It's not uncommon for me to fly five to six different aircraft types in a week and this past week offered exceptional variety. One day I flew an aerial survey job in turbo 206 - lumbering along at 7000 feet over a dozen survey lines, 8 to 10 miles long, while maintaining a mind-numbing lateral course of +/- 10 meters and altitude within +/- 20 feet. A day later, I got a chance to test my G tolerance with a former CFI student of mine in an Extra 300. The Extra, a lightweight two-place aerobatic aircraft with a 300 horsepower engine, is what you might call a solution in search of a problem. It's pretty much the antithesis of a turbo 206 loaded with expensive digital camera equipment. So one day I'm flying tracks through the sky as absolutely straight and level as possible, then the next day I'm making different sorts of tracks - doing aileron rolls, loops and hammerhead turns.
This was my first time in an Extra and while I'm not drawn to aerobatic flying, I still appreciate the precision, skill, and physical conditioning it requires. The Extra 300 gives one the feeling that the plane could handle much more stress than most pilots can handle. This lead to a sense of confidence and trust in the plane along with, ideally, a healthy respect for your own physical limitations. I got too slow at the top of the second loop I attempted and I realized we were going to "fall out," I was very comfortable in letting the nose drop, gaining some airspeed, and just trying again. In normal and utility category aircraft I'm conservative, but in the Extra invites you to wring things out. A wise pilot remembers which aircraft he or she is flying and adapts accordingly - doing this stuff in a normal or utility category aircraft is just stupid.
I also spend a lot of time making IFR tracks with the G1000, which contains so many features that one could make a career out of knowing them all. Earlier in the week I had the opportunity to get creative and try some features that I hadn't used before during an VFR flight. I try my best to know all about the equipment I use, but many of the G1000 features fall into the category of "nice to know." You may never need to use them, but they can be handy in the right setting.
The Along Track Offset feature is pretty simple to grasp - it allows you to create an unnamed waypoint that is a certain number of miles before or after a waypoint in your flight plan. On the flight in question, we'd created a simple flight plan for a return flight from Petaluma Municipal Airport to Oakland. Since NORCAL usually instructs pilots inbound to Oakland from the Northwest to "cross the Mormon Temple at or above 2500, make right traffic runway 27 right," I'd entered the GPS waypoint for the temple - VPMOR.
Cruising at 5500 feet, we'd penetrate class B airspace if we didn't manage our descent, so I created an Along Track Offset that was several miles before the temple. To do this, I went into the Multi-Function Display's flight plan interface, pushed the small FMS knob to enter cursor mode, and scrolled with the big knob until VPMOR was highlighted, then I pressed the ATK OFST softkey.
This was my first time in an Extra and while I'm not drawn to aerobatic flying, I still appreciate the precision, skill, and physical conditioning it requires. The Extra 300 gives one the feeling that the plane could handle much more stress than most pilots can handle. This lead to a sense of confidence and trust in the plane along with, ideally, a healthy respect for your own physical limitations. I got too slow at the top of the second loop I attempted and I realized we were going to "fall out," I was very comfortable in letting the nose drop, gaining some airspeed, and just trying again. In normal and utility category aircraft I'm conservative, but in the Extra invites you to wring things out. A wise pilot remembers which aircraft he or she is flying and adapts accordingly - doing this stuff in a normal or utility category aircraft is just stupid.
I also spend a lot of time making IFR tracks with the G1000, which contains so many features that one could make a career out of knowing them all. Earlier in the week I had the opportunity to get creative and try some features that I hadn't used before during an VFR flight. I try my best to know all about the equipment I use, but many of the G1000 features fall into the category of "nice to know." You may never need to use them, but they can be handy in the right setting.
The Along Track Offset feature is pretty simple to grasp - it allows you to create an unnamed waypoint that is a certain number of miles before or after a waypoint in your flight plan. On the flight in question, we'd created a simple flight plan for a return flight from Petaluma Municipal Airport to Oakland. Since NORCAL usually instructs pilots inbound to Oakland from the Northwest to "cross the Mormon Temple at or above 2500, make right traffic runway 27 right," I'd entered the GPS waypoint for the temple - VPMOR.
Cruising at 5500 feet, we'd penetrate class B airspace if we didn't manage our descent, so I created an Along Track Offset that was several miles before the temple. To do this, I went into the Multi-Function Display's flight plan interface, pushed the small FMS knob to enter cursor mode, and scrolled with the big knob until VPMOR was highlighted, then I pressed the ATK OFST softkey.
I then used the small FMS knob to specify a point 7 miles before VPMOR. You press the ENT key to accept commit any changes you make.
Lastly, I assigned an altitude (you can only do this in the MFD's flight plan interface) of 3500 feet at VPMOR-7 and 2500 feet at VPMOR, again using the ENT key to confirm any field inputs.
A few miles later, we heard the aural alert "Vertical Track" and if you have a G1000 with the Garmin AFC autopilot, you can dial in the next altitude using the ALT knobs and use the VNAV button to instruct the autopilot to intercept and track the advisory descent. Our plane had the KAP 140 autopilot, but we were still able to track the advisory descent path.
Another handy feature is Parallel Track, which I'll cover in my next post. For now, I've got to rest my left arm which has some tracks of its own from several inoculations I received yesterday in preparation for an upcoming trip. More details on that trip as they become available.
