Page 27 - Sept 19 TNT

roll with slight back pressure, left aileron and left rudder, but as we approach knife edge, smoothly switching to slight right rudder pressure to keep the nose pointed up. We continue over to inverted flight, which requires forward elevator pres- sure and a check to be sure that enough aileron pressure is being held to con- tinue the roll. Now, rolling out of inverted flight, these “backward” control inputs can be removed and slowly returned to normal. The slow roll is a beautifully choreographed dance between man and machine when done correctly. Unfortunately, my first attempt re- sults in a two-step instead of tango, but it opens my eyes to just how much learning to fly aerobatics has to offer seasoned pilots. We spend years learning to fly straight and level “normal” attitude f lying, incorrectly thinking that this realm is the one and only: pull and we go up, push and we go down. We avoid all things beyond 30-degrees left and right, or 10-degrees pitch up or down. We are often blind to the upside-down world that exists and the duality of the rules we thought we understood. Aerobatic training opens this portal to us. Speaking of upside-down, it is time for inverted f lying. Dan has me complete half of a slow roll and then hold the air- plane in the inverted position. I am not exaggerating when I say I have never felt something quite as uncomfortable as inverted f lying. The weight of your body rests on your shoul- der and lap harnesses. Your feet fall away from the rudder pedals. Making sense of the horizon and other visual cues is challenging and confounded by the fact that constant forward stick pres- sure is required to keep from descend- ing. It feels like every little correction that I make pushes me harder into the restraints and more blood to my head. The positive G’s of the next maneuver, the loop, is a welcome return to normal. Combination and G Maneuvers As we continue, Dan coaches me us- ing lessons learned and muscle memory built from our previous maneuvers as building blocks to others. For example, roughly speaking, if you can combine the slow roll and a loop, you should have a barrel roll. Having already practiced these two maneuvers separately, along with the skills learned from my earlier L-39 training, it takes me only a couple of tries and Dan chiming in “freeze the stick” to keep me from overcontrolling. Everything then seems to fall in place with the control movements, and I feel like I am tracing the inside of a barrel in the sky. Feeling that I have accomplished a great deal, I ask Dan to do a little bit of showing off. “I’ve always loved torque rolls, could you show me one?” I ask. “Sure!” Dan responds and takes the controls, quickly pitching the nose up vertically. In only a matter of seconds, we are hanging on the propeller, com- pletely stationary. Then, with a nudge of aileron, we began to rotate around the longitudinal axis of the airplane. Dan then gives a slight tug on the elevator and we flip over backward and speed back down vertically. The only thing Send Solutions September 2019 / TWIN & TURBINE • 25