[Carol's note to our daughters about her first aerobatic
ride last Thursday follows....forwarded with permission <grin>]

It was really cool. Some maneuvers were at almost 4G's!

What fun!

I have to admit, I was getting a little jumpy as we drove
to AUS and a little more nervous as we left AUS and flew
to the practice area south of Bastrop.

I started laughing though before we ever left the airport.

Once the parachute was tightly strapped on and I was snuggly
buckled into my seat and I couldn't move, the giggles began.
Don't know why exactly, something just struck me as funny
about the situation. I couldn't move if I wanted to.

The first maneuver we did was a 'steep turn.' Think of it
as a top pivoting on it's point. Herb raised the right wing
and we started turning counterclockwise. I was surprised
that the G forces on that maneuver were almost 2. Not
significant, but enough to pin me to my seat and have the
ground spin way below us. We did this maneuver a couple
of times until I was comfortable with it. Compared to
some later maneuvers, it as actually kind of lame. But
that was all it took to put me at ease. I couldn't wait
for the next maneuver..

The next maneuver we did was a 'wing over.' This is used
when you want to change directions and stay in line with
your ground marker. The nose climbs until it and the wing
are perpendicular to the ground. The plane rolls over and
drops. Because the nose is dropping you are able to see
and line up with the ground marker and stay right on track.

It's really cool. It was minor, but it was almost a free falling
feeling.

Then we did loops. These are like when you're on a roller
coaster and you do a 360 degree vertical loop. One minute
you are looking straight ahead, then into the clouds, then at
the ground while you're upside down. There are windows in
the top of the plane so you can see everything. It's VERY
cool!

We did Cuban 8's after that. These are harder to explain.

They start out as a loop with a flip over because you end
up going in the direction you just came from, not the
direction you were going originally. We only did half
Cuban 8's. The full one is like a figure 8 where you flip
over twice as you traverse the 8, thus going back in your
original direction. These were lots of fun and had the
most G forces, but these were also the ones that make
me queasy.

All those direction changes in such a short time, or
maybe it was the G forces got to me. Herb thinks it might
have been the way the tail was yawing at the end of
the maneuver. Who knows? After the first one, we flew
around for a while until the queasiness subsided and we
did it again. The second one brought back the queasiness
so we called it a day.

We looked at our watches and realized that we had been
flying around for over an hour already! How
time flew by! Can't wait to go back again next week!

All in all, I LOVED it! It was a hoot to fly out of Bergstrom.

We had to yield to the big planes before we could take off.
But there we were - right on the taxiway in our little bitty plane
while the big Boeings taxied by, took off, and/or landed all
around us.

Carol

=======================

She wants to go again on Tuesday.

Herb Martin, PP-SEL
(...and aerobatic student)
Try ADDS for great Weather too:
http://adds.aviationweather.noaa.gov/projects/adds

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