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Aerobatic Ride with Michael Mancuso in the Extra 300L

August 8, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher, listen to audio at http://airspeed.libsyn.com/, or download directly at http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/MancusoRide1.mp3.

The second of my 2007 aerobatic rides!

The show starts out with an update on my instrument training, including cockpit audio. Then we get into the ride, complete with audio from the MicroTrack 96/24 plugged into the Extra’s intercom.

Michael Mancuso is in his 10th year doing shows. He has 7,000 hours total time and commercial and instructor certificates. He started flying gliders at age 11 and soloed for the first time when he was 13. He and his family own Mid Island Air Service on Long Island in New York and Michael started Gyroscopic Obsessions in 1995 to teach aerobatics. He competed in IAC aerobatics from 1992 to 1997 and then spent from 1998 to 2000 with the Northern Lights.

Michael flies the Extra 300L. The 300L is about 23 feet long and nine feet tall at the tail, and has a wingspan of about 25 feet. It’s powered by a Textron Lycoming AEIO 540-L1B5 300 horsepower engine connected to an MT three-blade prop that pulls the aircraft through the air at 170 knots when cruising at 75% power. It’ll get off the pavement in 315 feet, climb at more than 3,000 feet per minute, pull plus and minus 10 g’s, and do all kinds of crowd-pleasing gyrations between its 55-knot stall speed and Vne of 220 knots. The aircraft is built in Germany and certified in the United States.

The Extra on the ramp when I arrived. Taking on fuel and getting ready for a morning of flying media riders. How nice is Mike? And I’ll bet you that going that Extra mile (pun intended) gets really valuable exposure for his sponsors that they wouldn’t otherwise receive. All this and flying two demos a day at the actual show? That’s hard work.

The guy scheduled to go after me cancelled when he got his signals uncrossed and figured out that this was an aerobatic flight and not a balloon ride. Gotta pay attention to who’s in town, my friend! This is Michael Mancuso we’re talking about! Anyway, since when does a balloon ride start at 9:00 a.m.? Not with any balloon pilot with whom I’d ride.

This is throw-the-airplane-ass-over-tea-kettle-high-over-Gull-Lake time!

Arriving back after the ride. My glasses came off as I took off the headset and – “sproing!” went flying into Michael’s lap. That’s alright. A ride like that and I’m set for the week.

Last shot on the ramp for the day. Then it’s time to go sit in the Meijer parking lot and let my vestibular system reset while awaiting the Blue Angels’ arrival a few hours later and the rendezvous with photographer par excellence Dan McNew for the interview with Craig Olson.

Great interview with a great naval aviator, but the ride makes Michael the Airspeed MVP for this trip to BTL!

Here’s the maneuver I discuss in the audio. Michael performs barrel rolls around an inverted Matt Chapman’s track on Sunday. You need to be on the ground and at the fence to really appreciate this. Precision in all three axes and power management to boot. Unreal. I hope the non-pilots in the audience recognize the difficulty of this thing that Michael makes look so easy.

Contact Information for Michael:

Michael Mancuso Airshows
Brookhaven Airport
139 Dawn Drive
Shirley, New York 11967
Phone: 516-359-9948
e-mail: michael_mancuso@mmairshows.com or nlight4@aol.com.

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2.5 with VOR 27 FNT with Published Miss, RNAV 18 FNT, ILS 27 FNT, VOR 18 FNT, LOC B/C 27L PTK

August 7, 2007 by Leave a Comment

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes, please see below.

Can anyone think of a better way to spend a Monday morning than weaving up and down through a 500-700 foot thick overcast layer shooting instrument approaches? So can I, but Winona Ryder was unavailable.

Nailed five of them (summarized in the title to this post). Flew it mostly with the hood up because I like to have two fully-functional pilots in the cockpit when I’m in actual. Plus, even the cockpit of a C-172 seems a lot bigger without the hood on.

