Hi Ronald,

May be it is too early for me to tell – but may be it helps you to get an opinion from someone that just got started and has not forgotten how it was in the beginning….

I have now approx. 25 hrs in my 4P (10 hrs instruction and 15 hrs by myself) – Jeff’s statistics say that once you get beyond 100 hrs it becomes unlikely that you hurt yourself. So I try to practice/fly as much as I can (2 to 4 times a week is my goal)

My previous flight experience are 1100 hrs in a C182 which I flew most of the time IFR – as of now it is unlikely that I will get insurance (that makes the training even more important)

I did my flight training with Charlie Kohler. We scheduled 3.5 days for this. Before he came I studied his book and made my own Pilot operating handbook which helped me  memorizing the important data / procedures.

Charlie did a great job making me feel comfortable in the plane. I was still working this week so he stayed at my house and we worked around my schedule at work and he helped me getting other things done (picking up the car from the shop, getting something form Wal Mart etc.).   It felt like working with my Dad or a friend that really cares that I do the right things.

We practiced all the procedures that I remembered from the C182 training except the power on stalls. In exchange for this he showed me how to do a roll. And even it is supposed to be bad for the gyro I think it is pretty cool (I had never done this before) and my girlfriend  likes it too.

After this week I had the feeling that the 4P flies just like the 182 – just everything happens twice as fast.

We installed stall strips on the leading edge of  my wing. Charlie said it would give me an approx. 3 – 5 knot warning before the stall. I feel the shaking a little below 90 kts (clean) and 80 kts (flaps + gear down). I never stalled it completely – when I feel the shaking I move the stick forward. So I assume that my airplane stalls at approx. 84/74 kts. I also installed an angle of attack instrument which is calibrated for this speed.

When I do slow flight / stall approaches (at 10.000 ft!) I can really feel that the plane doesn’t want to be in this position – so I would figure this is relatively easy to recognize – plus the AOA warning comes on and I feel the shaking of the stall stripes.

The thing that worries me more (and the stall stripes and AOA warner don’t tell you) is when you get slow (<100 kts) on final: there is a chance that your butt drops down – you start sinking very rapidly but the plane is not stalled. The only way to get out of this is full power – if you have any available. It happened to me once and I was really surprised how quick it goes down. Since then I rather do 120 kts on a steeper final and slow it down  right before I get over the fence.

I hope the explanations of a newcomer did not bore you too much. But I can tell you it is a lot of fun and it is really exciting. I can see almost 290 kts TAS at 18.00 ft with full power (with the bezel around the air speed indicator – it probably needs to be corrected by 15 kts or so for air compression – but it’s still exciting).

One more thing: be careful of what you buy. I bought a plane that was a lost worse than what I thought. I had a pre buy inspection done by Lancair (they missed all the critical issues!) and it took me 3 years to turn it into something that I can show without being embarrassed.

Good luck

Ralf