Elizabeth flew with her instructor Pete again last night. We were trying to do two things really, one was to get Elizabeth more comfortable with the airplane and the other was to get Pete familiar with the flying characteristics of canard aircraft generally, and the Velocity in particular. I think we made good progress on both. We’d previously sent Pete the video of Scott Swing flying our airplane, which is a pretty good overview, and we discussed some of the finer points and set out these goals for the flight.
- Climb to about 4,000′ and retard to idle and demonstrate fully developed canard stall and record descent rate and indicated airspeed (result 68 kias at about 400 fpm descent)
- While stalled demonstrate that full directional control is available
- While stalled demonstrate that adding power will arrest descent and even climb
- While stalled lower the speed brake and record descent rate and indicated airspeed (result 73 kias at about 500 fpm descent)
- Accelerate out of stall to slow flight (below 110 kias) and demonstrate above standard rate (e.g. 45 degree) turns
- Practice night landings and demonstrate the ability to fly the glideslope at 90 kias
I’m hoping that after getting some additional time with Pete in the airplane Elizabeth will start working on her instrument rating using our airplane. We really want to get her the rating so we can travel more reliably, but also we really only expect to fly IFR in our plane, so getting the rating using it makes nothing but sense so we work up proficiency with our instruments and flight characteristics.
Posted By: Brett FerrellWednesday September 22nd, 2010 at 9:20 PM