I haven't flown it for a few weeks due to weather and being out of town but
I am basically at the point where I don't have to think about "dancing on
the pedals" and that sort of stuff but I can't say that I have "mastered"
the airplane yet either. My efforts to date have been aimed at mastering
STOL landings. I can now reliably land and stop in 300" but I wouldn't be
confident landing on a 400' strip yet. On the most recent flight I managed
to stop before rolling off the numbers(!!!) with 6kts of headwind but this
was my best to date My goal is now to be able to land softly *and* short.
This is really challenging because there is no energy availible for flare at
under 50mph. The next step after that will be (short, soft) crosswind
landings which are tough because of the low approach speeds and the large
vertical stabilizer with small rudder. After that there will be sloped and
curved runways...

The Helio is like an onion in that there are layers of performance which
make it rewarding to fly. Each time you master one layer, you find another.
It is easy to get better performance than is even possible with other planes
like C182 or C185 but that is very different than being able to use all the
capability that is built into the airplane.

I am looking forward to having the backcountry strips dry out and the
beginning of fishing season!

Mike

"jsmith" wrote in message
...
Mike, how about another update on flying the Courier?