This thread brings back some wonderful memories for me.
Back in late 80's, a few years out of college with not quite 100 hours on my PPL and with money to burn I took aerobatic lessons in Olean NY from Bill Thomas, a national champ, in his Pitts S2B that had less time in the air than I did at that point. Yeah I pulled to hard on the top of the loop at least once and was amazed as the world tumbled around and settled into an inverted spin. Oh how I loved doing hammerheads! Wish I could have continued on with more but I moved out of western NY soon after that and never looked up anyone else to continue with as houses and careers took over my budget and life. Bill passed away in 2009 (scroll down to 2009 entry in this site
http://oleanairport.org/history/).
A point I would add as a recommendation for anyone doing acro is in regards to the parachutes required to be worn when flying acro. Go to a jump school and take the first lesson of the accelerated free fall training. Explain to the jump instructors that you want to fly acro and are required to wear a parachute but want to have experienced going out of an airplane, pulling your chute, and landing incase you ever have to do it for real. Aside from a great training and confidence building measure it is enjoyable in itself. So much so you might want to do it more!
The training takes the better part of the day. When it was my turn to go up it was the very end of the day as there had been a lot of other jumpers, static line students, and free fall students there and I drew tail end charley in the jump order. It was so late that they didn't want to let me go but I begged and pleaded to go so I didn't have to come back another day. They gave in and we went up. I'm so glad we went when we did. While free falling from 10,000 AGl I could see Niagra Falls lit up already to the west, the sun setting, and the moon rising. IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!! IT WAS LIKE FLOATING!!! No sense of falling really other than the relative wind. But once I opened the chute I could see there was a slight problem. We had jumped about a mile north of the airport since all day there had been a north wind pushing the jumpers to the airport. That wind had died and I was descending straight down over a forest area! About then the ground based instructor with a one way radio told me he couldn't see where I was going to land and that I was on my own. So my pilot training took over as if I was in an engine out situation. I looked around and saw an open plowed field on the other side of a road about a half a mile to the east perfect for an "emergency landing". I judged I'd clear the electric lines on the far side of the road and kept heading for the field. Made it no problem with a standup landing no harder than jumping off a chair. Back at the airport they knew I was okay because they heard my enthusiastic "Yehawwww!!!" I gathered my chute and started walking out of the field (parallel to the rows to not annoy the farmer by trampling his sprouting corn!). Soon some instructors in a van pulled up and I piled into the open side door on the floor to head back to the airport and a beer. What a wonderful day!
Three things I learned and still remember from my acro training.
One is the already mentioned practice at altitude. To that I would add unless you're a competition or airshow rated acro pilot any aero you do is practice, so no low altitude stunts to impress friends on the ground.
The second was how alcohol can affect your abilities. One of the weekends I was in Olean I went to a local gin mill on Friday night and had 3 or 4 beers before calling it a night at around midnight. We flew the next morning around 10. I drove to the airport, felt fine, and had had a good nights sleep. But I was off and I knew it.
The third lesson I learned was how little I knew.
This thread brings back some wonderful memories for me.
Back in late 80's, a few years out of college with not quite 100 hours on my PPL and with money to burn I took aerobatic lessons in Olean NY from Bill Thomas, a national champ, in his Pitts S2B that had less time in the air than I did at that point. Yeah I pulled to hard on the top of the loop at least once and was amazed as the world tumbled around and settled into an inverted spin. Oh how I loved doing hammerheads! Wish I could have continued on with more but I moved out of western NY soon after that and never looked up anyone else to continue with as houses and careers took over my budget and life. Bill passed away in 2009 (scroll down to 2009 entry in this site [url]http://oleanairport.org/history/[/url]).
A point I would add as a recommendation for anyone doing acro is in regards to the parachutes required to be worn when flying acro. Go to a jump school and take the first lesson of the accelerated free fall training. Explain to the jump instructors that you want to fly acro and are required to wear a parachute but want to have experienced going out of an airplane, pulling your chute, and landing incase you ever have to do it for real. Aside from a great training and confidence building measure it is enjoyable in itself. So much so you might want to do it more!
The training takes the better part of the day. When it was my turn to go up it was the very end of the day as there had been a lot of other jumpers, static line students, and free fall students there and I drew tail end charley in the jump order. It was so late that they didn't want to let me go but I begged and pleaded to go so I didn't have to come back another day. They gave in and we went up. I'm so glad we went when we did. While free falling from 10,000 AGl I could see Niagra Falls lit up already to the west, the sun setting, and the moon rising. IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!! IT WAS LIKE FLOATING!!! No sense of falling really other than the relative wind. But once I opened the chute I could see there was a slight problem. We had jumped about a mile north of the airport since all day there had been a north wind pushing the jumpers to the airport. That wind had died and I was descending straight down over a forest area! About then the ground based instructor with a one way radio told me he couldn't see where I was going to land and that I was on my own. So my pilot training took over as if I was in an engine out situation. I looked around and saw an open plowed field on the other side of a road about a half a mile to the east perfect for an "emergency landing". I judged I'd clear the electric lines on the far side of the road and kept heading for the field. Made it no problem with a standup landing no harder than jumping off a chair. Back at the airport they knew I was okay because they heard my enthusiastic "Yehawwww!!!" I gathered my chute and started walking out of the field (parallel to the rows to not annoy the farmer by trampling his sprouting corn!). Soon some instructors in a van pulled up and I piled into the open side door on the floor to head back to the airport and a beer. What a wonderful day!
Three things I learned and still remember from my acro training.
One is the already mentioned practice at altitude. To that I would add unless you're a competition or airshow rated acro pilot any aero you do is practice, so no low altitude stunts to impress friends on the ground.
The second was how alcohol can affect your abilities. One of the weekends I was in Olean I went to a local gin mill on Friday night and had 3 or 4 beers before calling it a night at around midnight. We flew the next morning around 10. I drove to the airport, felt fine, and had had a good nights sleep. But I was off and I knew it.
The third lesson I learned was how little I knew.