In yet another episode of the "new plane, new instructor, new airfield, new
country" saga, today was a "first flight" all over again. This time, it was a Tecnam Eaglet - a plane that in the U.S. would be classified as a Light Sport (LSA), but here in Australia is the foundation of the "recreational pilot" certificate.
In short, it's a lot like the DA-20, but with slightly less power, much lighter, and much more sensitive to control inputs. On the other hand, it doesn't take much rudder to stay on course, except for a full-power climb.
The flight was supposed to be an extended intro to the light aircraft. I am planning on converting my U.S. private pilot certificate to an Australian version of the same thing. There are naturally a few bureaucratic hoops to jump through, including a test and a checkride, but flying is flying. At the recommendation of my instructor, however, I am looking at becoming certified as a recreational pilot here at first. This will allow me to fly daytime VFR anywhere (very similar to a U.S. recreational or sport license) and build some hours in preparation for the full certificate. Further, in my case, it won't require a checkride - just an instructor endorsement.
So today was to be the first step, but didn't really work out as planned - for better AND worse. Not only was it very windy today, leading to some nervousness about the whole situation, but my instructor was late getting arriving back to the field. The winds I was experiencing on the ground all day were adding almost an hour to another student's flight.
Not to just sit idle, I poked around the hangar and the planes that were still there. I read through the operating handbook, flipped through the VFR flight rules, and watched a few planes in the circuit (what us Americans call the pattern). When he finally showed up, yet another student arrived as well for his lesson. Since my instructor wanted to fly with me personally, we quickly adjusted the plans and another instructor took his place with the other guy.
We didn't have much daylight left, so what was supposed to be an extended flight to visit some other fields and fly over Brisbane was cut short. Nonetheless, it was a nice flight, and the winds died down a bit with dusk coming on, so the bumps weren't too bad.
It was pretty simple - a lot like my very first flight years ago. Gentle turns, climbs, descents, and even a "roll on a heading" that I did so long ago. But that was just with me at the controls. Seeing my hesitancy at handling the plane, the instructor wanted to show what it could do. He took us into some steep turns, a zooming climb, and twisted through the sky in ways that I had never experienced before - even during my "unusual attitude recovery" exercises back home in Montana.
The thing that got me was that everything happens much faster in this plane than I have been used to. It turns faster, climbs faster, responds immediately to power and control adjustments, and takes off after just a few seconds of rolling down the runway. Much different than watching the airspeed slowly come up and gradually letting the plane lift off. This one practically jumps into the air and doesn't stop.
The other trick the Tecnam has in store is that it keeps your hands busy on the ground. There are no toe brakes, so stopping power comes in hand brake form. You can talk all you want about proper control inputs on the ground (climb into/dive away from a quartering crosswind, blah blah blah)...but when you've got one hand on the throttle and one on the brake, the control surfaces don't get much love.
I'm also used to flying a standard pattern and setting up a stabilized approach for landing - obviously a good thing. This plane doesn't require such formality. Tighten up the pattern to half of what you're used to, cut the throttle, and glide in. Not at all what I'm accustomed to, so I think I was giving the instructor a bit of a twitch as I flew a textbook pattern.
On the last go-around, he took the controls again, and twisted the plane around on one wingtip from downwind to final, had us at 40 knots and touched down just off the edge of the runway threshold. We were taxiing off the runway barely 100 feet from where we landed! Wow. Practically bush flying.
Nine touch-and-goes, with some of my most consistently wonky patterns ever. If you want a visual illustration of the difference between accuracy and precision, you couldn't do much better. Precision? Did pretty well at holding heading and altitude visually. Accuracy? Though altitude was pretty good, with just a couple of spikes, my heading was consistently off due to two main causes: the shifting winds and the right-hand traffic pattern that made it hard to judge my downwind turn - especially being over water with no set turning point. You can see the result as my downwind leg is pretty much a random walk.
