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SonexFlight Episode 15 - "Sonex Acro" is available for download now!

We explore the ins and outs of flying aerobatic maneuvers in a Sonex, review the types of maneuvers appropriate for a Sonex, and go over a few tips from our guest Mark Kingman to make flying acro a bit easier. In the news we discuss the NTSB's recently released Factual Report of the 2014 Sonex crash near Big Bear, CA.

Our guest this episode is Mark Kingman. Mark is a retired military aviator, flying F15’s in the Air Force and then moving on to fly helicopters in the Army. He retired as a commercial airline pilot flying Boeing 737's and Airbus 330's in 2009, and his current day job is flying EMS helicopters across eastern-Kansas. Mark completed Sonex #1304 in 2011, and has flown it nearly 500 hrs. He knows a thing or two about maneuvering flight, and regularly flies acro in his Sonex.

http://www.sonexflight.com/15

Thanks for another great podcast.

To me, a lot of the inverted spins that were described sounded more like normal upright spins that happened to be initiated when the airplane was upside-down. Not sure that the distinction matters for the purpose of the podcast, but I imagine a real inverted spin in a Sonex would be far more unpleasant (and pretty rare). The pilot would be hanging from the straps with the engine starved of fuel.

Before performing aerobatics, I typically do some steep ~2.5G turns and low G nose-overs while I fine-tune my mixture to run smoothly over the entire range. Does anyone else do something like this? I then adjust the power setting to give me a comfortable rpm margin below red-line at whatever maximum speed I expect to see and keep the throttle constant throughout maneuvers that finish at the entry altitude unless something goes wrong.

Yeah, we were referring to an inverted spin where you enter upside down, like falling out the top of a loop. Not an inverted flat spin.