Flying: The Piper Dakota Checkout

I decided it was time to be able to fly the club's other aircraft.

After all, I'm contributing to it so might as well get some prop time. The club has a new instructor that is cleared to checkout pilots on the Dakota. Since I could never match schedules with the other club instructor as he's busy as heck in his corporate flight job, it's taken me awhile to get this arranged. Between the lost Covid year and then training for the instrument rating, the Dakota checkout then took a back seat.

So I met Mike at the hangar today at 7pm and did a preflight of the plane.  

The main differences between the Dakota and  the Archer are the constant speed prop, the higher performance, and the weight and nose-heaviness of the Dakota.

Started the plane up and did the run up, no issues.

Taxi'd to Runway  9L and there was a lot of traffic so Tower had us cross 9L for 9R and maintain runway heading, to get out of the traffic pattern, and so we flew on straight out until they let us head to the northeast.

Takeoff was a breeze,  the Dakota has power to spare and it effortlessly leaped into the air and started climbing.  Pretty soon had it up to 3,500 and moving along at 105 knots at 2,200 RPM/22 Manifold pressure.

Flew to the practice area and did steep turns, slow flight, power off, and power on stalls - all maneuvers I haven't done in a while.

Steep turns in a Dakota is kinda hilarious - you have to work to not climb during the steep turn, unlike in an Archer or Cessna 172 where you're trying not to lose altitude.  Much fun.

Slow flight took some getting used to, and making the plane stall in a power on condition took some serious pulling back on the yoke.  We also had to disable the GFC 500's protective environment that stops the plane from stalling even when the autopilot is off.  Very neat that GFC 500 is.   Good stalls, good recoveries, no major problems.

Then back to Pontiac for a landing which I did pretty well, though I have to work on keeping the nose up, unlike the Archer.  Landed pretty flat as a result.

You drop the power down in the Dakota and the nose wants to drop fast.  Short Final speed is 75 knots, and it pretty much handles just like an Archer with quite a bit more oomph. But, with the extra weight up front, you can't just chop and drop as you would with the Archer but have to leave some power in and mind your approach speed reasonably carefully.

Next week we will get a lot more landings in and complete the checkout.

That's 1.0 and 1 ok landing.