Will teach you how to fly this airplane for cheap....

Would YOU want to learn how to fly fromTHIS flight instructor? Actually, I would. This is John in a stellar "real life" pose, just prior to our Saturday departure last weekend to terrorize the skies over Erie/TriCounty (EIK) and Longmont Airports (LMO). At that point I had about 3.3 hours remaining to be "eligible" for my tailwheel endorsement. This was a rare late morning/afternoon flight for us, with the majority of the flights thus far being very early morning flights to accomodate work schedules and availability and such.

Then there is even the more rediculous looking student (aka me). Bet you are wondering how a big guy like me can fit in a tiny airplane like that. Well, lets just suffice it to say that John gets a good chuckly watching me maneuver my way into the cockpit. Definitely a tight squeeze, but I manage. So ignore the ugly guy in the below photo - nice plane though, eh?

We burned about 2.4 hours on the Saturday flight, and another hour today. The original plan was to travel to Platte Valley as well. Unfortunately I was (and still am) in a bit of a plateau in my ability to confidently handle this airplane in a variety of different conditions, and so I had some difficulties at Tri-county and again at Longmont that I later attributed to mishandling the rollout and flare attitude by raising the nose just a bit too much before allowing the airspeed to bleed off just a bit before executing my 3 point landings. When John told me that the runway at Platte Valley was even less wide than the taxiway at Tri County, there was just no way I was even going to attempt that landing.  I managed to salvage the last landing back at Centennial, but I was just not happy with the landings at all.

So with .9 hours of "eligible"  time remaining, John was gracious enough to schedule an afternoon flight with me this evening. Well, the forecast winds for this evening were supposed to be light and variable, and don't ya know that ya just can't trust a forecast very much. The winds turned out to be direct crosswinds of 9-12 knots, and they pretty much beat me to a pulp tonight.

So what have a learned? I learned why you don't let the tailwheel stay up forever during a wheel landing in heavy crosswinds. I learned that I need to remember to take the power out during my wheel landings (something I seem to keep forgetting to do), and I learned the hard way what happens when you forget to allow the speed of the airplane to build up fast enough to depart the runway smartly on a crosswind takeoff. All very stupid mistakes on my part - and ones that I know better than to commit. The airplane is pretty much kicking my butt during landings at this point. Not very fun lessons to learn, to say the least, but lessons that must be learned to conquer this type of flying.

Personally, I don't think that a private pilot has as hard a time as I am having while trying to nail this down. Once you possess the type of flying experience that I have accumulated over the years, you have a certain degree of very high expectations of yourself. While John is always quick to remind me not to beat my self up too much, the fact of the matter is that I always have hight expectations of myself at this stage of my flying career - both as a pilot and a flight instructor. And when I don't live up to those expectations, it weighs quite heavily on me.

So am I giving up at this point? Nope. Just need to keep getting back on the saddle until I finally get it figured out. My measuring stick of success is quite simple. I just need to prove to myself that I can spend just one lesson performing landings of different types where the outcome of the directional control during each takeoff or landing is never in doubt. I ain't ashamed to say it, but right now I am a little afraid of this airplane and what it can do to me if I screw up too much. I just have to get over that somehow.....

Anyway, here are some more fun photos of our journey to front range a while back.

and finally John calling for fuel.....