Vans Aircraft RV-12 Airplane Build: Transitional Flight Training

It's been about 5 years since I flown regularly. So the first order of business was to get current in a Cessna 150 and get a few hours of flying, all air work, including stalls, step turns, slow flight, takeoffs and landings. With this under my belt I scheduled parts of two days for transitional training with Mike Seager. If you look on the Van's Aircraft website you will find him listed under flight training. Vernonia, Oregon is a quant little town West of Portland, Oregon. There are some neat restaurants and we stayed in a nice little Bed and Breakfast called Rock Creek B&B.



So that brings me to the transitional training. Mike and I started with about an hour of ground training centered around flying an RV airplane. Then the flying started after taking off from Vernonia's airport (a small grass strip) we headed to the airport at Scappoose for pattern work. With 5100 feet of runway there is plenty of room to learn the intricacies of the RV-12. Then it was back to Vernonia a coupe of hours of rest (ay least for for me, Mike had a second student) and then back up for another 1.6 hours of flying in the afternoon. Day two was similar but without the ground instruction. This is longer than some may need, but I'm happy I spent the time.



What did I learn? I learned how to fly with an EFIS, which is just different from steam gauges. How to work the Auto Pilot. Some of the idiosyncrasies of operating the Rotax 912 engine. This includes how much the Rotax's RPM is affected by in flight loading and unloading of the prop. Flying with a castering nose wheel. That ham-footed rudder work that works fine with a Cessna doesn't "fly" with an RV. Slipping the RV-12 to loose altitude on final. And much, much more.

So next comes the intial test flight and phase 1 fly off. Stay tuned!