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| It wasn't flying this baby that made me sweat. |
I think of this airplane as an airborne version of Dorian Gray. Somewhere there must be a painting of N96710 in its real state, aged, wrinkled and faded from the years. It sits now in its hangar across the taxiway from my own hangar seemingly frozen in the condition in which it was shipped from the factory in 1946. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's a real nice specimen nonetheless! Anyway, the current owner, my friend, Glen, is kind enough to let me fly his airplane so that I can practice my stick and rudder skills.
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| This is your basic day VFR airplane! |
There are no bells and whistles here. In fact there is not even a battery, so the aircraft must be hand propped to start it as they did in the old days. Tie the tail down (or have someone sitting in the left seat to apply the heel brakes), pull the prop through about four times, make the mags hot, and she cranks with a quarter turn of the prop. The 65 horse Continental purrs.
I owned a Cessna 140 of similar vintage for a few years, and I must say that this airplane is much more pleasant to fly. The landing gear is a bit firm compared to the Cessna, but the pitch forces on the control wheel are much less, making it easier to land. So that's what I did - a bunch of takeoffs and landings. I prefer the wheel landing rather than the three-point landing preferred by others, but this plane will do either easily. I am a lucky person to have friends that, for some reason, want me to fly their airplanes!