That’s Steve Roemer, CFII extraordinaire. Former air cav pilot in Viet Nam. Sometimes I think that I’d have to be inverted before he’d intervene, but I’ll flatter myself and believe that his calm disposition is a result of my nailing the approaches. (Wait ’till we get out there VFR and he can fail by vacuum gages – Then we’ll see who’s nailing what!)

My eminently-organized kneeboard. ATIS and clearances on the left. Approach briefing cheat sheet at the top right of the pad. Climb, cruise, descent, and pre-landing checklist usually on top on the right followed by other approach plates, the IFR low-altitude en route charts, spare taxi diagrams, then my leg. Energency checklist dangles on the side to my left in the third panel of the kneeboard. Don’t know how I’m ever going to fly center stick because I really like this kneeboard configuration. At least I can still keep the pen Velcro-ed to my noggin.

The multimedia capture area (sometime known as the back seat). M-Audio MicroTrack 96/24 on the right to capture audio. Old Sony Handicam with analog video input in the center. Battery pack for the bullet cam next to the Sony. Bullet cam is mounted with Velcro to the top of the mag compass in front. No apparent adverse effect on the mag compass.

Wish I had remembered to hit REC once I confirmed that I had signal! Anyway, I’ll get some video on the next appropriate flight.

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"Hey, Don!" and Oshkosh 2007 Wrap-Up

August 3, 2007 by 3 Comments

Subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher, listen to audio at http://airspeed.libsyn.com/, or download directly at http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedHeyDon.mp3.

As promised, the NSFW version is at http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/FirstSoloHeyDon.mp3.

We’re back from AirVenture Oshkosh 2007 and beginning the decompression process. For this episode, I’m hauling out a song I recorded about my first solo a few months after it happened.

Many of you have heard the podcast episode about my first solo (the show notes for which are here), but there’s a funny side, too. I loaded all of the angst and energy into a song called First Solo and recorded it and gave a copy to Don Fuller, the CFI who soloed me. I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to me before now to include the song in an episode of the podcast, but I thought about it on the drive home and decided to do it.

It’s way too long, contains too many details, and isn’t the best sound-engineering job I’ve ever done (I did all of the engineering in addition to performing all of the instrumental parts and all of the vocals except for two of the radio voices without much help in setting the levels, etc.) but it’s a fun tune and you guys might appreciate it. So I post it now for what it’s worth.

Thanks to John Crowe and Doug Parker for playing the parts of YIP tower and Don Fuller respectively.

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Pod-A-Palooza 2007 Audio

July 30, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher, listen to audio at http://airspeed.libsyn.com/, or download directly at http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/OSHpodapalooza2007-96.mp3.

Here’s the audio from Pod-A-Palooza 2007 at AirVenture Oshkosh. See the post below for details.

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Pod-A-Palooza 2007

July 27, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Pod-A-Palooza 2007 went off without a hitch this afternoon. Members of (generally left to right) of The Flying Pilot, Uncontrolled Airspace, UltraFlight Radio, The Pilotcast, The Student Pilot Flight PodLog, The CFIcast, The Finer Points, and, of course, Airspeed, gathered in Forum No.2 to on Friday, July 27 to hangar-fly. Pictured above is the panel as Jason Miller of The Finer Points and On The Flight Line (on mandolin and lead vocals) and Pilot Kent of the Pilotcast (on backing vocals) reprise their 2006 rendition of Jason’s I Look Up In the Sky. Jason was unable to bring his primary axe (guitar) and instead made do at the last minute with a borrowed mandolin in a different key. Rare and well done!

Uncontrolled Airspace’s and Around the Field‘s Jack Hodgson and The Student Pilot Flight PodLog’s Will Hawkins get acquainted as Pilot Mike, Pilot Dan, and the others set up the audio.

Pilot Will (formerly Student Pilot Will) fires off that pose of confidence that a new private pilot certificate is known to induce.

Cole has a CFI! Kate Bernard of Airspeed Alive briefs Cole on the logistics of getting around airventure.

Thanks to all who participated and especially to The Pilotcast for engineering the gathering and setting up the time at the forums that made Pod-A-Palooza a reality! And thanks especially to the listeners who came out to meet the voices in their heads!

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