Temporarily flying the Remos

Three months ago, while on a night cross country training flight, I had an up-close encounter with a goose.  While neither myself or my instructor were injured, the damage caused by that bird strike knocked our flying club’s Cessna 172 out of commission.  Our insurer was called and the plane was ferried to the repair shop.  Work is coming along, but the extent of the damage has meant that we have all been grounded far longer than expected.

After being out of the cockpit for so long, I was getting antsy to do at least a little bit of flying.  Last week I contacted Bev Cleair at Skybound Aviation in Cape Girardeau to schedule a few lessons.  Skybound is a great organization to work with.  Bev, Erik, and the other instructors at Skybound helped me rediscover my love of aviation two years ago when I enrolled in their private pilot ground school class.  After a couple of introductory flights in the Remos GX, I was utterly hooked.  Unfortunately, they are also over fifty miles away from my house.  That distance proved to be a logistical challenge.  Joining the Stoddard County Flyers and training right here in Dexter was simply too good an opportunity to pass up.  Anyone in Cape Girardeau with an interest in flying should give Skybound a try.

Ultimately, Bev put me in touch with Mike McCrate, Skybound’s newest instructor.  Mike is an extremely experienced pilot who has been flying all of his life.  He and I already knew each other as members of EAA chapter 453, in Painton, Missouri.  Mike is our president and I was looking forward to getting to know him in another capacity.  We scheduled a flight for Monday morning and I spent the next couple of days re-reading the pilot’s operating handbook for the Remos GX.

My goals for my brief time back at Skybound are very simple.  Primarily, I am hoping to minimize the degradation of my flying skills.  Even though the Remos and the 172 are very different aircraft, the simple act of getting back in the air proved to be very valuable.  After three months without flying I had plenty of rust that needed to be knocked off.  My second goal was to gain more experience flying in a control tower environment.  Dexter is an uncontrolled airport.  Flying in Cape Girardeau’s class D airspace is very different.  This was a much needed opportunity to go back and review my aviation radio procedures.

Mike McCrate proved to be a very patient and helpful instructor.  He sat down with me and provided a thorough pre-flight briefing.  He asked where my training left off and what I hoped to work on with him.  We filled out the needed paperwork and then went out to the plane.  He supervised the pre-flight inspection, but gave me plenty of freedom to demonstrate what I remembered from my previous experience with the Remos.   Most things I did okay on, but he was very patient as I struggled with the start up procedures.

After being coached on talking the tower I made a somewhat stilted request for taxi and we made our way to the runway.  Winds were calm and the weather was perfect so it proved to be a great day for flying.  Mike let me perform the takeoff while shadowing me on the controls.  We headed out to the practice area and went through a series of maneuvers that reacquainted me with the Remos and allowed Mike to get a sense of my flying skills.  On the steep turns I overshot my headings but managed to hold my altitude fairly well.  Trimming the Remos proved difficult for me, but slow flight felt very comfortable.

Midway through the flight Mike pulled the engine to idle and called for a simulated emergency landing.  I struggled with the Remos engine restart procedures, but made a smooth approach to landing at the Painton grass strip.  We did a go around and headed back to Cape Girardeau for some landing practice.  Mike again coached me on what to say to the tower and we reentered the pattern from the southwest.

Overall the landing practice went fairly well.  I did okay in the pattern and my landings were relatively smooth.  Where I struggled was on take off.  My  tendency was to slightly drop the right wing of the Remos on rotation.  My other challenge came when talking to the tower.  My instinct was to refer to the tower as “Cape Girardeau traffic” and I repeatedly said my tail number was “one oh two golf x-ray.”  These are simple mistakes that I should not have made, but fortunately the controller was very understanding.  Mike coached me where I went wrong and offered suggestions on what to fix for next time.

After three trips around the pattern we called it a day and headed back to the hangar.  Mike debriefed me and gave me suggestions on what to work on for next time.  We scheduled our next lesson and hopefully next time my radio work will be a little more respectable.

Overall it felt great to be back in the air.  Flying with Mike was fun and I enjoyed the chance to fly a different airplane for a bit of variety.  The Remos is a very different airplane than the Cessna 172.  The controls are much lighter and the glass cockpit takes a while to get used to.  More than anything, I appreciated the opportunity to get some experience talking with the control tower.  Despite my struggles, chatting with the controller was not nearly as scary as I had built it up in my mind to be.  Hopefully the next couple of lessons will help make it even more comfortable.

Huge thanks to Mike, Bev, and Mac at Skybound for temporarily taking me on for some much needed controlled airspace lessons!