Today was the first day of flight school. I am flying a Citabria Adventure: http://www.flyacroair.com/N2088V.htm.
The plane is interesting, the instructor sits in the back seat and the control panel layout is a bit different from what I pictured from seeing so many pictures of Cessna cockpits. The surface of the plane is some sort of fabric rather than aluminum.
Taxiing was a bit harder than I expected and I don’t think I really every got good with it–you have to get it going a decent clip before its easy to steer and then I feel like I’m going too fast :-) The whole steer and brake with the pedals was a little tricky as I never quite felt I knew where the cutoff between braking and steering is.
He had me hold the controls and fly with him during the takeoff which was a bit tricky… once we got going we had to push forward on the stick (it has a stick rather than a yoke) to get the tail off the ground and then when we got up to speed we pulled back and flew away… the whole takeoff seemed to take about 5 seconds so I missed the whole thing :-)
He had me fly the initial climbout and level off around 3000 feet. He had me practice a few 30 degrees turns while attempting to keep the altitude constant and keep the rudder in the correct position. It was tricky… I got lucky my first turn and kept the altitude within 50 feet the whole way around. Then he had me practice turning 180s and 360s while climbing or descending 500 feet. We did a turn while banked 45 degrees while maintaining altitude… I really felt like I was getting stuffed into my seat (it was a 2G turn).
The landing was fun… my instructor had me idle the engine and trim the elevator and hold on the controls while he landed. I was surprised that we landed with the tailwheel slightly before the main wheels but he said that is allowed in a full stall landing which is what we did.
Actually flying was crazy… you feel every bump in the sky :-) The instruments don’t stand still like they do on the computer flight simulators… everything is always moving and it seems all you can do to get everything lined up how you want it for one second :-)
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