Well, that was easier than I would have thought. Ended up calling a different IP that Mr. I Won’t Go Flying if the Wings are Dirty. Hizzoner was proud of the opportunity, so long as payment was made in cash. I’m quite sure this has nothing to do with an aerial underground economy. The two being ontologically exclusive. Opposites, like.
Never a brief, per se. Just you preflight whilst I go and fetch some paper towels.
It’s always fun when you get checked out in a new airplane, especially if it’s anything like complex. Constant speed props, fuel flow meters for leaning the engine out and cowl flaps turn those boxes red for your host, even if retractable gear are something of a yawn. Pre-start checklist: Cowl Flaps – Open. Jolly good.
How does one open the cowl flaps?
VFR departure to the west, a climb to 3.5 once north of the Class B airspace and some basic turns, reversals and stalls. Power on, power off and trim stall. Which I’d never done one of those before, but since there’s a fair amount of stabilator trim going on while performing level speed changes, a full-power go around without forward yoke to counter it will put you in an uphill attitude, going downhill. No real vices apart from a marked right wing drop at the stall break. If there was a stall horn installed (there was), I never heard it.
“Let’s go to Ramona for some touch-and-goes”, yer man said.
Ramona, right. Checking the VFR terminal area chart. Ramona, yes. There it is. Good thing I’d brushed up on the Biennial Flight Review standards for last week’s abortion. ATIS on 132.025, Tower on 119.875, 1395 foot airport elevation, 5000 foot runway, left pattern. Wouldn’t it have been marvelous to have briefed all this prior to the flight?
It would.
Five landings, none of the particularly credible, none particularly loathesome. A lot of work in the pattern, GUMP (gas, undercarriage, mixture, prop) on downwind, ten degrees flaps on the turn to base, cowl flaps closed. Full throttle on the touch-and-go, landing gear up, flaps retract, cowl flaps open, manifold pressure to 25 inches, 2500 RPM, mixture to 13 gallons per hour. And then back to GUMP again, fuel selectors – both, gear – down, mixture – rich, props – full increase.
The Cardinal has excellent upward visibility for a high wing aircraft, Cessna pushed the wing well aft. Which, with the 200-HP engine up front, makes center of gravity calculations a more than a merely intellectual exercise. With two full-sized humans up front, a full fuel load and nobody in the trunk, offsetting weight is required in the baggage compartment to stay within forward CG limits. In the landing pattern this means that flaring to land requires more than a mere adjustment of attitude to the landing configuration: As airspeed decays, increasing back pressure on the yoke is required to hold the nose off.
“Let’s go to Gillespie and get some more landings,” said himself. And your host, by now prepared for whimsies, had at least a rough idea that Gillespie was something south of our position.
Flying south from Ramona, Gillespie is obscured by “Rattlesnake Mountain,” so-named – according to my instructor – because so many pilots had been snake-bit trying to cut the corner on the approach. Do that with sun down, and your flight will terminate short of its destination.
A couple more landings there and it was a crosswind departure to the south to set up for an ILS arrival back to Montgomery. A bit of cautionary language about the use of cowl flaps on the way back – open when climbing, closed when descending – and we were safely on deck. An hour and a half later from chock-to-chock and I was checked out for both the C-177RG and the various C-172s (just remember to use carb heat on the normally aspirated Skyhawks, he said). Yes of course. Carb heat.
You’re good to go, he said. We’ll call this a flight review as well.
Yeah, right, I thought to myself. “Maybe an instrument refresher is order, just in case?”
Sure. Fifty dollars.
Cash, please.
Great job, Lex. Now go do that college tour with your daughter. I can’t wait until my boys are old enough to take on some serious overnight x-countries, instead of the current $300 hamburger runs.
No joke about carb heat in your area – the only time I’ve ever experienced carb icing in flight was climbing out of MYF near Gillespie on a day when the marine layer was just clearing and humidity was high. Got my attention for a few long minutes….
Sounds like you and the Biscuit will be a-college goin’ soon.
Best,
Congrats! And Dang wish I’d been there, to volunteer as baggage to help with the trim. I promise I would have kept my mouth shut, uh, mostly.
