>I have been flying the heck outta my Pitts as of late. Usually 5-6
>flights per week. One new set of tires, a tailwheel tire, and a set of
>brake pads later, I am really starting to feel pretty confident in the
>airplane.

Sounds familiar. I've put nearly 80hrs on mine since the beginning
of the summer ;)

>Am I too overconfident? Maybe I need to be set straight. Could someone
>give me an idea of what sort of "rude awakening" I might need to be
>aware of? I don't understand what the plane could do to surprise me in
>these maneuvers. The spins and stalls are so straightforward to recover
>from. I'm usually no lower than 4,000+ ft. AGL (and usually at 5k-6k)
>so I have plenty of time to recover. What can't I get out of by
>executing standard spin/stall recoveries?

You sound fairly conservative to me Ryan. There are lots of folks
doing stuff WAY lower than you ;)

There are a couple of places where people get burned in aerobatics.
The main point is altitude. If you are always at 5-6k and have no problem
with upright and inverted Spins, go ahead and have fun. Most botched
manoeuvers end in a spin of some kind anyway and from that altitude you
are reasonably safe.

Where you are likely to get into trouble is when you bring your
practice down low, as you eventually will for competition altitudes
etc. The problem is that at 5-6k feet, you don't care that much about
100' or so of altitude loss in a roll, or loop etc. Try it at 1000'
and all of a sudden that 100' is a BIG issue. I used to always practice
at 5k but had to move lower for contest practice and the world sure
looks different at 1500' or less.

If you find yourself with either the tail pointed straight down
or the nose straight down at low altitude, say 1000' or so, that is
where the trouble begins. The other problem is one of statistics.
Lets say you get your spin recovery right 999/1000 times. What
about the 1000th time? Those are not very good odds for staying
alive. Anyway I think everybody needs to keep in mind that they can
have a bad day and you need to factor in some room to account for
it.

What you are doing seems perfectly natural to me, pushing the
envelop a bit each week, at a safe altitude. ... after all... that's
what a Pitts is for.

Cheers,

Peter



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