Well after a series of long breaks due to my schedule as well as my instructors schedule not lining up, I was able to get in an hour of IR training yesterday. I’m amazed at how quickly the skills I was building up have vanished! My self-debrief was basically that I was disappointed in my performance and am not where I want to be. Feedback from my instructor (as well as some others at the airfield) were all similar; IR training is hard and it take time for it to “click”. If you are not regularly flying twice a week (or more), you can’t expect to progress. Difference between logic and emotion. Logically I completely understand, but it still doesn’t change how I feel. 😛
The remainder of the day was pretty awesome. I was able to hang out for a bit and give a debrief of S&F to my instructor and a local RV pilot (Robert). Who doesn’t love talking about aviation, or about the cools things they saw at the latest airshow / vendor booths. Also retold the story of how my opportunity to fly the Vans demo RV10 didn’t happen. A few more stories later, and Robert offered to take me up in his -7 for a quick flight from VKX to Cambridge and back before our IMC Club meeting. DONE!
Quickly file our FRZ / SFRA flight plans and it’s time to pull the plane out of the hangar. This was a whole bunch of firsts for me. Taildragger, CS prop, Glass, High Performance, Stick vs Yoke. I’ll admin, I think I was drooling most of the flight. Did I get an RV Grin? Yep!
Robert was awesome and took me over to a quiet area to practice some maneuvers to get a feel of the plane. I was totally nervous as this thing had so much power, and was EXTREMELY responsive on the controls. I think the most jarring was when he was having me do a stall in the -7. I was rightfully nervous applying full power to recover from the stall, so I was totally wimpy in my stall and recovery. Robert then demonstrated it and I swear the power compared to the weight is insane. He really knows his plane and was very generous in letting me tag along! Luckily I was able to provide a small amount of value as I helped fix a minor issue with his on-board GPS. If only I could get my piloting skills up to the same level as my Tech skills!
Finished up with a great discussion in our local IMC Club where I continue to learn a lot and ask what I’m sure others consider “silly” questions. Hey, this is how you learn right?
Overall it was a great day of flying and hanging out with fellow pilots at the airport. Can’t beat that.