This evening I went out and brushed up on a few basic piloting skills. First up was some slow flight. After climbing to 2000ft I slowed to just above stall with flaps up, and started doing some steep turns holding altitude and power. Just above the stall, cranking all around the sky with the AOA yelling “angle angle push!” quite fun. Then pull it up into a stall in that configuration, and recover over and over with varying bank and power. One thing for sure, the RV9 really hangs in there in slow flight.
Next I headed over to Shelton’s Sanderson Field for some landing practice. at 5 miles out another RV was on a straight in to runway 23 so I dropped in behind him and did the first touch and go. On climb out I continue to circle up to about 2500ft over the airport. Then I pulled the throttle to idle, locked it there and started a descent back to the runway. From 2500 it took 2 wide 360’s to hit the runway. At first everything looks fine as you setup on downwind, then it starts looking low, so you turn in early on base, then it looks high and you start to panic, then things worked out about right. Just a little slip on final and dropped the flaps at about 100ft and I was on the numbers. Never touched the throttle! Now if I was really up to it, I would go power OFF next time! 🙂
I headed towards Chehalis next and flew around the south side of Olympia and the Centralia Coal mine before turning north towards home. Returning at dusk and did a no flap landing with full slip all the way down final to a nice soft arrival back home at Auburn rounded out the evening! All in all, can’t be beat that’s for sure. These RV’s are sure nice flying.