It's about lunchtime at work today on Friday, my flying-buddy colleague and I are talking, and I glance at my appointment calendar.
"Uh, looks like I have about three hours free here", I notice.
"Same here, don't have a thing to do for awhile..."
Our eyes sort of meet and light up. He has a brand-new-to-him Christen Eagle II that has just completed its U.S. testing period (it was built in Canada, the FAA required ten hours' flight testing).
"You drive and we'll fly".
"We're out of here! Let's go!"
(1/2 hour later...)
"...bail out procedure. Lean forward, I'll call "canopy clear", the canopy will blow off, unbuckle the five-point and LEAVE."
"Check."
"Contact!"
The Christen Eagle II is of course Frank Christenson's kit-built high performance biplane, a somewhat pudgy version of the Pitts S2A. We have 200hp Lycoming AEIO-360, constant speed propellor, and a 19.5 foot wingspan. Very much a motorcycle-of-the-sky.
These airplanes are VERY roomy and complete inside for small biplanes. The have a single long two-pace cockpit underneath the bubble canopy; the pilot in the rear views instruments up front past the front-seater's shoulders, and has only basic engine instruments and radio in the rear cockpit area.
The Christen's engineering and completeness is gorgeous! The seats are molded fiberglass affairs with removeable cushions. Taking out the pillow from the cushion leaves plenty of space for front-cockpit creature comforts even while wearing your parachute. The 4130 welded steel tube fuselage frame is out of sight, hidden nearly everywhere by the aluminum cockpit side rails, and other covers where various things attach. This is too bad, since if you were to look you'd find that the Christen kits were provided with complete factory-welded fuselage assemblies, and the welding is quite pretty and strong-looking!
Anybody building a homebuilt airplane can learn a lot by just looking at the various Christen details, and then trying to duplicate these. That's the approach I'm going to be taking on mine, if I ever get to those details. The canopy release mechanism alone is a work of art.
We take turns taxiing out, with plenty of required S-Turns (you cannot see forward out of one of these things), and I notice how amazingly smooth and easy the airplance taxis. Heck, you could probably do primary flight instruction in one of these!
We complete the run-up checks and line up on the runway. Power-in, zoom!, tailwheel up, wait three seconds, rotate! We're off in a short distance, and hold her five feet off the runway while accelerating to 140 knots, then....
Zoom! Somebody kiss me quick! We are at pattern altitude and turning downwind in not too many seconds.
We climb out to a favorite aerobatic practice area just East of Morgan Hill. I ask to take over to get the feel of her on the climb out. This is a pretty stable ship! The last little biplane I flew was an Acroduster, which I found to be oversensitive in pitch, leading to immediate pilot-induced oscillation. Not so with the Eagle II; although light in touch this bird is solid in feel, going immediately wherever you point the nose.
(and you can point the nose wherever you want, as I soon find out!)
At the aerobatic practice area now. Clearing turns, loosen up -- 90 degree bank, yank! 90 degree bank the other way, yank! (you all do 4G warm-ups, right?)
At which point my friend executes some pretty good aileron rolls, loops, humpty bumps, slow rolls (NICE in this airplane), immelmann. He's been taking a few aerobatics lessons from Wayne Handley this winter, and it shows.
"Can I try one now?" I ask earnestly.
"Your airplane"
A couple more-timid clearing turns ensue.
"I'll start with the aileron roll".
"OK".
Nose up a bit. Unload stick. Stick over! The roll starts out good but very quickly develops into a snafu-roll, apparently I started out with and left too much rudder in. It turns out the Eagle requires virtually no rudder at all to execute a good aileron roll! (the rudder has gap seals on it, and is very effective indeed). At any rate what I envision happened is sort of a rolling maneuver with the tail skidding out throughout the maneuver. I am in the front seat near the CG and not particularly sensitive there to yaw forces. By the time I pick up on this, notice too much rudder, I overcorrect with rudder the other side, which has the effect of trying to eject my now-laughing back-seater from the cockpit under negative-G as the roll slows! This after me slamming him side-to-side a couple times with the rudder-play.
I am not sure what to call this maneuver. It must have been really ugly.
At any rate, we figure it out and my next roll comes out pretty good.
Oh, well, time to get back to work.
Next flight I'll explore inverted flight more, and promise to try a vertical roll!
Don't tell anyone I was playing hookey this afternoon. :^)