Here comes the sun

It has been quite a few days since I trained.  Had a good first session and then the monsoon came.  Either the rain was coming down or the clouds were really low.  While I would normally be all over some of this weather for instrument practice, with a new plane I  needed good weather to work through my next training objectives.  

I finally got some sunny skies this morning.  First objective was some Airwork.  Last flight we were loaded pretty much at the front of the envelope.  I moved some stuff around and we had less fuel today so while we were still at the front of the envelope, we were not as close to the edge.

I noticed the difference on departure.  The plane behaved a bit better on the ground with less weight on the nose wheel.  After wheels up we headed to 7500 feet and cleared the area.  Once clear I practiced some slow flight both clean and dirty.  The next exercise was stalls.  Barons have a reputation for dropping a wing in a stall.  

First stall was clean and I was ready on the rudders to pick up a wing.  I was pleasantly surprised though, as the plane slowed I could feel the imminent stall approaching and had a solid buffet before breaking straight ahead and a conventional recovery.  At our weight the book says the plane stalls at 83 KIAS.  It stalled at 75 which confirmed that the VGs were doing their thing.  VGs or vortex generators are small tabs across the front of the wing span that  help energize the boundary layer and delay the onset of the stall.  They claim to get you 9 knots reduction and we saw at least 8.

Dirty stalls (with flaps) were next and the break came at 65 KIAS while the book claimed 72.  The VGs are supposed to give you 5 knots so this was better than expected.  The dirty break was also straight ahead.  So much for bad mannered Barons.  After a few of each type of stalls, we moved onto simulated single engine flight.

The manual has a power setting which simulates one engine feathered.  The instructor set that power and I added power on the good engine.  At 7500 feet and 5250 pounds, the plane climbed 200-300 fpm on one.  It was relatively easy to manage the yaw with rudder and a slight bank into the good engine.  The ideal profile is 2-3 degrees of bank and a half ball deflection towards the good engine.

After single engine practice we slowly warmed the idling engine and then began a descent towards St. Augustine.  I called approach and requested some practice approaches.  We shot 3 GPS approaches, one with a hold in lieu of a procedure turn.  The final run was an ILS and then we broke off to the North to fly the GPS 32 back home with a circle to 5.

Lining up on final, everything was looking good and passing 50 feet I was on speed.  Having a slightly more rearward loading made a difference.  The flare went nicely and I was able to hold the nose off after touchdown.  This really helped slow the plane quicker and I think in a more typical loading I will typically fly. This should make arrivals and departures a bit easier but it was good to train at the more difficult part of the envelope.