As to carb heat, well, I live in FL, so it’s more a matter of remembering to turn it OFF once one gets up where it’s high and dry.
Congratulations! Does this mean you’ll also be flying a variety of aircraft at the weekend gig?
That’s about how my checkout in the 172 went. Seemed shady, but all the FBO rats said it was kosher.
Now my PPL checkride with a retired F-8 driver. . .different story, with no doubts of legitimacy.
Being fairly conversant with air-cooled motors and far more familiar with the carburetor than I generally wish, I get the carb heat thing. I can see why it might be a manual setting.
But cowl flaps? All they do is allow airflow over the engine, specifically the cylinders and cylinder heads which tend to get awfully hot without a lot of air. So what would it take to convert that cylinder head temp reading into an automatic cowl flap adjustment?
Or is that level of automation just far too expensive to certify on something like a 172 where simplicity and low cost to own are factors?
– Max
Nice work!!
Max:
Manual cowl flaps are all about simplicity and weight savings. Had them on the Moooney. Seems like that biggest single drag conributor in a light plane is often the cooling drag associated with the air-cooled engine. A 200 hp air-cooled engine puts out a fair amount of heat and the secret to coaxing any performance out of the airframe bolted to one is to tightly cowl the thing to minimize drag. All fine for cruise config but doesn’t let enough air flow through at low airspeed/high-power output combos hence need for generous cowl flaps to let enough blow by the cylinders.
You could make them automatic wih motors, sensors, actuators, and simple microcontroller circuit. That would add weight you’d rather have as payload and complexity a simple manual control can’t beat. While a cable can break its MTBF is a lot higher than aformentioned automatic system. Of course the real cost of the automatic system would be getting the combo certified which would take somewhere around the costs of several airplanes to accomplish to the FAA’s satisfaction. That is teh reason almost 100% of any innovation in light general aviation aircraft sector has come from the Experrimental ranks. You can see it all at Oshkosh which is, somewhat like Sturgis where you can see it all and then some I’m told, another reason to make the pilgimage to Wisconsin come late July.
The biggest performance gains to be had in modifying light aircraft often are had by changing the cowling of the engine.
As far as manual flaps go – open them before takeoff, close them once at cruise altitude and forget it was pretty much how it went with the Mooney.
Dang, OT6 said the “O” word again. Does this checkout faintly suggest that a Cardinal trip to Oshkosh for book premier might be in planning stage? As the supermarket tabloids scream “Inquiring minds want to know!”
Congrats on the new log book entry.
G Man:
Noticed how I slipped that in, huh. Subliminal message and all….
Now all you need to do is get checked out in the company T-6 and the Lex Babes will be lining up for rides…
Lex,
Congrats on the checkout
BZ sir. Ain’t it great to fly a little plane low and slow….now, go get that taildragger endorsement. I got mine in a 1939 Piper J4. No power, absolute minimum instruments (fuel gauge was a float in a tube outside the front window), and a (seriously) one armed CFI – he lost it in a hand propping incident years ago. Of course, he told me just before I gave the prop the first tugs…..
Pure flying. Lust reigned in to simple pleasure. It don’t get no better, sir. A J3 Cub/J4 will set your mind straight, and make a better pilot out of you. Really.
CW4
Sweet Jesus…Lex what really concerns me is that I actually understood most of what has to be the most jargon filled, non-pilot friendly post around here in my recollection…not to complain of course…survival of the fittest and all that…so congradulations on whatever ticket you just got punched…and keep forever-more in your thoughts from this point forward these three immortal words…” Cash is King”. Best
CW4 – that wouldn’t have been Rucker Tibbs by any chance that checked you out in the J4?
How different is the Cardinal RG from the Cutlass RG? I checked out on the Cutlass.
Couldn’t say, haven’t flown the Cutlass. People I’ve talked to say that the 200-hp Cardinal is underpowered, but – having flown the 150-hp Varga – it seems to climb fine to me.
Not like flying the Hornet, where leveling off at 6000 feet required a thousand feet of anticipation to avoid blowing through the altitude. But not bad for a GA aircraft.