that when I pushed over to go into the box, the negative Gs allowed the rivet to float up to the control cable, which was moving back and forth during the wing wags. Eventually it got stuck in the pully.

Anyway, we visually inspected every single inch and component of the aileron system and didn’t find anything else, so we test flew it again without incident. But that’s the first time I ever seriously considered bailing out of an airplane. I was totally calm about it, but the adrenaline really kicked in, so much so that later on when we were working on the airplane, I got really sleepy once it wore off.

Last year the airplane had a broken elevator cable during a flight. So now that the ailerons have had their moment in the sun, I’ll be expecting the unexpected from the rudder.

Just kidding. But it does prove once again that the first few flights after maintenance are one of the most dangerous times to be in an aircraft. The wing had been off the plane for the installation of the new fuel tank, and the mechanics did it pretty quickly. So that’s probably what happened — they just left an extra pop rivet in there. I rather like the composite planes that have the translucent inspection panels in the tail so you can look for this stuff before flying. Of course, in this case, that wouldn’t have helped since the object was in the wing root.

Throughout the next couple of days, I was regaled with stories of other aerobatic pilots who’ve been killed by FOD (foreign object damage). The guy who won first place related how his first aerobatic instructor got killed in a Yak 55 when some FOD got stuck in the elevator during a sequence.

So I’m not sure I won second place as much as it was God paying me back for all the hell He put me through.

With respect to the infamously confusing aerobatic box at Paso Robles, it didn’t confuse me, but it did get Bill. On his 2nd flight, he torqued out of the hammerhead and didn’t realize it until he was nose down, and then when he saw the box markers at an angle, he corrected the wrong way and zeroed that maneuver. He also did the final maneuver on the Y-axis, so that knocked him out of contention. He was probably tired after working his tail off to help find out what was wrong with the plane, so I think that played a part in it.

The key at PRB seems to be ignoring the runways. If you look beyond them, you’ll notice that the field section lines that radiate out across the valley are perfectly aligned with the box. But yes, it’s tough because the box is a square and it’s overlayed on a triangular runway.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t difficult to fly the airplane in the competition. I thought after the incident with the aileron jam that I might be reticent to fly the Super D really hard, but I just went out to have fun and ended up flying it harder than ever. It was great being down near sea level instead of up at 8000 foot density altitudes.

The flight home was interesting, too. On the way back the clouds obscured the southern half of the state, so I flew back in formation with the Pitts (he has a GPS) and we just circled down through a hole over Huntington Beach.

As always, when I got back many people asked how the contest went. I can sum it up by saying “I learned about flying from that.”

It’s hard to believe that nearly a month has passed since I flew my first aerobatic competition. But alas, that’s what the calendar tells me.

In fact, I’m getting ready to leave for another one — this time at Apple Valley — on Thursday morning. I’m stepping up to the Sportsman category because I did pretty well at Borrego — in fact, I won. That’s not saying much, because there were only a few others in my category, but I’ll take it. Incidentally, I also received the Challenge Award as the highest scoring pilot flying an aircraft with less than 180 hp.

Competition aerobatics is interesting. I love it, but it bears little resemblance to the stuff I learned in the Basic AB course. Sure, we mastered spins, loops, rolls, cubans, hammerheads, immelmans, and so on, but once you move into competition things change. Instead of flying solely for safety, we’re flying for performance. Instead of flying to please only yourself, the criteria becomes “how does this look from the ground?”.

The short answer is “not good”, unless you’re ready to fly as though you want to break the plane. Get comfortable with Vne (’never exceed’ speed), because you’re going to spend a lot of time there. Maneuvers feel far more violent and uncoordinated. Rolls are initiated with zero rudder (boy did that take some getting used to!). Errors remain intentionally uncorrected. But it looks great from where the judges sit, and that’s what counts.

So those were my initial impressions. Now that I’m used to it, it feels normal. But the transition from the old way of flying these manuvers to the way I do it now was awkward. Everything felt wrong. The aforementioned aileron roll (officially referred to as a ’slow roll’) is a good example.

Aileron rolls are classically initiated by raising the nose before rolling the wings. This is done to allow for the drop in pitch which inevitably occurs when you bank the wings and lift is redirected horizontally.

However, in competition, no altitude can be gained or lost while executing the slow roll. So you begin the roll from level flight with no rudder. Aileron drag pulls the nose upward as you roll, and as the aircraft moves to knife-edge, top rudder is used to hold it there while the plane transitions to inverted flight, where even more rudder is required to keep it on heading. This is also the point where forward elevator is needed to hold the nose up. As the aircraft rolls to opposite knife-edge, there is a sudden call for opposite rudder (which is now “top” rudder) to hold the nose up while the roll continues back around toward level flight.

