Cessna 152 Checkout
Today I got checked out in a Cessna 152. It was really my first time (besides spin training) flying high wing planes and I was a little nervous. We had a pretty standard pre-flight check, took a lot longer than just a "I'm out here to go on a flight", again because Luke was explaining things to me. There's a lot of differences like with the warrior, all the flaps are on hinges, but in the Cessna, there's one pulley hinge and some rollers you need to check, not just actuation hinges. Pointed out how the landing gear is different, there's plastic fairings that we need to repair quite frequently, and there are no dampeners.
After the pre-flight we took off, Vr is pretty low, at 50 so the plane just wanted to float almost immediately in my opinion. It was also a cooler day outside than my most recent few flights, so that helped too. We took off, headed north to the practice area. I get up to 3000' msl and we level off, trim for cruise flight and lean the engine. This plane also has a vernier mixture control, so it's nice to be able to dial in the mixture, even if there's no on screen display of the gallons per hour like the M20J. There were some clouds at 4000' I think, but they were tiny, and we figured we didn't need to go above them, so we stuck at the 3000' level.
This is where Luke says to just take the plane and do tiny things with it, like turn it uncoordinated, see how much rudder I'd need to do a turn. So I did that for a bit, did a standard rate turn to the left, and we switched to some 30° turns, leveled off then did two 45° turns, back to back. I hit my prop wash at the end of the second one, that always feels great. The first few turns were gross, this plane has old cables for the ailerons, so there's a lot of play when turning, so it took a few tries to be able to maintain altitude and find that comfortable dead spot with cable tension. The last plane (M20J) I flew, everything was much stiffer for turning.
After the few turns, he said "oh no, there goes your engine" and throttled to idle. I looked around for a …
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