Flying The 2012 Sportsman Known In a New Monoplane
A friend recently moved from flying a Decathlon to an Extra-300. He competes in the Sportsman category. At his first critiqued practice session he was accused of flying the Extra like a Decathlon and in response to his query on how he should be flying his new ship. I typed in the description below. It occurred to me that some of the readers here might be entertained by it, and it might actually be useful to other Sportsman competitors making a similar aircraft transition.
The Aresti diagrams of the flight program may be see on the IAC web site's "Members Only" area.
Regards,
Wes
N78PS
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First, fly a base leg at 4500' AGL maybe 1300' downwind of the downwind edge of the box. When you get to an X-axis line about 500' from the front of the box turn and dive 45 down and use the full stick deflection to do 3 wing wags towards the judges. Each wag should be at least 45 degrees of bank. Pull level at 2000' going the speed of heat and maybe the airframe red line speed. Fly a "one banana, two banana" line and pull into figure 1, the Hammerhead. Your speed should take you back up to the top of the box (3500') for the pivot. You should be looking down at the upwind boundary of the box after the pivot. Drive the down line for 4 "bananas" before pulling back to level flight going down wind. You should be at probably 2700'.
Count two bananas and pull to the 45. Since you built a little speed on the down line of the hammer, you might be able to use the time coasting back upwards to dial in the power setting that you want for the 180 turn. You can push over when you see your airspeed coming down to the target speed for entering the 180.
Push the stick over hard but not too hard to enter the 180. You have more speed going in than you will coming out. Ideally you want the roll rates going in and coming out to look equal. You will want to try for full stick deflection rolling out of the turn, but with less speed your roll rate will be less. So you can be slightly less aggressive on the entry.
Do the 180 away from the judges with the airspeed bleeding off towards your stall speed. The goal is exit the 180 and spin 2 or 3 "bananas" later. So pull the power to idle immediately after rolling out of the 180. See if you can make the airplane climb just a little as you decelerate. The judges won't see a very slight climb. Do not let the airplane settle at all. You turn away so that you can see the front of the box coming back into view as you get ready to stop the turn on the opposite heading.
The vertical line down from the spin can be 3 or 4 or more "bananas" depending on your altitude.. Go for some speed since you noted that all of the figures to go can be adjusted for your altitude in the box using your airplane's horsepower.
Spin to the judges. The 180 away should have bought you some room and now you get back in their face.
When your are driving down from the spin look at your box position. Plan on putting the rest of the figures at the front of the box, so if you can draw a 4 or five second line (bananas) towards the front of the box, feel free to do so. If you are in the back half of the box, no need to hurry into the humpty. Make the judges bend their necks back to look up at you right overhead as your finish the program.
If you enter the humpty with some speed you will go back up high overhead again. That lets you sit on the down line and count off 3 "Bananas" before you roll and 3 more after. Figure 6 starts with a 45 up line so you can gain back altitude if you think the you are too close to the bottom of the box. But you can be at 1800' here and be fine.
Figure 6 is the reverse half cuban. You should be able to drive up the 45 line 4 or 5 seconds, roll, drive inverted for another 7 seconds, and then gently round over into the looping part. You can make the loop large if you want to finish at the same altitude that you entered, or you have the option of pulling the loop tighter to exit higher than you start.
As you fly the loop down through the half cuban, look at your box position. With the nose down in the looping part of the figure, look to see if you need to drive up wind so as to start figure 7 in the upwind half of the box. If there is wind, you might choose to drive 6 seconds before starting figure 7 instead of 3 seconds.
Figure 7 also allows you to gain altitude if you want. If you make a larger loop, and short lines before and after the roll, you will exit higher than you started. But I don't think that is needed here and you should be able to count off 4 seconds before and after the roll. I should note that verbalizing keeps you honest. If you think that you are counting seconds in your head, you will find that your count is much farther from real time than if you speak the words aloud.
The entry altitude for figure 8 should be maybe 1800'. With some speed you will drive pretty high on the vertical line. You should be able to draw a solid 3 second line before and after the roll.
The loop should be right in front of the judges, both on the X and Y axes of the box. Keep the stick coming back as you reach vertical so the loop stays round and does not elongate upwards. At about 20 degrees before inverted start letting off of the back pressure and think about floating across the top. At inverted, a little push will keep the nose from falling and stretch the curve out to make a loop as wide as it is tall.
The concluding roll looks great if you can make the stick hit the stop.
