It's a little trafficky...

Every pilot has a fear. There are hazards unique to flying but for some reason it seems that most pilots pick one as “their fear.” My original flight instructor was terrified of an in flight fire. Another was scared silly of icing conditions. Mine is a mid-air collision.
Flying in the Northeast is like flying around a beehive. It is so congested and busy that you constantly have to keep your head on a swivel looking out for traffic. Even so, you could have the most amazing vision in the world and things come at you quick. I have 20/10 vision but with a closure rate of over 200mph things can come in and in out view rather quickly. That is why whenever I am practicing I am absolutely religious about clearing the area before each figure. Yesterday was a little nuts.

I got to the airport pretty early only to find that the Decathlon had full tanks. This would be awesome if I were planning on traveling somewhere. But I wasn’t. The awesomeness of full tanks does not apply to flying acro. The extra weight of the extra fuel on board (aviation fuel weighs about 6lbs per gallon. The D can carry 40 gallons) makes the plane too heavy to pull more than 3 g’s. You can get a pretty severe stall buffet right at the start of a loop which if you know how to fly through it is fine, but not exactly ideal conditions for practice. I like to have no more than ¾ tanks.

To burn off the extra fuel I flew up to North Central airport to do some takeoff and landing practice. You can loop and roll all you want but if you can’t land…well you’ve got some problems. Practice is always good and I admit I don’t do it enough. It started off quiet in the pattern with only me and a Cessna 172 going round and round. Quickly more people came in though and it got nuts. I saw some of the worst airmanship I have ever witnessed in all my years of flying. Flying is a privilege. I don’t care if you have 100 hours or 10,000 hours, there is a reason rules are made and no amount of arguing will convince me otherwise.

It got so hairy that I boogied out of there pretty quick to go get the practice session in that I was looking forward to. I managed to find the spot I had picked out but once I was there it didn’t seem all that great. I kind of wandered around for a few minutes looking for some good space away from homes, airports, towers, and other airplanes. I cleared the area and started working on my clover down, working right into the hammerhead. Again, I was clearing the area after each figure but there was a constant stream of airplanes passing through. It was annoying to say the least. I was thinking of moving to the deserts of Arizona after one too many sightings.

The flying side of things was great. I was working on the clover into the hammerhead. My clover is coming along nicely. I was talking myself through it making sure that I was pulling through the loop. The neat part was I was almost standing on the rudder at the bottom of the loop to keep everything coordinated (flying straight, not crooked). I wasn't thinking about it, just doing it. Little things like that make me rather happy.

I am starting to think that Alan Cassidy might not be lying about losing energy in a loop. My ending altitude is good but I’m short on airspeed by around 10 - 15mph. I am thinking that a slight descent from the clover into the hammer is going to work well to keep my energy level up. Since this figure is heading directly towards or away from the judges it will be pretty difficult for them to see a slight descent.