Andrew-
>Congratulations on the new Pitts - it will teach you a
>tremendous amount about aerobatics.
Thanks!>At the risk of being pedantic, there are two things you
>must have to become a better aerobatic pilot:
Don't worry about being pedantic- I need all the pedantry(?!) I can get!
>1) practice. Lots of it. One, maximum two short (eg 0.5
>hours) aerobatic flights every day if you can. There is
>an old saying in IAC cirles about the best pilot being the
>one who has put the most 100LL through his engine 
I agree with your point, although the logistics of flying two hops every day might be tough (e.g., need to find time to become an expert lock-picker, since wife will soon change the lock on the front door).
>2) critiquing. Without critiquing, you will likely end up
>practicing your errors over and over again. The more
>critiquing you can get, the faster you will improve.
>One of the major benefits of attending a contest is the
>comments on the judge's score sheet. Bring them home,
>read them. Without a box at an airport, it can be very
>difficult to get any critiquing ... you need to get
>someone to travel out to where your aerobatic box is
>located. Get several people together to make the
>critiquer's trip to the box worthwhile.
Excellent point. I got my very first critiquing from the ground last weekend, and we found some things that my instructor has not seen before from the back seat. Our airport does not have a box, so the ground critiquers drove 15 minutes away to a spot where we could imagine a box. If it weren't for the copious amounts of animal droppings we had to navigate around on the trail to get to this spot, it would have been a really nice locale! Hopefully we can rope some of our chapter-mates into having semi-regular critiquing sessions there.
>Last comment: get a sight. Get a really big sight. Get
>two really big sights, one for the right as well as the
>left. Spend the time to set them up correctly for wing
>drag on the vertical.
The airplane has a sight on the left, but I'll need to see if it's calibrated correctly for my head position. So far, I've been flying in the front seat of the instructor's airplane, and the finely-tuned sight is aligned for the back seater...
Thanks for the advice, and don't hesitate to offer more whenever the mood strikes you!
Tom P.
Printer-friendly
version of this topic
Bookmark this topic
(Registered users only)
Aerobatics and Air Shows
![[Guest]](http://www.flightadventures.com/Forum/htdocs/dcforum/Images/key-s.gif)
![[Admin]](http://www.flightadventures.com/Forum/htdocs/dcforum/Images/4bar.gif)
![[Sysop]](http://www.flightadventures.com/Forum/htdocs/dcforum/Images/3bar.gif)