I flew the Grumman American Yankee when I was getting my ticket. In the years that followed I was a serious student of plausible first planes for a fellow like me. I am completely agnostic in the great wars over wing placement, except that I firmly believe they should be there. High, low, mid, canard, it is all the same to me. I can easily see myself in a pusher prop plane or a tail dragger, all that really matters is that it fly. But, that little Yankee got to me a bit. It was such a sweet flyer that a major contender for first airplane because its four seater big brother. There were essentially three models that mirror the three/four engines put in the Skyhawk and the Warrior. The Traveler had a little 150 horsepower engine, but with its clean lines and narrow fuselage it managed 20 more knots than the Cessna on a little less fuel. The Cheetah was a slicked up version and got yet more speed out of the same engine, and the Tiger put 180 horses up front and managed about 140 knots at less than 10 gallons per hour. I was completely enamored with the sliding canopy and even joined the type club for a year to read more about people who had taken the plunge. All things being equal I suppose the Cheetah is the plane I would have tried to afford and I even called Barron Thomas once when there was one that looked like too good a deal to pass up. But I had never flown one until I stumbled upon another pilot who worked in the same building.
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| This is what the Tiger looks like, but I can't find any photos of the one I flew |
Dana had been flying for 20 years and had owned the Tiger with a partner for about 8 years or so. His description of the partnership is one of only two that I have heard in detail and it did not make me want to shell out real money for a part of a plane. For one thing, when you have partners you keep track of every hour and charge the partnership for them. I actively do not want to know what the flying is costing me. Since I am well over 200 hours a year it must be cheaper than renting, but I sure do not want to really know the per hour cost. Dana and I had talked planes quite a bit and I started passing along the copies of the NTSB reporter than my brother passed along to me. It was pretty clear that Dana and I are very different sorts of pilots, with him being he smart cautious one. We tried several times to set a time to go out flying, but with one thing and another it was about 8 months before we hit a day that seemed perfect for a lunch trip up to Santa Barbara. We would depart from Orange County (KSNA) and meet my brother at 1500 feet over Santa Monica (KSNA). He would also be in a plane.
As I expected from the Yankee experience just walking up to the Tiger is great fun. It is a very cool looking airplane with flowing lines and neat little holes for cooling flow in the front of the cowling. Entry is exactly like the Yankee, step up onto the trailing edge of the wing then slide open the canopy and step in. The ergonomics are such that it is easiest to step on the seat then the floor of the cockpit, so the smart pilot flips up the seat cushion with her toe before stepping on the seat then knocks it back down again as the other foot is brought in to the cockpit. I flew right seat, but all that time in the right seat of the Diamond, and any other airplane I fly with my brother, means that I am about as comfortable operating on the co-pilot’s side as I am in the left seat. The panel is pretty standard, with the main oddity being he placement of the fuel gauges, which are on the side panels because they directly read from the tubular tank in each wing. The tubular tanks are an issue if the plane gets in a spin because the fuel can be pulled away from the wing root and the fuel line will unport leaving you in a plane that is rapidly rotating, falling fast and has no engine. Since this is more excitement than even utility pilots are accustomed to, spins are prohibited.
Starting is about the usual for a carbureted 180 hp Lycoming. Prime a few times with the mixture full rich and the throttle cracked. Mags on both and push the starter button. The engine usually catches on a few blades unless the weather is just brutally cold. An excellent feature of the Tiger (and Yankee) is that the canopy can be open during taxi and even during flight. This really mitigates the greenhouse effect of the bubble canopy on a sunny southern California day. We taxied to the run up area and I reacquainted myself with the concept of a castering nose wheel. It is a feature I actually like in a plane and would put it on a list of things I would like my theoretical perfect plane to have. The ability to turn a tricycle gear airplane in a radius normally only seen by conventional gear planes is a real plus. I like doing a 360 after the run up to see whether I can spot folks in the pattern. Tail wheels or castering nosewheels make this a fun proposition rather than an exercise in staying inside the run up area.
Lining up for takeoff I recalled that the Yankee needed more right rudder than the Warrior, but when I poured to coals to the Tiger I found it climbed straight and fast with pretty minimal rudder input. Not ten feet off the ground it is already clear that this is not a Cessna/Piper straight ahead workhorse. This plane can fly and if you are not right on top of the control yoke and rudders you quickly find yourself correcting for errors you are not sure you made. The plane has such a direct connection between me hand and pitch, roll and yaw, that you will go exactly where you aim…but the corollary is that if your mind wanders the airplane will as well. The C172 is so stable that I can often fly 50 miles without putting in more than a token bump of effort on the yoke. In the Tiger you could get it trimmed then shift your feet or put a little unconscious pressure on the yoke and before you know it you are sliding off in some direction only vaguely related to the one you were hoping to fly. I find that when I am ahead of the airplane and have a clear idea of my destination that I can keep my head out of the cockpit and fly long straight distances. But when I get behind, like when I am told to watch for wake turbulence from a departing 737, the airplane darts around like a fractious horse.
The airspace of LA and its environs is wonderfully complex. I say that as someone who trained in there and whose second flight was through the ‘miniroute’ over Los Angeles International Airport. This required following a VOR before I was entirely sure what the navigation radio was listening for. I think I had a vague idea that it was turning in various talk radio shows and guessing where you were by the suite of available programming and the strength of the various signals. Lots of preachers over by John Wayne/Orange County. More NPR as you head north. In any case, the airspace gave me an excuse to maneuver the airplane quite a bit on the way up to find my brother. As I had hoped, the pushrod actuators on the controls and the laminar flow wing made for an agile and steady airplane. Just to get the feel for what landing would be like I did one power off stall at 2500 feet. The look on Dana’s face and his pointing out that he does not do stalls in the plane without an instructor, convinced me to go a bit easier in my testing. We got overhead Santa Monica and I cranked in 45 degrees of bank, added a little trim (which is electric, by the way) and started a series of small circles over the airport. Dana seemed to be impressed with my airmanship, but I believe he would have preferred to hear of my exploits while we sat in his office making flying noises. Eventually the DA40 rose up towards us and we raced for the Santa Monica Mountains. The Diamond is fast but the Grumman had no problem keeping up. It may even be that the Tiger was a little faster. You will never get my brother to say, he rarely thinks about his air speed as long as the plane is not in danger of stalling.
We zipped up to Santa Barbara and the flight was too short by several hours. It is just a great plane to fly. More fun than should be possible in a vehicle worth less than $60,000. I was really happy when Dana offered to let me take the landing. I have no idea whether he was being generous, he was confident in my abilities, or so airsick from my piloting that he just desperately wanted to get on the ground. I set up for left traffic and went a little long on downwind because I had heard a long stabilized approach helps you to land these planes. If you read much about the Grummans a recurring theme is that they like to fly, conversely they are not so keen on stopping flying. If you have a little extra airspeed, say for good luck, or because it is Tuesday, or because there are a godawful lot of bushes on that side of the runway, you will find that scrubbing off that speed is difficult. Raising the nose just makes the plane balloon, neglecting to scrub off the speed leads to a departure into the weeds at the end of the runway. In any case, I had been boning up on the POH and had the spot landing speed in my head. I called the 1000 foot markers and landed 50 feet from the numbers end of them. It was a good landing and Dana looked relieved. We had a pleasant lunch and then headed back to John Wayne. The plane is beaut and with the sliding canopy would be pretty easy to exit in the case of ending up in the water. This one is on my list of step ups from the 172, but it is hard to imagine the circumstances where it is enough of a step up since I own the 172.
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