Time To Fly! ("Right Rudder!")

by ANN Managing Editor Rob Finfrock

"I'll go ahead and handle the first takeoff. Follow me along on the controls," my instructor, Jim Crone (right), told me. It was 10:15 in the morning of March 25, a bright and sunny day south of Green Cove Springs... and my flight training in the Gobosh 700S was about to begin.

At this point, I'd known Jim for all of about 16 hours -- but I was already impressed with his knowledge, and his easy-going nature. With more years of flight experience -- much of it as an instructor -- than I've been in existence ("it's been either 34 or 35 years," he'd told me during an earlier phone conversation) Jim had already taught me some new things... and all we'd done so far is preflight the aircraft, start it up, and back-taxi down the grass runway.

At the top of that list was how to deal with a free-castering nosewheel -- a new experience for me. I'd made a mess of taxiing N702GB when I first flew this airplane, at AirVenture last year on a demo flight out of Fond-du-lac.

My efforts to keep the plane in a straight line on the ground then looked more like a pinball game; I was doing much better this time around... after Jim showed me how to lead with the brake, but not to ride it. Perhaps the added resistance of the grass is helping me keep it in a straight line, too, I thought.

Jim advanced the throttle, and the Gobosh started rolling down Haller's 2,600-foot grass strip. I'd like to say I noticed how much right rudder Jim had in as we approached rotation speed... but my mind was mostly preoccupied with how fast we were advancing towards the tree line at the end of the runway. Of course, we were off the ground and climbing out, well in advance of the local flora being of concern.

Two left turns onto downwind, and we were heading south to Palatka (28J) for fuel. It was a somewhat bumpy day, but I was doing a fairly good job of keeping us straight, level, and on-course. I mentally patted myself on the back; I'd last flown an airplane -- this one, in fact -- eight months ago.

The traffic pattern at Palatka was a little busy, with two other aircraft in the pattern for Runway 9. We entered at midfield, with Jim leading me through the proper steps to landing. I knew he was testing my skills, to see how much "rust" was on them. As it turned out, it was a fair amount; I was 10 knots too fast on downwind, and 100 feet low; and my turn to base was late.

Still, by the time we were on the (too long) final, I had things configured nicely. Okay. Time to impress the guy. We crossed the threshold at 55 knots, in a beautiful (if I say so myself) descent. Once I got the "picture" I was looking for -- of how the nose looked ahead, relative to the end of the runway -- I flared gently...

... And bounced the nose off the pavement with a decided smack. A quick blip of the throttle -- provided by Jim -- lifted us into the air, and allowed us to settle back onto the runway in a more-controlled fashion.

As I zig-zagged the plane towards the fuel pumps (sure enough, taxiing was harder to do on pavement than it was on grass) Jim offered his take on what happened.

"This plane sits nose-high," he said, gesturing towards the cowling. "Not taildragger-high, but more so than a lot of other tricycle-gear planes. If you're used to flying a Cessna or something like that, the sightlines are going to be a lot different than you're used to. If you'd raised the nose just a bit higher, you'd have had that landing made."

After fueling up at Palatka's self-service pumps (at $3.99 a gallon!) we started up and taxied back to the runway. I was looking for nothing short of redemption; a nice, smooth takeoff would do nicely.

"This plane takes a LOT of right rudder on takeoff," Jim told me as I drove us onto the runway. "You have to stand on the pedal from the moment you advance the throttle. I'll follow along with you, of course."

He wasn't kidding. The Gobosh immediately veered left the moment I applied takeoff power, and it took all the right leg I had to keep us straight. I even had to cheat a little, pushing in the right brake a bit until we had enough speed to make the rudder fully effective.

And then came the rotation. The Gobosh's stabilator tail raised the nose abruptly in response to what I thought was just a small amount of back pressure, resulting in the first two seconds of our ascent into the Florida skies being accompanied by the stall horn. (Even worse, I had made a similarly-awkward takeoff back at Fond-du-lac, too.) I lowered the nose just enough to gain speed... which then came quickly, requiring what felt like an unnaturally nose-high attitude to keep us from exceeding 60 knots.

"I swear to God, Jim, I know how to fly!" I said as we climbed straight out, over the St. John's River.

"No problem," he responded. "Hey, you're rusty. Happens to all of us."

