...Until you get it right

There are some secrets to the Allegro 2000 that I had to figure out on my own.

Until flying the Allegro, I flew the Piper PA-28/140 Cherokee, the PA-28/180 Warrior, and the Cessna C-172N Skyhawk, Mostly the Skyhawk. Because the Allegro is high wing, we'll compare it to the Skyhawk.

I'm 5'7" tall, and on a level ramp I can walk clean under a skyhawk's wing upright. Attempting to jog under the Allegro's wing without ducking buys a trip to the dentist. Where the Skyhawk has hand holds and foot grips so you can climb up to see the tops of the wings, a moderately tall pilot can do so with soles on terra firma.

Climbing into a skyhawk's captain's seat means standing under the wing behind the wing strut, opening the (forward swinging) door, placing your left foot on the gear strut, and swinging up into the plane. The Skyhawk is very much like a Toyota Camry in seating posture; upright and neutral. Your spine is vertical.

Climbing into the Allegro means ducking under the wing ahead of the strut, opening the (upward swinging) door, sticking your butt into the cabin, and falling over backwards; butt, head, feet. The Allegro has a laid-back chair; much more like a Mazda Miata. Your spine is about 15-25 degrees aft of vertical.

The result of chair height and rake has one major result: The Allegro pilot's head is about 2 feet lower than the head of the Skyhawk pilot. The first 30 times I flared the Allegro, I put it in a perfect Cessna sight picture and fell the remaining foot and a half out of the sky, into a nose-high 3 point landing.

The third point is the tail-skid. Let's review: "The first 30 times I flared the Allegro..." You don't want to flare the Allegro because of it's lowered tail fin. Instead, the pilot should glide into ground effect, level out, bring the nose up so that the mains will light before the nose wheel, and allow the ship to settle to the runway.

But that's landing. Let's talk about the pattern in order. I love blasting off of the pavement and climbing to 50' AGL before the 500' marks, but it causes problems later. I fly from KTTA, A 6,000' X 100' slab of asphalt. The above "50' AGL before the big marks" bit is the normal takeoff procedure. Short-field takeoffs can have you at pattern altitude before reaching the far end of the runway. The normal takeoff is done with one notch of flaps, retracted basically as soon as you're off the ground and climbing. The flaps help the ship climb away from the surface without an excessively nose-high attitude, which would again bang the tail on the ground.

The landing phase of touch-and-goes eats up about 400 feet worth of runway, bringing the geometry of the pattern closer to comfortable, and so will carrying a passenger.

I don't like staying on upwind any longer than I have to, and the AIM suggests turning no sooner than crossing the departure threshold. So that's what I do, usually at about 700' AGL. The turn is sharp, so I'm usually inside the fence while starting crosswind. Crosswind lasts long enough to get the plane up to pattern altitude, and power/trim set for level flight at about 100 mph. That takes about 8 seconds. Then I turn downwind. I shoot large patterns compared to my instructor, and I'm still FAR inside of most other traffic.

In fact, let's talk about that. The traffic pattern exists so that, in the event of an engine failure, you can glide to the runway. The flying club at the field operates 3 Cessna 152s, with a glide ratio of 8:1. The Allegro 2000 glides at 12:1. I have seen the flying club's cessnas fly a downwind leg one or two miles beyond the approach end threshold of the runway before turning base, out to where I couldn't glide the Allegro to a safe landing should the engine fail, let alone a C-152. Also, you eat up time flying downwind instead of landing. Fewer landings per hour of practice.

Anyway. Abeam the approach end numbers, I bring the power to idle and leave it there, trim almost all the way aft, and let the ship fly. The airspeed will fall to around 70 (top of the white arc), one notch of flaps. She'll descend at a pretty 65 mph. Once you've gotten all that done, it's just about time to turn base. Let the ship come down. If you're low, power. If you're just right, forget it, land the plane. If you're high, wait a minute.

Wait until you're almost to the runway edge line before turning, cause she turns sharp when going this slow. Unless you're high, forget the second notch of flaps. It's a BIG configuration change, one that's basically superfluous. If you are too high, go ahead and lower those big plain flaps to 48 degrees, and trim neutral. If you leave it back there where you set it up on downwind, you're going to fight the ship all the way to the ground.

