First flight in the Arrow today – what a nice airplane! Very heavy and much more stable than the Cadet. Bill briefed me on the engine, and we were on our way. A few little differences, but I have practiced them all before in the Seminole. Stuff like gear and propellers were suddenly much more easy to manage when you have one engine.
So we climbed to 4000 ft, started our maneuvers, steep turns, stalls – clean, turning and landing config, all went okay.
I recovered from one of the stalls and Bill said to me “you hear a ticking noise?” – to which he asked me to bring him home, so I was under the hood and I tracked the 280 radial back to Ormond.
We got back into maintenance and we opened the cowling to find that the exhaust had cracked in around 2-3 places! So that put an end to the days flying.
The guys at maintenance are good, they got a new exhaust shipped in overnight and it will be here at 10 am!
I didn’t hear back from the CAA today about my test, so it’s going to be Monday before I hear from them.
Andrew