Once we were over the practice area east of the river, Jim led me through a basic refresher course of maneuvering flight: turns-around-a-point, forward-and-side-slips, descending and climbing turns, and pilotage. After I got a "feel" for the plane, everything was fairly effortless; I was beginning to feel my piloting mojo return, and Jim agreed.

"All those maneuvers were to checkride standards," he told me. "See? You remember how to fly!"

My confidence was bolstered by another discovery, too. As I suspected during my earlier "sim" training, it's tough to miss Palatka -- since two large smokestacks rise over the flat land, visible for miles around, and the airport lies just southwest of those stacks. Although I was flying over a completely unfamiliar area and terrain, I was comforted by knowing I'd have little trouble finding the airport.

After 1.3 hours of pretty intense airwork, we returned to Palatka -- my landing this time wasn't a bouncer, but it was a three-pointer -- and borrowed the FBO courtesy car to grab a quick lunch. Since I still had to post afternoon stories on ANN, we took off to return to Haller afterwards.

This time around, my takeoff was slightly better; we still veered a bit down the runway, but I had the proper takeoff attitude this time, and the stall horn remained quiet.

As we bounced our way back to Haller -- thanks to turbulence brought on by the warming of the ground, and residual breezes -- I contemplated the task ahead of me. This would be my first-ever soft-field landing, on a short, grass landing strip. I was nervous about that... even going so far as to tell Jim I was willing to sit back and watch him do it.

"Well, I can, but why don't you try it?" he responded. "I'm here if you need me, but you might surprise yourself."

I gulped. Before now, the shortest runway I'd ever landed on was the 4,000-foot asphalt strip at Grand Prairie... and that runway didn't have trees on all sides. At least we'd be making a straight-in approach, as the winds favored landing to the north. Still, my heart was in my throat as we descended... and it raced as I noticed our descent below the tree line out the corner of my eye.

Surprisingly -- well, to me anyway, if not Jim -- I made an unassisted, spot-on landing at Haller. I even flared properly... and remembered to keep back pressure in throughout the rollout to keep the nose light on the soft ground. For the first time all day, I felt like a pilot.

"You're going to do fine on grass," Jim laughed. "And did you notice you had a pretty stiff crosswind? But you kept us on track fine. You're going to do fine on all of it."

****

After four hours of catching up on the latest goings-on in the aviation world, it was time to fly again. This time, the wind favored a takeoff to the south. I made a decent, not great, takeoff; my right leg was already feeling a bit sore.

During the short flight down to 28J, Jim showed me how easy it is to trim the airplane to fly at 60 knots -- on the edge of slow flight, flaps up. "This is all you're doing in the pattern," he reminded me, as I did a lazy 360-degree turn to the left. "This little plane will fly all day at this speed."

Sure enough, my traffic pattern was much better this time around. It also helped we were now the only plane in the pattern; traffic had cleared out appreciably from the rather crowded state earlier. 28J is VERY popular with student pilots from Daytona Beach; apparently, they were now busy in ground school.

We did six landings, a mix of touch-and-goes and taxibacks. After another one of my bouncy landings, Jim demonstrated a high-speed taxi... with the nosegear high off the ground, in the climbout attitude, using the rudder to keep us in a straight line and power to keep the nose raised, but not so much that we took off.

"Here's your flare attitude, too," he pointed out. "See how high the nose looks?"

Jim then had me demonstrate a high-speed taxi. I didn't have the heart to scrape the tailskid, as Jim had (note to Gobosh: this is why N702GB's once-pristine tailskid is now scraped. I didn't do it!)... but I did keep the nose high off the ground, and proved able to work the rudder to keep us in a straight line. Things were starting to come together.

After one more landing -- which was far better than the ones that had preceded it, at least the ones on pavement -- we refueled and headed back to Haller. By the time we landed at 7:15, I knew I WAS making progress... and I capped it off with another nice landing back at Haller.

Total time for the first day: 3.9 hours, with 11 takeoffs and, fortunately, and equal number of landings, not counting bouncers.

"How do you feel?" Jim asked me after we shut down. I grinned, weary but relieved. "I'm loving every minute of it."

Coming Monday: Learning The Quirks Of N702GB

FMI: www.sportpilot.org, www.eaa.org, www.gobosh.aero