After a little phone wrestling with the insurance company, I flew my instructor, Ben Freelove, up to Healdsburg in a 172 to ferry the Creamsicle Cessna 170 back to Oakland. Avemco wanted me to get at least one hour of checkout from a CFI, but insisted that my CFI had have a checkout in a Cessna 170 from another CFI who I suppose was to also have a checkout . . .
They relented, and with bureaucratic blessings, Ben pushed the throttle forward on N2932D and could only have rolled 180 feet before floating up off the runway in front of me. We flew formation all the way back to Oakland, arriving as a "flight of two" all the way into the pattern. Ben gushed about it the whole way, commenting on the nice handling. We dropped off the 172 and I hopped in the right seat. Good god. The way that thing levitates off the runway with 20 degrees of flaps can only be described as ferris wheel-like. With a decent headwind, the ground roll is hilariously short, then the plane appears to lift vertically off the earth with little or no forward movement. The controls are very delicate- very little rudder (the size of a volkswagen) is needed on climbout, and it reveals every little error. I imagine after a hundred hours of flying in it, I will be a far better stick than I am now. The lightness of it reminds me a bit of the Schweizer 2-33 glider trainer I learned to fly in at Wurtsboro, NY., and in gusty winds, it gets swatted around just the same way. It's loud as hell, smells wonderful, and appears to be a full two feet longer than a Cessna 172, though the specs say it's shorter. I tried both three point and wheel landings today. It is such an honest machine: it's easy to see how quickly it can bite you if you're not absolutely attentive and ahead of the airplane. We also did some stalls a couple says ago, and the break is much more crisp than a contemporary Cessna. I am very happy with it, and it seems to attract attention just sitting on the ramp. Even the crabbiest tower controllers at Oakland seem to give a little more respect.
As expected, the Falco has not gotten much attention this week. The 170 even intruded into the workshop with me making a set of wheel chocks for it. But alas, fresh motivation is imminent! Tomorrow I am flying from Santa Rosa to Redding for the West Coast Fly-In, and I'm flying right seat in Dan Dorr's red Falco, hopefully in a formation arrival with Doug Henson. I thought it would be too embarrassing to show up and have to admit I hadn't touched it in two weeks, so tonight I did a little work on the elevator spar, then puttied epoxy and dry flox around the control tab cable tube that runs through the stabilizer framing. Just another meager step towards float sanding that piece.
