My Birthday Present - Revealed
After weeks speculating about my secret birthday present, I found out on Saturday. My wife gave me an aerobatic ride in a biplane. Woohoo!
Here are me and my boys standing in front of the plane. The plane is a Pitts Special, designed specifically for aerobatics. It is really quite small – 20 feet wide, 18 long and, fully loaded, weighs only half as much as my car, empty.
Getting into the plane was pretty easy. The big trick is not to step where you shouldn’t, because the wing is made out of fabric, and a hole in it wouldn’t look good.
Once in, I was given a lambswool “helmet” to put on, complete with headphones (which double as earmuffs against the noise and cold) and microphone. Also wore my sun-glasses, which turned out to be a good move, because it was a little windy up there. There was a five point harness and secondary lap belt. The pilot helped me do up both, tightly.
While taxying, I got to listen in to the radio. It is really hard to understand what is being said—the radio receives a lot of hiss and the are voices are all crackly. Apparently you get used to it if you do it all day, every day. Because there is no tower at this aerodrome, pilots using the runway rely on everybody making the right calls at the right time and, of course, watching for other planes.
Another one of the flight company’s planes was also leaving then, so the pilots took the opportunity to do a formation take-off. The other plane was about a length ahead and to the right of us—maybe 20 feet away. The two planes accelerated from a standing start to the 150 km/hr or so take off speed while maintaining the 20 foot separation. Then they took off together, climbed and turned, all with only 20 feet between us. Very, very impressive!
Here’s us going over:
We then puttered around a bit, sight-seeing, but climbing, climbing, climbing. Finally, we were high enough and far enough away from everything to do some neato stuff.
The pilot, Phil Unicomb, was careful to communicate what each manoeuvre was before we did it, and then talked me through it as we did it. This made it so much more enjoyable. At the end of each one he asked “Was that OK?”, ready to pull things back a notch if I was having a problem. My reply was always “I’m good” or “I’m fine”, and I really, truly was.
Phil started us off with some steep turns. These are done with the wings at 60-degrees to the horizontal. To maintain height at that angle, the plane has to pull 2Gs, so you feel heavy in the seat. Then he did three or four barrel rolls, one of them in a shallow dive. The rolls were so gently done so that I didn’t notice any g-force, it was just that the sky and land turned through 360 degrees while I watched. Lovely!
At about this point, my legs started wobbling. I was a little anxious, but I didn’t think it was that bad! In retrospect, I was probably just cold, being several thousand feet in the air, moving at two hundred km/hr on a cloudy winter’s day.
We did some wingovers too, and a hammerhead turn. A wingover is where the pilot lets the inside wing stall in the turn, and the plane turns 180 degrees in no time at all. Fun! For the hammerhead, Phil took us into a straight up climb (90 degrees) until the plane was going quite slowly then turned us to the left so we were going straight down, then flattened out.
We did a full loop (inside loop where you climb first), and later on a half loop up followed by a half roll so we ended up 800 feet higher and going just a bit slower. That was a rush.
My favourite was the tail slide. Phil put us straight up, cut engine back to idle—it got eerily quiet, and I could see the prop turning—and then let the plane fall backwards for a second or two before kicking it forwards. The little Pitts fell for a bit more while the speed built up and then, with great thump, started to fly again. I can’t describe just how much fun it was to do that. I can’t even tell you why it was fun. It just was.
We also did some aileron rolls with stops at each 90 degrees, to show how precise the pilot and plane could be. Phil also showed me just how fast the plane could roll—360 degrees per second once the roll is established. This makes for rolls that finish before you’ve worked out what’s happening.
Toward the end Phil flew us upside down for a few seconds. Ha! Phil also flew us on the edge of the wing, 90 degrees to the ground. It takes a powerful plane to be able to do that.
Landing was interesting. It is not possible to see over the nose of the Pitts once it is landed. The pilot has to judge where they are by watching the side of the runway.
And that was all. Sigh. I could’ve stayed up for another hour.
Next time—and I’m pretty sure that there will be one—I’m going to:
- Do a flight on a week-day so I can spend half-an-hour talking to Phil before we go up (his Saturdays seem pretty busy)
- Ask for some negative-g and more falling manoeuvres.
- Wear something warmer than jeans.
If you’re interested in doing this yourself, I can heartily recommend Action Aerobatics up in the Hunter. It wouldn’t have been the same without Phil’s professional approach and unpretentious application of skill.
What a great Birthday Present! Thanks Karen!