The idea was to work on wheel landings. The wind was just strong enough and offset enough to be a bit of a challenge- about 40 degrees and 10 knots.
As we taxiied out, I could see and hear that two of the Red Bull competitors (they're racing over the harbor this weekend) were practicing over the airport... there was, in fact, a whole Red Bull setup (tents, trailers, etc) by one of the hangars; maybe they're staging from here, I dunno.
I saw them in the pattern working 26R and flying a raccetrak pattern at 2500 over the fiel, but ha to try to ignore them; too much work to do.
The wind at pattern altitude was quite strong, and the first half of eah final leg had me crabbing like mad to track the centerline... also did a pretty good job sideslipping on a few approaches- getting over my fear of lowering that wing. It's very different from 172s, et. in that nothing happens at first, then it seems to roll too much, along with that godawful adverse yaw...
The low sun made landing to the west a bit of a problem for me, esp. as I didn't notice how dusty the windscreen was until final... everything would look OK until that critical moment, then it seemed I couldn't gauge my height or direction very well. First was a 3-pointer just to get warmed up; not too shabby. The first wheel-on attempt had me bounce instead of easing it on- got major points from Bob for just going around instead of trying to salvage that one.
I decided to try a couple more 3-pointers... then decided to try to wheel it on again. This time Bob sort of worked the stick with me, so I got a better feel for how it's done. Went around for another try, bounced again; Bob took it and showed me again how to do it before we ran out of runway.
Feeling more confident, I went around for another stab, and made a really fine wheel landing. Stick forward, ignoring the feeling that we were tipping forward... rudder rudder rudder as the plane slowed and the tail came down... it would be a touch-and-go, but I wanted to roll at least until the tail came down, to get a feel for a full-stop of a wheel touchdown... what happened next was rather interesting...
The Champ suddenly swerved left. I applied hard right rudder, she swung right briefly, then just ran off the runway to the left, with both of us trying to jam that right brake and rudder pedal. She tipped a little, but not enough to drag the right wingtip. I was too busy to be scared, but it wasn't fun, I'll say that much.
By the time she stopped, we were at about 90 degrees to the runway centerline... not a complete ground loop, but embarrassing nonetheless. We hadn't even stopped rolling when Tower offered assistance... LOL.
"Once that tail gets past a certain point," B. said, "she's going; that's all there is to it... that'll make a believer out of you..."
I got her out of the sand onto the taxiway, and tried again. Almost did one good wheel landing, then a few more good 3-pointers... I called it a night after about 1.2 hours- the sun was making it harder and harder to flare properly.
Bob was sympathetic, and told me that in his Navy days, landing on a carrier into the sun was often harder than night landings, because sometimes he'd lose the "meatball" altogether in the glare.
Postflight inspection showed the right tailwheel spring hanging loose again- we theorized that this may have contributed our little ride on that one landing.
But I obviously have some work to do... we'll resume next Sunday, and I hope I'll get to solo it then.
