Sun-n-Fun 2009 Saturday

Well it's time to go home. I'm sitting at the gate at Tampa International waiting for the plane. In a few hours I'll be home.

Today I headed straight for Plant City Municipal airport for my RV7 demo ride. Brian and Howard met me at the airport while I was waiting for my flight. It was nice to sit on the bench out front of the FBO and listen to Howard and Brian tell stories of past planes that they had or had flown. I met Rick my pilot when he got back from the 9:00 am time slot flight. Rick is a flight instructor that does transition training for RV aircraft. He has been to Sun-n-Fun for 17 straight years! We took off from runway 10, my first flight in a taildragger, and the RV7 had good visibility. This particular plane had a 160 hp Lycoming engine which is the low end of the hp range for the kit. The plane climbed out quick and felt very responsive. Once we got to altitude Rick trimed the plane for cruise and let me make some turns. It felt very light and felt like it wanted to climb even in the turns. Rick then took the controls and put the plane in slow flight at about 60 knots, the plane was still very responsive to turn inputs. Then Rick demonstrated a power off stall. The RV had a pronounced buffet and stalled straight ahead, I was following on the controls and recovery was quick with just a slight relaxing of the stick. Much more of a buffet then in the Diamond, but that plane is very docile in the stall. After this Rick demonstrated roll rate by banking 90 to the right and 90 to the left then back to wings level very quickly. He also did a wing over and it was awesome to look straight down the right wind as it was pointed toward the ground. It was time to head back to Plant City, so Rick had me fly back to the airport, descend to traffice pattern altitude, and enter the downwind. Rick took over from there and greased the landing right in. We pulled up to the FBO and Rick shut down the plane so I could get out and his next demo could get in. I thanked him and told him that I have a new plane at the top of my short list.

Time to board the plane, so I'll update with pictures again this evening when I get home.