Airwork

I've finally started working on the flying portion of my commercial pilot certificate.  It's been a long time coming (passed the CP written test more than a year ago) but now that nice flying weather is here, it's time to dust off the Gleim maneuvers manual and get to work.  So far:

• Steep turns: Tons of fun.  More challenging at the minimum 50% bank, doing two back to back/one each direction.  Need to keep working on them.

• 180 degree power off spot landings in the Arrow (with the glide ratio of a streamlined brick):  Combination of fun and interesting.  Gear down, power to idle abeam the 1000 ft. touch down marks, *turn now*, flaps when the landing is assured (or you know you're way too high...rare in my plane), cheat and pull the prop back the instant you think you might be short....oh yeah, fun fun fun.  The interesting thing is that I tend to land them 100 ft. longer than allowed.  More practice needed.

• Chandelles: Fun but I've only tried them once.  Need to work on the proper pitch attitude to establish then hold.  Nice way to gain altitude for the steep spirals though.

• Steep Spirals: Have only done one.  Nice way to lose all that altitude gained doing chandelles.

• Slow flight: So far, this is the easiest part of the airwork.  It's also the least exciting.  It does have the distint advantage, however, of consuming less fuel so it's not all bad :-)

Not much ground covered in the past couple of weeks but it's a start.  My plan is to get out at least once a week, more if possible, and work on all of the maneuvers until I have them dialed in.  Oh, and poke/prod/beg/cajole my instructor friend into getting current in the ranks of the CFI world so I can log the necessary dual instruction.