Here's my Pitts sheltered with another Pitts in a hangar under the wing of a Cessna 172. Looks like Momma Goose with her two chicks. Either that or a chaperone sheparding two virile teens. If not for the Cessna, we could have had a bunch of little Pitts running around the hangar when we opened the door in the morning.
These are some of the planes waiting to fly the Intermediate category. My Pitts is second from the left, between another red one and a blue one.
This is Patty Anderson with Doug Bartlett in front of his Sukhoi. Doug gave Patty a ride in the plane.
Patty and her boyfriend put me up for four days while I waited for weather to clear on the East Coast. The T-shirt got Patty in trouble. When she wore it to work the supervisor sent her home. Guess he's afraid of girls who don't listen to their mommies.
This is my free sequence. I'm told that the Avalanche (Figure 1) is impossible to score well on. It has no place in my free. The reason it's there is that it's in the known and that's where I have the most practice flying the snap.
The other figures that gave me trouble are the two P loops (figures five and thirteen). I thought these were flown with no line between the loop and the roll on the vertical. Wrong. The rolls on the vertical must center on the line.
Finally the humpties (figures three and four). I closed late on these, meaning the back half of the loop over the top ended below the start of the front half. I've worked on the humpties and improved them with critique. It takes a lot of acceleration of the rate of pitch change in the back half to make them look right. In the push humpty I push right to the buffet.
One judge was pleased with the double looping turn-around maneuver (Figure 12). He thought it was original. It is. You don't see it used much. I think it's fun; but, will see how it scores.
This is the known sequence everyone in Intermediate will fly this year. I think it's easier than my free, which shouldn't be. C'est la vie. The figures that gave me the worst scores were the hammer and the avalanche (figures nine and eleven). I've worked on the quarter roll up, getting the timing so I don't over-rotate it. I've also worked with someone on the ground to help me center the rolls up and down. It's quite a rush taking a point roll headed straight toward the ground. It takes an act of will to hold the point long enough to show it well.
Here is a scan of the unknown sequence card that I flew in my plane. This was my favorite flight and the one in which I placed best. I came-out right in the middle of the pack, sixth out of eleven. The unknown had a snap on the 45 down. I pulled that off; so, maybe it isn't such a bad idea to put a snap there in my free. I've also tried the snap on the 45 up line with decent results.
