Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Viperdoc wrote:
Great work! Saw your photo in the IAC mag. There was a while when I
was going up at least five days a week, and twice a day practicing on
the weekends. However, it soon stopped being fun, and started feeling
like a responsibility.

Then, a bunch of us were going to hire a coach to come up and
critique, and I suddenly realized that it was getting too intense,
and the fun aspect of flying acro was going away- it had become a
second job.

Now, a bunch of us use the box, and we go out and have fun, and
frequently hook up on those summer evenings and fly formation.
Afterwards, we go to one of our hangars and cook out, have a few
beers, and tell stories.

So, I realize how much work and effort go into all of your practice
sessions, and it obviously did pay off! Congrats again, and best
wishes in the future.

Good luck next year!
JN


You'll never know how much I both envy and respect you new guys.
You're flying equipment that we in our time only dreamed about, and
you're doing things with these airplanes we envisioned but didn't have
the planes available to us to make it happen.
I never flew competition acro as military stuff was basically my venue
but I got a piece of what you guys can do today in the Pitts.
It was what made flying fun then, and I'm sure you guys feel the same
way today.


There;s a down side to them if they start in them from scratch. It took me
about two minutes to see that a Pitts S2 was a real bad airplane to be
teaching aerobatics in. You can slow roll it just by banging the stick to
the side. It's not a slow roll, of course, but I couldn't see the thing
teaching any kind of management at all.
A good friend of mine who does instruction and displays in a Chipmunk
recently took a guy up in it who had bought an Extra 300 as his first
aerobatic aircraft and learned aerobatics in it. He couldn't get the
Chipmunk to do anything (and the Chipmunk is an easy airplane to aerobat)
A simple hammerhead ended up in a near inverted spin entry. Nothing wrong
with these new airplanes I'd love to fly one! Just not great primary
aerobatic trainers.


Bertie