Well, I am back from my 4 days of advanced aerobatics training.  What a great week, just shy of 1100 miles of driving but not really a bad ride.  Left Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.  I stayed in downtown Shawano, pronounced "shawno" by the locals.  The Settle Inn, had great rates, the bed was comfy and room was clean.  Dave Scott is an RC trainer extraordinaire.  His no frills flying field is in the middle of beautiful Midwest Farm country, in fact is is off a one lane dirt road, surrounded by corn fields and a couple of farm houses.  The field is nice short cut grass and all instruction was  under a comfy canopy keeping the sun at bay.  3 of 4 days were perfect.  Wednesday was overcast and cool, low 60's but way better than expected.  It was breezy the first 3 days, but other than correcting for wind with rudder, it becomes a non issue.  Thursday was perfect, very light winds, blue skies and great flying.  Day to day, Dave personalized our instruction.  I was there with a gentleman from Ames Iowa, there for his third time.  Twice in aerobatics and the first time was for one week to solo.  He does not do much flying at home and I was impressed at how well he flew.  Obviously a result of great instruction.

I was hoping to get my hands on one of his precision aerobatic birds but that is for next year.  We flew an Hanger 9 Ultrastick with a, ready for this, K&B .61. 16-18 minute flights everytime.  It was a little cantankerous off idle after starting it but once in the air it pulled like crazy through every maneuver we could put it through.  We only flew this the first day.  To be honest, I was happy because the plane we flew the most was the old reliable Super Sportster, again with a well used K&B .61.  This was a kit built plane with hundreds of hours on it.  It still looked great and flew better.  Dave had several of his trade mark modifications.  The most obvious was a aluminum landing gear mounted ahead of the wing in place of the wire struts in the wing.  The other was to the ailerons.  In Dave's books, he writes about smooth airflow over the control surfaces.  To help with that he uses an airfoil shaped leading edge to the ailerons that is slightly thicker overall than the trailing edge of the wing.  This smooths out the airflow making the controls much more predictable.  This is explained very well in his manuals.  On this particular model he also added material to the trailing edge of the aileron that made the roll rate a little quicker.  This plane flew wonderful and looked great.

I had expected hours of flying.  You may think that if this didn't happen I should be disappointed.  I was not disappointed.  Aerobatics are somewhat technical but when broken down to individual parts, they are quite simple.  A good amount of our time was spend discussing the maneuvers components piece by piece on a chalkboard and with his stick planes.  As he says, 25 percent is physical (practice flying) and 75 percent is mental.  Oh yeah, level wings and straight lines are most important.  I discovered this pretty quick.  Everyday built on the previous day.  Loops, rolls, 1/2 cuban 8's, reverse Cuban 8's advanced to full cubans, avalanches, spins, slow rolls, 4 point rolls and on and on.  As Dave talked me into the next advancement, occasionally  something would go haywire in my brain.  When this happened we simply went back to straight lines, level wings, loops, rolls and cubans.  Dave would then add, "left snap" as I was doing my perfect loop, without thinking, it turned out perfect.  Very cool to say the least.

I would encourage all of our new pilots and instructors to get Dave's "One week to solo" and follow his suggestions.  I have incorporated these into my training already with great results.  Just a few to start as I have not read the entire book.  I would almost want to attend Dave's solo class just to learn exactly what is being talked about.  If you truly want to be a better pilot then sign up, dates go quick.  Scott Paschen