Day 13 - Sat 22 November
I woke up this morning with a very slightly sore head. I was pretty sure that I hadn't drunk enough last night to cause this... which left only one possible explaination. It must have been caused by the loud shirt which Keygrip was wearing when we met for a drink last night! But I checked the rugby result - nice one England! - and suddenly everything felt fine again, so I was good to go for my Arrow familiarisation flight. Although I don't have a day off planned, my instructor needed a day off, so I flew with a different instructor today. My regular instructor was, I suspect, happilly tucked up in bed after watching the rugby!
I had a slight advantage in that I logged around 20 hours in an Arrow a couple of years ago. But although I remembered much of it, there were still a few small details which I'd forgotten. For anyone who is completely new to the world of complex aircraft, though, here is an idea of what you can expect at this stage, based on my memory from two years ago, and talking to instructors at EFT. The world of complex aircraft involves two extra things, neither of which are very difficult. Retractable undercarriage - make sure it's up once you take off and don't have enough useful runway to be able to land back on it again. Also make sure it's up when you do a go-around. Make sure it's down when you do your pre-landing checks. Check that it's down on base leg. Really definitely check that it's down on final. And that's about it!
Then there's the constant-speed prop. Instead of learning RPM settings for, say, cruise, or descent, you have to learn an RPM/Manifold Pressure setting. There's also a setting for the climb, which you would typically set at around 500' (having used full power and maximum RPM for take-off). The settings which EFT teach happen to be exactly the same as the ones I learnt for my previous Arrow-flying. The POH will have tables full of valid settings, but really as long as you learn one setting for each phase of flight which you're happy with, that's sufficient, and that's exactly the way EFT teach it. Remember to move the levers in the correct order (mixture, prop, power to increase the power, or power, prop, mixture to decrease the power) so that you don't apply too much power for the engine speed (imagine flooring the accelerator in your car in 4th gear at 10mph for an analagy). And that's it. Pretty simple.
The only difficult part about the Arrow is nothing to do with its complexity - it's to do with its speed. The instructors tell me that most students have problems adapting to a 120kt aeroplane, and I remember from when I first checked out on the Arrow that this was what I had trouble with. That wasn't a problem today, though, because the Europa which I fly in England is also a 120kt aeroplane, so I've had plenty of time to adapt to the extra few knots.
We took off, pulled the gear up, reduced the power to the climb settings, and then increased speed to a cruise climb. I soon found the first thing that I'd forgotten, which is that as your altitude increases, the ambient air pressure decreases, which causes a decrease in the manifold pressure. You have to increase the throttle setting a touch every 500-1000' to ensure that the manifold pressure stays at the 25" climb setting. Even maintaining this power, though, the Arrow does not climb particularly fast, especially with two big blokes and full tanks of fuel. But before very long we reached a safe enough height to do some Vx climbs, Vy climbs, transitions between the two, and so on. Then we moved on to steep turns. The Arrow's controls are much heavier than the Cessna, and at first I didn't apply quite enough back-pressure and lost a bit of height. The solution was to remember to set the attitude and keep it - once I had my eyes firmly fixed on the horizon, and learnt to ignore the false horizon to the east where a cloud layer had formed over the sea, steep turns clicked into place quite easilly. We did some cruise descents and glide descents, but there wasn't very much more that needed doing before we headed back to land.
Check that gear is down as part of the downwind checks, of course, and then increase the RPM to 2500 when approaching the airfield. On base, check the gear again, and push the prop lever all the way forward (I stuck with the GUMP check that I'd been taught before - Gas (pump on, check which tank you're using and that there's sufficient remaining), Undercarriage (down - 3 greens), Mixture (full forward), Prop (full forward) and my instructor seemed happy with that). Turn final, check for 3 greens again, and round out for a not-perfect-but-quite-safe landing.
