Well, I’m back in North Dakota again after a relaxing winter break – and some awful travel experiences with Northwest. All I’ll say on that topic is to avoid booking regional legs of your flights on equipment operated by Pinnacle. New Years in Seattle is always fun, and I managed to catch up with just about everyone while I was in town. As for the family’s new silver American AA-1A Yankee, it’s great fun. For an inexpensive (really; we spent quite a bit less than $25,000 all told) aircraft that just puts a huge grin on your face, look no further. It’s extremely responsive in roll and pitch, almost aerobatic, but it’s still a nice steady cross-country cruiser.

I got checked out by a local Grumman instructor, doing a couple stalls and some steep turns before heading to Arlington Municipal for landings. Stalls were identifiable far in advance, and the buffet was followed by only slight wing drop. I can honestly say I’ve never flown a plane this rock-solid in steep turns; I snapped it to around 45°, added some back pressure, and it whipped through the turn like it was on rails. No altitude wandering, no change in airspeed – just a nice, steady 360° turn.

If there’s one negative thing to be said about the Yankee, it’s that it needs to go fast. There’s really no such thing as slow flight (stall is 60 mph with flaps down, 63 with them up), so it requires careful management of power and airspeed to avoid getting caught on the backside of the power curve. Still, landings were uneventful – it acts a lot like a small Piper, though it weathervanes a bit more in crosswinds due to very light weight. It took a couple laps around the pattern to get my head back into the landing-from-the-left-seat groove after a semester of instructing from the right.

Eric (the CFI checking me out – we’re everywhere in aviation) had me run through a power-off approach from pattern altitude, and it worked surprisingly well for an airplane that sinks like a brick. If you’ve ever tried to stick a power-off accuracy 180° approach and landing in a Piper Arrow, for example, this is quite a bit easier provided airspeed is kept at 85 mph the whole way around.

My dad and I took a few brief $100 hamburger trips as my break wrapped up, heading first over to the Spruce Goose Cafe at Jeffco (the Washington one, not the Colorado) and a little breakfast place in Friday Harbor. On the whole, the Yankee handles delightfully, and should be a lot of fun for me and my dad over the next few years. And, of course, if you’re in the Seattle area and are interested in seeing what the world of flying is like, don’t hesitate to contact me for information or about getting a ride.