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The wait continues

Nothing new to report on the status of Ariel. She's still sitting in the shop hangar at Harvey Field waiting to be put back together. In the meantime, I've been trying to keep from getting too rusty.

About a week and a half ago, I rented a 172 for a couple of hours and just flew around the area. After landing, I did two more takeoffs and landings. It didn't surprise me that my skill at landing an airplane had atrophied the most, but I also improved again by the third one. The skill fades quickly, but also comes back quickly with renewed practice.

I've also been doing a bit of "flying" in Microsoft Flight Simulator. I currently use a Thrustmaster Hotas and a pair of Thrustmaster rudder pedals. For those unfamiliar with the term, "hotas" stands for "hands on throttle and stick". It's a combination of a throttle lever and a joystick, both of which have a bunch of buttons that can be mapped to additional actions like toggling the parking brake or the landing gear. It works well enough for practicing procedures, but the controls are nothing like the yoke and throttle quadrant in my airplane.

I'm considering purchasing a yoke and throttle quadrant. The current favorite among flight simmers appears to be the offering from Honeycomb. However, I'm actually leaning toward the VelocityOne from Turtle Beach. While the Honeycomb throttle quadrant has two of each lever and can therefore better simulate working the engines of a twin engine aircraft, the Turtle Beach has both lever-style and push-pull style controls. So if I want to have controls like in my plane, I can use the levers and, if I want to better simulate flying a Cessna 152, 172, etc. I can use the push-pull controls.

I was really hoping to have my plane back in the air by the end of August. Now I'm not at all sure I'll have it back by the end of September, or even October. I know that the shop is slammed, and has been for a while. There's a shortage of mechanics pretty much everywhere, and they have to give priority to the flight school airplanes. The rental business appears to be doing well so those planes need to go in for oil changes and 100-hour inspections frequently. Fingers crossed I'll be able to get it back in the air and get the engine broken in before the weather prevents me from flying regularly.


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