For the afternoon flight, we were torn between stalls and emergencies. But the cloud-base was sufficiently low that stalling would either have meant getting up close to the clouds, or climbing well above them, so emergencies won. A few extra things to remember in the Arrow. Immediate actions on engine failure - as well as pitching to Vg (80kts) and asking if there's a fire, you have to set the prop to fully coarse, so it provides minimal drag on the way down. Gear - most likely you will want to land gear up. If the field is at all short or boggy, or if you're forced to land on water, you will definitely want gear up. If you do decide to land with gear down, remember that it produces a lot of extra drag (this might be quite useful if you find yourself a little high). Also remember that the hydraulics are electrically operated. There is an emergency gear lowering lever, of course, but if there's any chance you might want to land with the gear down, leave the battery on. But the biggest thing to remember is that the Arrow glides much much worse than the Cessna, which reduces your options, and catches most people out the first time.
The instructor pulled the power on me, and I quickly set myself up for what I thought was a Vg attitude, coarsened the prop and established that there was no fire. I picked a nearby field, and made sure I stayed tight. The attitude wasn't quite working - I was a little fast - so I adjusted my mental picture of what I thought Vg looked like and corrected, before running through the normal re-start and shut-down drills, declaring Mayday, and briefing my passenger about what was happening. I did seem to be very high and very close, though - I had over-compensated for the poor glide performance of the Arrow! I did some S-turns, turned onto final, and was contemplating using the gear to increase the drag. But it turned out that the flaps are very effective at getting you down quickly even without the gear, so the gear wasn't necessary. Electrics off, tell my passenger to Brace, Brace, Brace, and the instructor told me to go around. Retract the drag flaps and check the gear is up - and I had another engine failure! No time to anything this time except pick a field and shut down - and then I was going around again.
We climbed back up to a nice safe height, and then had a go at an engine fire. This was something I don't remember ever practicing before on the Arrow. The drill is exactly the same as for the Cessna, except for the prop. Set up for Vg and coarsen the prop whilst establishing that there's a fire. Run through the shut-down checks, and then ask if the fire's out. It wasn't out, so I put down full flaps and began an emergency descent. What I hadn't done, though, was fine the prop. The fine prop adds drag, which will increase the rate of descent - which is exactly what you want to do for an emergency descent. Once the fire is out, roll wings level, retract the flaps... but don't forget to coarsen the prop again if you want to glide any kind of distance! It'd not difficult, once you know the procedure, so the second one we did I got right.
Then I got my first chance to play with the wonderful nav kit in the Arrow, when I was asked to get a position fix. Except that my instructor gave me multiple failures! The HSI and DME both failed. Then Nav 2 failed. And when I tried to tune Nav 1, I found that it was jammed, so I could only use the Vero Beach VOR!
It was time to see what I had available. I had a working RMI. I could use the Vero Beach VOR, and I also had an ADF, which I tuned to Fort Pierce. And suddenly the beauty of the RMI became obvious. All I needed to do was read the QDR for both the VOR and NDB off the RMI (ok, so I should have checked it against the compass first to ensure the slaving hadn't failed) and draw two lines on the chart, and I had a fix. It doesn't get much easier!
We set ourselves up for a flapless approach back at Fort Pierce. ATC left us a little close to the aircraft in front (for real - this one wasn't a practice), so I elected to go around, which my instructor congratulated me for. But I was getting an absolutely terrible rate of climb, and I wasn't sure why. I looked over everything, and eventually realised I'd left the gear down. Particularly disappointing, because my Europa has retractable undercarriage, and I do plenty of go-arounds in that (usually when I c0ck up a landing!), so getting the gear up isn't something that I have any excuse for forgetting. Still, better to do it today than on the day of my test - as long as I don't forget it again, it's not a problem.
I like the Arrow. It could do with more pockets for keeping charts and clipboards and checlists in, and it could do with a few more horsepower, but getting back into a PA28 of any kind always feels a little like coming home, since I did my PPL in a Warrior.
FFF
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