Gyroplane Training 
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Web by: Rebel Systems Training Days April 7 - 22 2001 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 May 26 - June 2 2001 April 1 - 11 2002 |
Day 34 0900 start again. Booted and spurred Chris and myself set out onto 07. Lowish hops first thing to settle into it. Now the problems begin. My landings gone to pot... Safe enough but not really steep enough on the thick wedge resulting in a flat approach. Again, and again, and again. 30 minutes of flogging the landings, and still can't get them sorted: Time for tea! Right say Fred, well Roger really, VPM time to get the picture right again. First run highlighted the problem, so next one lower the nose more on powering down to get more penetration and a steeper descent. Better, and into the thin wedge with more speed for eventualities. Mind you the VPM "glides", (if a gyro can ever be said to glide that is!), considerably better than the Benson so the thin wedge is a protracted affair by comparison. Well problem sorted in the VPM at least. Whilst we are up here says Roger...Power fails to practice. We did them up wind, down wind, cross wind. Now the power fail itself tends to be a non event in a gyro due to the zero groundspeed landing capability. Too make things more interesting, on the numbers says Roger. Love the tight turns near landing to wind the rotors up for increased energy reserve. Didn't sus it out well enough to land exactly on the numbers, but well within the 100 feet tolerance that Roger expects. I hadn't got the measure of the required length of the thin wedge, to work back for my aiming point. The poor landings of the day before had spooked me, but I was feeling a little more relaxed now. 1 hour in the VPM that time. Tea, and tiffin time, again... Late afternoon and out again on the Benson. Lowish runs again to check out the landings. Now I'm getting really annoyed with myself. Low run landings ok. Lowish that require thick to thin transition poor. Safe, but not precise. This is hacking me off. Half an hour of that and I decide to bin it. Not achieving anything as I'm too wound up. Debrief time. I've gone from ready for circuits, back to ready for low level hops in my own mind. I'm p#$$ed off!!! Roger is happy with my cruise to thick wedge transition, and the thick to thin transition. However the transition from thin to flair is resulting in an over pitch and balloon. On one occasion I had to apply full power to pull it from behind the drag curve, into a low level run. Since this was very familiar territory the resultant landing was perfect. Good job we have practiced that one ad-nauseam. I think talking it through with Roger I came to the conclusion I had become ground fixated, instead of flying the horizon, as a result of being spooked the day before. Right if that's the problem then let's see if we can sort it out tomorrow. Well I hope so as it's my last day here. |