Flight #14 Alice w/ Judge Robert Pate

Robert met me at Mercury at about 11 AM .. sat down and discussed what we were going to do and then headed out. The weather was overcast with 1500' ceilings .. but little wind ... 100 @ 8

We went to Alice but on the way did some maneuvers .. slow flight ... slow turns .. steep banks .. power off stalls ..

Once we got to Alice we got in the pattern and did 7 T&G's .. overall I did better than I'd been doing .. some things that might explain this ..

1) Started 10 deg flaps @ 80 knts at the beginning of the downleg to get the plane stable
2) Left some power in all the way to flare .. even then came off power easy .. no chop
3) Used power trim ( so I could leave my hand on the throttle ) all the way around the pattern
4) Not much wind

Still flaring a little early but the steps above seemed to make it work anyway .. allowed the plane to settle in without stalling high ..

Robert also demonstrated a soft field take-off, short field take-off and short field landing .. on the way back to Crp he demo'd the autopilot feature .. decending from 2500' to pattern altitude as we approched CRP .. he even showed me how to use the IFR approach to rwy 13 .. very cool.

We spent about 2+ hours in the air .. really enjoyed it .. he offered to go again.

Although Robert doensn't do PPL instruction he does IFR .. he offered to go again ... probably take him up on it when I've made some progress ...

I REALLY liked Alice .. once I've solo'd I'll want to use it .. wide runway .. no one there ( outside of hunting season ).