Once over the asphalt, you have to fight the habits learned in the skyhawk. Skate along in ground effect for a second, enjoying it because it's really fun, and let it settle. No Flaring. And at some stage you'll hear the wheels start to roll.

Flying out of the pattern is different too. Stalls break kind of abruptly. It's almost like a pair of giant hands twist the plane from the wing tips. You could steep turn the ship in a basketball gym. The windows extend down below your lap, so you can see beyond the vertical while turning. Keep your eyes on the horizon if you are afraid of heights. The low panel and big windows are great for ground reference maneuvers.

The cessna pilot will swallow his Adam's Apple on his first cross country in the Allegro. No VOR, no ADF, no heading indicator. You've got one COM radio, one magnetic compass, and maybe a handheld GPS, either stuck in one of those 3rd party panel mounts or on a ball joint on the console ahead of the stick.

The single-stick-between-the-seats arrangement gives the plane some unique challenges when navigating. For example, most people are right handed, so writing on the kneeboard while steering the plane can be a problem. I'm a lefty, so this plane actually makes things easier.

On the plus side, I can actually wear my orgaKNEEzer because there's no yoke to mess with it, and you've got plenty of lap space to spread out a chart. Your knees are higher than your butt, so you have a nice little chart table to work from.

Working the radios with your left hand is a pain in the ass. They're usually centered in the panel or offset slightly to the right, and the knobs on a COM radio are ALWAYS on the right side of the unit. So you have to reach most of the way across the ship to turn the dials. This usually means throwing off the 4-point shoulder harnesses. Inertia reels would be really nice.

I usually find myself spreading my chart in the right seat, and taking up my lap with navlogs. I end up cruising with at least one of the shoulder harnesses tucked behind my shoulder so I can get at the panel if need be.

I have not yet flown the Allegro at night, so I can't speak to any cabin lighting or whatnot. I've never noticed any interior lighting.

What an airplane. It'll suprise you.

The Difference...

Greetings and salutations and all that.

Normally, a pilot begins his career as a private pilot, and progress through the instrument rating and commercial certificate, often earning a Flight Instructor certificate soon after. Thus a CFI progresses steadily and easily to professional pilot.

CFI-SP requires a sport pilot certificate and 150 hours of flight time, with the usual stipulations of pilot-in-command time, cross country time, etc. along with the practical, FOI and the flight instructor-sport airplane written. So, the transition from amateur to professional is rather abrupt. I am in the midst of that transition, and I'm going to chronicle that transition (as well as whatever else I feel like) here.

The Backstory: My intro flight was my 14th birthday gift. I spent most of high school studying the books, and began flying late in my junior year. I started flying PA-28 Cherokees at Albert J. Ellis (KOAJ) in Richlands, NC. Between weather, travel and aircraft availability, I spent about 3 months gathering 10 flight hours. I moved my training to a little closer to home, to Moore County (KSOP). No Pipers there; I completed my training in N500TC, a 30 year old Cessna Skyhawk. Great aircraft; the trim wheel isn't a damned window crank on the ceiling.

Shortly after I completed training, I rented the aircraft for about an hour. I came back, shot a lousy approach and decided to go around. On climbing out, the flaps wouldn't retract. I was blamed for the failure, charged for the repair and asked not to fly with them again.

I moved my operation to Sanford Lee Co. Regional (KTTA). Here I flew a newer but more run-down Skyhawk. And I mean that ship was tore up. It flew just fine, but it was less than glamorous.

At the other end of that same airfield are two other businesses that provide aircraft. One is a flying club that operates a fleet of about ten ships, from Cessna 152's to a pair of Mooney Bravos. The other one is B-Bar-D Aviation. I've spent about 23 hours in their aircraft, various examples of the Fantasy Air Allegro 2000.

So there I am. I'm a 110 hour pilot or so, needing another 40. Just fourty hours. I have fourty hours to become a professional pilot.

And so my blog post has come full circle; back to becoming a professional pilot. I once heard someone in the airline industry describe that transition thusly: The difference between an amateur and a professional is that an amateur practices until he gets it right. A professional practices until he does not get it wrong. I've got a lot of work to do