Saturday, May 30, 2009

Video from the First Acro Session in the Super Decathlon


Subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher. It's all free!

These are the show notes to a video episode. You can watch online right here by clicking on this direct link.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedAcro02.m4v.

It’s here! The second full-up Airspeed video episode!




These are highlights from my first flight in the American Champion Super Decathlon. I had flown the Citabria with some frequency in 2007 and had a couple of flights in that aircraft in 2009, but this was the first Super-D flight.

By this time (April 16, 2009), I had received word that my T-6A Texan II ride had been approved and I knew that is was going to be sometime in May. So I got out to the airport and flew acro aggressively to condition myself for the Texan ride. I wanted to be able to fully experience that ride and motion sickness can be such a buzzkill, in addition to making the coverage for you guys pretty lame.

So I headed out to Sutton Aviation and set up an acro program with Barry Sutton where I’d train as aggressively as I could and try to build my endurance for the T-6A ride. Toward the end, I was flying twice a week and getting a pretty solid 25-40 minutes of maneuvering each time. But this flight was pretty short. I rag-dolled myself pretty quickly, both because I was just getting my tolerance back after a long winter and because this aircraft is a lot more powerful and maneuverable and I was able to throw myself around the sky a lot more aggressively.

Anyway, here’s the video. For those to prefer, or miss, the audio episodes, I have more in the pipeline. I’m out on the patio this evening writing the script for the seaplane episode. And I go into the studio in a few weeks to record the music for the T-6A episode (provided that I’ve finished writing it by then).

Be sure to catch me at the Indianapolis Air Show next weekend. I’ll be there Thursday through Sunday. I’m doing a presentation for the Civil Air Patrol at Jonathan Byrd’s Cafeteria in Greenwood, Indiana 6:00 – 9:00 and I’m thinking about having an Airspeed meetup/Tweetup at Damon’s in the Holiday Inn Indianapolis East on Friday at 7:00. Watch my Twitter feed for details and to confirm before showing up.

Contact information for Sutton Aviation, where you can fly this airplane with Barry Sutton:

Sutton Aviation, Inc.
Oakland County International Airport
6230 North Service Drive - Waterford, Michigan 48327
248-666-9160
http://www.sutton-aviation.com/

1 comment:

JackR said...

Really enjoy the special video episodes you're providing. Of course all of the episodes are great. I look forward to new episodes as they arrive. Thank you.