I am learning the beginners pattern, (at 59yrs old) My question is on the overhead 8 ,once I'm overhead, do I fly the inside portion of the 8 first or do the outside part first, or doesn't it matter? I have watched several videos on u tube etc and see beginners doing it both ways. What is correct? I have flown it both ways and I would like to practice it correctly. Also on the horizontal 8, I am being told to fly the AMA 8., once again, I see beginners flying both the AMA 8 and a lazy 8. I can fly both, but want to fly the pattern correctly. I guess its never too late to learn the pattern! thanks.....Gene
Start upwind, go into vertical climb. When you get to the top, do one complete inside loop, and that will get yo back to directly overhead, then immediately transition to an entire outside loop, inside loop, outside loop, and then come straight back down on the downwind side of the circle.
There are a number of issues people typically have. The most obvious and common is to start too early (partly because Gentlemen of a Certain Age cannot lean back far enough to keep it in sight if you put it where it is supposed to be) and have the maneuver turn out too low, or out in front of you. One of the problems with that is that this puts the loops on the upwind side of the circle where it tends to hurt the line tension. A second issue (sometime caused by the first( is making the loops WAY too big, like down to 15-20 feet at the ends of the loops. The entire maneuver is intended to take place above 45 degrees elevation. This is caused, usually, by lack of line tension. It is generally to your advantage to get it directly overhead, or even past overhead, than to have it in front of you, so learn to bend back as far as you can.
The third big problem is that the intersections are all over the place. Particularly on a beautiful cloud-free day, there is absolutely no reference for where you started or did the last part of the maneuver, so it just tends to wander. What I suggest is, right from the start, to set your body up as a reference. Get your feet ahead of yourself as you get ready to do teh maneuver, so that your feet are on a line perpendicular to the dead upwind point. As you get there, rotate your upper body until you turn, and when you get the airplane vertical, your feet and shoulders should be perpendicular to the vertical line. Then, don't move them and use your feet as a reference for where you started.
Note that in the vertical climb, you don't have to jam that corner really hard and make it sharp. If you swoop into the climb, you lose less speed, which means you have more line tension when you start the maneuver. In fact, you can whip the airplane into the turn. If you do this, you have to start well before you get dead upwind, so anticipate the right spot and start early enough to adjust the radius to what you want. In a wind, it will turn *very easily* compared to regular turns so it will want to "jump" into the vertical faster and sooner than you want.
If you are going to make a mistake on the positioning of the climb - *don't go past dead upwind*. If you do, you will have to crab the airplane back into the wind and you are going to have all sorts of problems.
A lot of stuff to think about, but if you can at least get it vertical with some speed, and get pretty close to overhead, it's not that hard to just execute the maneuver. It's hard to get it exactly right (and I probably would have won the 2008 NATs had I been able to do even an average overhead
, but that's why people stick with the event for decades.
Brett