Day Off

I tried to go do aerobatics today on my day off, but Mike was busy in the afternoon and the weather in the morning wasn't very good. I could have gone tomorrow afternoon, but I'm going to be in Detroit, so I told him I'd hit him next weekend. I wish I could just take the Decathlon by myself and work on stuff after he gives me some pointers, but...I'm sure a lot of people wish the same thing, and I'm glad to have the opportunity. :) He's a good aerobatics instructor, knowlegeable on all the various forces and control inputs and reasons and theory, not just having somebody pull back on the stick until they go around...

I finished the book "Faith and Flying" today, and enjoyed it. There's a lot in there that just about any red-blooded pilot can appreciate, at least the ones who actually like to fly, not just play with computers. I did have to laugh though. This guy, a kid who never graduated from high school let alone went further, but still managed to work his way up to test pilot and fighter pilot instructor and all this stuff, he was asked to ferry a bunch of P-51s, not in the best shape, during WWII. He read the book the night before, then hopped in, and had this to say: "With the flaps fully extended I was able to hold a reasonably steep approach angle and see over the nose and well ahead of the approach. The airplane had such good control balance that it was easy to coordinate the approach, correct for wind drift and finally join rubber with asphalt with a gentle chirp. I guessed it was one of the easiest taildraggers to land that I had ever flown!" I swear I could smack these guys. ;) He learned to fly the good old-fashioned way, he had a total of four hours of dual instruction until after he was a CFI, which didn't require the rating that it does today, and he checked out in every airplane by somebody just telling him to hop in and go do it. It's harder to get away with that today in the Land of Liability. Something else he would do is go out on his own and do loops and try to skim the grass with his tires on his recovery. He'd go lower and lower and try to judge it to get as low as possible without smacking the ground. He'd also do spins all the way to the ground, kick it out and recover at the last second, and land out of it. He missed once (more than once) and managed to live through it, though he destroyed a few airplanes. There's my line. I have a family, and an entire life to live still, and while I do like to go upside down, and have fun, and probably expose myself to more risk than average, I have no desire to see if I can skim the earth on my recovery. I have too much to hang around for to do that just to see if I can. But it was a fun book to read about a pretty impressive life of both, as the title suggests, flying and faith.

We had some friends over tonight and hung out on the deck, the kids played around, I got some pizza and we just kicked back and enjoyed a few hours. Happy Saturday. :)