Today we worked on more stalls.
After yesterday’s ground school lesson and the quick demo my CFI gave me during the last flight, it was time to do some real work with stalls.
We did power on and power off stalls, both with and without flaps extended. I learned to recognize the warning signs and how they actually expressed themselves during flight.
The warning signs are:
- Buffeting — the feel of the controls starting to vibrate as the airfoil loses its lift
- Control effectiveness — the controls become sloppy and mushy as lift deteriorates
- Wrong attitude — the sight picture for phase of flight is wrong (for example, the nose is way too high for level flight)
- Airspeed — the airspeed indicator shows you are flying too slowly
- Kinesthetics — you feel the increased G-forces pushing you into your seat
- Stall horn — the audible horn that sounds when the wing start losing lift
After forcing the plane into each stall, we worked on recoveries. This is something I’m going to need a lot more practice with — I want stall recognition and recovery to become second nature. This is a very serious area of instruction that can mean the difference between life and death.
I did reach a big milestone today: Performing my first unassisted takeoff! My inexperience showed — I was weaving around the centerline while accelerating down the runway and had trouble finding the right climb attitude after rotation. I also learned that it takes quite a bit of right rudder while taking off and climbing out to counteract the tendency of the plane to pull to the left (due to P-factor). I’m definitely going to need some more practice!
Flight time today: 1.2 hours
Total flight time to date: 6.8 hours
Total takeoffs to date: 1