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*** This morning, I had a light breakfast and one ginger capsule, then
drove my sidecar rig down to the airport for my lesson. The airport was
really busy, four or five planes were lined up in the holding area. I preflighted the C120, we sat down, I taxied to the runway. There we sat for maybe five minutes. When the plane in front of us started his runup, ours started to shake like she wanted to take off! I asked "If that guy was off to our right, which way would we point the yoke?" He told me, and I filed the fact away. The instructor did the takeoff, he told me to steer. I did the high-speed taxi thing with the rudder pedals again, we rotated, he gave me the plane about ten seconds afterwards. It took five or ten minutes to get the hang of coordinated flight again - the last time I flew an airplane was Feb 5, 6 days ago( Last lesson was IFR condix - we just taxied ). On the way to the practice area, we practiced the Four Fundamentals - ascents, descents, straight&level, and turns. Once there, he demonstrated a couple of steep turns. Then he told me to try. Over with the yoke and rudder - banking well past the "standard rate" markings on the turn coordinator - the world assumed a strange angle and proceeded to briskly slide past the window. I chose a magic spot on the cowling and attempted to keep it glued to the horizon, at the same time staying coordinated and keeping the appropriate angle of bank. Strangely enough, it all clicked around the second or third try. The airplane went round & round, the magic spot stayed glued, the turn coordinator ball stayed near the center, and then *umph* we sailed right through our own wake! Well, that last only happened twice. Then he had me do them in combination - do a left 360, bank out of it right into a right 360. The transitions were a little hard to get right, and after we went round & round enough, that good old queasy feeling started to manifest itself. I didn't complain though, I was still having fun. :) Toward the end, I started to lose it a little: glanced at the turn coordinator, and the ball was off the scale :-(. On the way back, we did a power-off glide and some more turns, this time standard-rate. Coming back to land, he demonstrated a forward slip. Whee! I can almost imagine myself getting good at this! - Jerry "5.4 hours" Kaidor
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