Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
A necessary post-script to the last entry is: Thank you John! I really appreciate his willingness to take me up and introduce me to both the world of biplanes and the world of aerobatics. I hope he isn't discouraged by my negative-sounding entry.
As I explained to him after the flight, it's very important that I get some experience with these planes before I go devoting a huge chunk of my time and money towards one. If it ends up I don't like them very much, well, thank god I found out now rather than 2 years, $3000 and 300 hours into the project.
For what it's worth, my thoughts now are more positive as I separate the aerobatic experience from the biplane experience in my head. I still know for sure that aerobatics aren't for me, but the biplane question deserves more research.
As I had somewhat expected, I dreamed about the experience, but not in the way I'd expected. Instead of dreams about falling out of planes, or anything obvious like that, I had a dream that I'd helped John refuel the plane, but in my ham-handedness ended up overfilling the fuel tank. He instructed me to just add a little bit, perhaps a quart or two, and I ended up spraying two and a half gallons in. I'm sure it's closely related to my inability to control the plane well in the air.
The nice thing about my lack of ability to control the plane in the air is, well, I've never flown that plane before. How should I possibly know how to control it well? I'm being too hard on myself to expect perfect, smooth abilities in a plane which everyone acknowledges is many times more nimble (and therefore sensitive) than anything else I've ever flown. That's a problem that can be easily fixed with practice. I did it to get where I am now with theater, writing, motorcycles and Cessnas, I can do it with a sensitive biplane, too.
Posted at 11:32 permanent link category: /aviation
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater