Current Again and Armchair flying.

Recently, my other passion, scuba diving, occupied the lion’s share of my non-work time, so flying had to take a backseat for a while. Add bad weather to the mix, and “a while” stretched into almost 2 months for Citabria and almost 3 months for Cessna. This meant I was definitely non-current.

The currency requirements range from monthly as the large school where I rent Cessnas to none (i.e. use common sense) at the smaller field. I knew I would have to get up with instructor in the Cessna to regain currency, but that was not a problem as I am also in the middle of my night rating, so one hour of dual night flying would make me current again for another month.

Citabria was a different story. They would have probably rented it to me solo on a nice day, but I decided to play it safe and made that one dual as well. I seemed to have lost a bit of confidence in my Citabria landings before the break, and decided that dual with instructor would do me a lot of good. We also added dual acro into that lesson for a good measure.

Before the day of flying (due to weather, both flights ended up on the same very expensive day), I did a bit of armchair flying with the Citabria. I know some people laugh about it, but I swear it works for me. I sat on the couch, moved my hands and feet as if managing the stick and rudder and imagined the whole process from getting Citabria in the run up bay to flying the perfect circuits into a perfect landing. On the day of the flight, the whole process was already in my memory, so I had to concentrate on flying instead of remembering what it was that I was supposed to be doing or circuit heights.

The circuits and landings were decent enough to regain some confidence back and soon we were off to do some aerobatics. The Wx was unbelievable with bright blue skies and air so still above 4,000 ft, it seemed not moving at all. Before the break, I was flying half decent loops, so we concentrated on hammerheads and aileron rolls. Some armchair flying helped in that regard as well and I managed put together a string of passable Hammerheads right from the start.

Rolls were next. Based on my few attempts in the past that ended up with the nose very low while inverted and picking up speed, I was not allowed to practice them solo, so I was eager to try again and do well enough to remove that restriction. The first few this time around were much better than the last few, so I knew I was making progress. We worked a little on proper entry position (nose high but not too high and unload the wings (stick momentarily forward) before turning. Soon, I was managing to keep the nose above the horizon while inverted quite reliably. The rest of each roll was not very pretty but I knew I had a good foundation I can improve on later.

That was not the end of the day as I also had a dual night lesson later. I did not bothered to armchair fly the Cessna and I should have. While all the radio procedures at the controlled airport came back very fast as soon as I pressed push-to-talk, the other rather essential stuff, such as reporting points, circuit height and direction, trickled back into my head VERY SLOWLY, so I had to confirm a few things with my instructor. I am sure having a student ask what the circuit height was whilst flying said circuit was very comforting…

My circuits were also very tight, which is fine and probably good practice at night and in an empty circuit, however, I kept coming in way too high (this had NEVER been my problem, if anything I am guilty of coming in too low). I finally started to reduce power to idle at the base turn and gliding it in. I then proceeded to land it in typical tail dragger fashion (i.e. very nose high), which resulted in a plane deciding it had enough of that flying thing while were still couple of feet above ground and then dropping to the ground like a stone. Eventually, the airplane got tired and we called it a day, but I am now cleared to practice the night flight solo.