Just a little more complex than “raise the nose and roll it over”, eh? An aileron roll at 80 mph requires serious control input in the Super Decathlon. From what I’ve heard, it’s significantly easier in airplanes with a faster roll rate like an Edge, Extra, or Sukhoi.

Another aspect of competition flying that took some getting used to was the concept of drawing lines before and after each figure. This was especially strange after a spin, because non-competitors are taught to keep the throttle at idle, and to recover to level flight as soon as the stall is broken. This makes sense. You don’t want to build the airspeed to a dangerous level.

Competition style spins, on the other hand, require drawing a significant downline while building speed for the next maneuver. So once you’ve un-stalled the airplane, it’s back to full power and maintain the downline as the airspeed indicator screams toward redline. You have to build the speed quickly or you’ll bust through the bottom of the aerobatic box (1500′ AGL) and be disqualified.

The competition spin brings up another big change. Pilots are traditionally taught to fix any mistakes in their flying as soon as they see them. Off heading? Fix it! Altitude a little low? Then fix it! Once you enter competition, that stops. If you’re off heading, don’t fix it, lest you draw the judge’s attention to that fact and incur a penalty. It took tremendous willpower to exit a spin just a few degrees off heading and yet do nothing about it.

The Borrego contest was a ‘mini’ event, featuring primary and sportsman categories alone. It’s designed to be a good place for newbies like myself to make their first foray into sport aerobatics. And it was, largely because many of us were able to get some time in the box in advance of the competition.

Sunrise held a training camp at Borrego in the days before the contest, which provided valuable input from coaches who were watching me fly from the ground rather than in the back seat of the aircraft. I thought this was the best thing since sliced bread! Getting the coach out of the airplane meant that the weight and balance was the same as it would be during the competition. And flying in the actual aerobatic box rather than a high altitude practice area with no accurate ground reference allowed me to answer other questions like “where do I hold while waiting for my turn in the box?” and “how hard will it be to see the box markers on the ground?” I used the Google Maps satellite feature to scope out the box in advance, but it’s not the same as actually being there.

Aside from the flying, the week spent in Borrego was great. The other competitors are extremely nice. Sure, they fly hard to beat you in the air. But on the ground everyone is friendly and helpful, almost to a fault. You have to be. These contests don’t work without a virtual army of volunteers. Judges assistants, scorers, registrars, boundary judges, runners, starters, refuelers, and more. When you’re not flying, you’re either preparing to fly, or helping someone else get ready to fly. Push an airplane to the fuel pit. Help someone strap on a parachute or find a missing sequence card, etc.

Borrego itself is a fascinating town. If you ever want to try a joint with some local flair, I recommend Carlee’s. It’s a relatively small diner & bar with lots of charater. Just call ahead and make sure it’s not karaoke night. (Don’t ask). Carlee’s seems to be a window into what Palm Springs would have been like fifty years ago. Put Sinatra on a bar stool with a glass of Jack Daniels and the picture would be complete. In fact, Borrego itself is sort of a Palm Springs from yesteryear. I understand they used to be about the same size. One took off and the other didn’t.

There’s a private airstrip just south of Borrego Airport, and one of the IAC36 members has a home on it. We congregated there after the competition for some food and an informal awards ceremony. The house is basically a massive box hangar, but finished with polished floors, white carpeting, leather couches, crown moulding, central air, a travertine lap pool, waterfalls, gourmet kitchen, rooftop viewing deck, etc. In other words, just your typical hangar. Except you could eat off any surface in it, including the airplane.

Borrego is a great place to go for the day, or to see the wildflowers bloom in the spring. The restaurant on the field is pretty well regarded. They have a lot of aviation memorabilia inside, along with aviation murals on the walls, plus an endearing yet half-deaf bartender. On days when it’s hot (aka “summer”), you can sit at the bar inside, have a cool drink, and watch the airplanes come and go. The view is better from the rooftop deck, but it’s not air-conditioned.

I guess I’d sum up the Borrego experience by noting that it has the kind of character I’d love to see in more GA airports. Instead of presenting onlookers with a wall of barbed wire, L08 says “welcome”.

If you want to attend a competition, I recommend the Borrego AkroFest in the fall (Oct 13-15, 2005). The MiniFest in the spring has only the lower categories, but the fall contest has the unlimiteds, so you’ll get to see the 4 minute freestyles and other stuff like that. It’s like a free airshow, but without the crowds and stinky jets.

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Flying, flying, and uh, flying. Plenty of photos of the training camp and competition at Borrego are available for your viewing pleasure.