Many thanks to all you guys for the great support and kind words. To me, this was the way to go and what flying is all about. Not to take anything away from the conventional wisdom and techniques of today, I'm just a little messed up in the head and wanted to try to experience what Pop must have gone through.
I think the feel of the tail coming up, keeping the stick forward while I learn to pin the wheels to the runway and learn to use the rudder to keep it centered all the way down 5000 feet before lifting off is "priceless". The P factor, wind correction, crabbing, all with the stick and a couple pedals, amazing.
I've had the luck of a fantastic instructor who was able to weather my "uncoordinated" turns from the back seat with just a "Yahooo". The tower calls him Crosswind Kurt as he is a fan of that instruction and how important it is. We did one when he showed me the extreme forward slip and I thought I was back in a Sprint car. I have never seen a plane that crossed up just over the threshold. But ya know, I learned alot from that.
We have been up on a day when the winds were from 170 to 230 at 12K gusting to 17K and we were just flying the pattern for runway 18. After about 7 T&G's there he said, "Wanna have some real fun?" I replied that I was but I already needed wipers for my glasses as the sweat was really dripping down my glasses. Well the next three were on 10 and let me tell you, full aileron, full rudder and a brake dragging trick I was taught real quick like. That was an amazing lesson. I was soaked by the time we finished but had an hour and a half of probably the best instruction yet.
This experience is just so amazing for me that after each lesson, I just need to sit in the cockpit and veg for a few minutes to take in what I just experienced.
The lesson before my solo was pretty cool as he had me start on some hood work. Now in the Citabria that means T&B indicator, Vert AS, AS, and ALT. That's all. No cheating, head down, eyes under th ehood and let me tell you, what a neat experience that is. It was amazing that just trusting the instruments and doing nice slow coordinated turns, I really didn't have the feeling of banking. Such tiny inputs to the controls, almost like a video game but I never played them much. I think I did OK. I held altitude real well, airspeed both indicated and vertical pretty well after the initial roller coaster stuff. I found that just relaxing and being so gentle on the stick was the trick.
It is almost like when we ran the sprinters on a hard dry slick track. We used to say that you had to imagine putting a raw egg under your throttle foot. Use the throttle but don't break the egg. Same concept. T33driver showed me that in the T-33 with the boosted ailerons. If not careful, you start chasing.
So enough of my jabber. Again thanks to you guys and I'm sure I'll blabber more as I continue.
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