How slow can you go?

I get up and out to work pretty early in the morning. When I left home today, I was thinking about flying and how nice the weather was going to be. Well that was at about 5:30 AM. By 10:30 when I was driving across the Skyway to St. Pete, things had changed. It had warmed considerably and a good breeze was coming out of the east.

Once again I met CFI Rob at Bay Air. We found our steed, N54666. Another 1981 Cessna 172 that Rob says some students won't fly because of the tail number. I did not mind the tail number, but it is a little more banged up and seemed to be a little harder to control. Of course, all trainers that have seen any service are banged up. I did most of the pre-flight inspection. The plane was a little low on oil, so Rob found a mechanic and oil while I finished the pre-flight.

In the spirit of preparing me for handling the radio next week, Rob let me tune the radio to Whitted ASOS (automated surface observation system) and get the weather report. At Albert Whitted, ASOS is sort of redundant because the tower always gives the weather report when you ask for clearance. I then tuned Whitted tower and Rob got taxi clearance. After engine runup, Rob requested take off clearance and we were on our way.

A clear September sky leads to a lot of heading midday in Florida. I found it difficult to trim the plane during our flight over Pinellas county to the Gulf of Mexico. We would fly through a thermal and gain altitude, then hit an area of sink and drop like a rock. It was a pretty bumpy trip. Once over the Gulf however, the air was calm. The water heats evenly, unlike the land, and strong thermals are not very common.

We took up where we left off Tuesday, with slow flight. I'm starting to get the idea of it. I held the nose of the plane up while reducing engine speed to about 1500 RPM. As airspeed falls, you add flaps and continue to slow. With full flaps you can get the plane down to under 40 knots, at which point you increase power to about 2000 RPM and putz around with your nose up in the air and the stall warning blaring in your ear. You can make very gentle turns in this configuration.

Coming out of slow flight, power is increased, the nose of the plane is lowered and flaps are raised as airspeed increases. We ran through this maneuver several times. Other than keeping the nose pointed up, this is the landing configuration of the airplane, and these maneuvers are designed to teach landing skills.

Rob thought I was getting the hang of slow flight, so we moved on to stalls. For non-pilots, a stall in an airplane is not like a stall in your car. The engine does not stop. The engine keeps running. It is the wing that stalls, and the plane stops flying and starts falling. Performing a stall is not quite as dramatic as it sounds. In fact, the 172 is hard to stall and easy to recover.

We started with power-off stalls. We climbed to 3500 feet and got into our landing configuration. With the plane slowed down and flaps fully extended, I pulled the nose of the plane up and bled speed until the stall horn sounded. Pull the nose up a little more and the plane stops flying. Recovery is easy. Release the pressure on the yoke, carb heat on, full power, raise flaps as speed increases. The real key is to remember that your ailerons don't work well when the plane is in slow flight and don't work at all when the plane is stalled. In fact, you can aggravate the stall with the ailerons and induce a spin.

Rob had me run though a few power off stalls and then had me perform a maneuver he called the falling leaf. Visualize a leaf falling through calm air and you have the idea. I climbed to 3500 feet and prepared for another power off stall as before. This time however, I was not to release the back pressure on the yoke as we stalled. The plane would stall, recover on it's own, stall again and so on. My job was to keep a constant heading and wings level during this maneuver using the rudder. It went pretty well, much better than I imagined when it was first explained to me. We went through 4 or 5 stalls before Rob called it a day and had me recover and head for home.

Back over the land we were in rough air again. We were getting knocked around so much that I was worried about the landing. Same procedure as the last two trips. Fly over the Don Cesar and turn toward the airport. Rob was telling me less about the landing configuration this time. I guess I got it right because he just let me keep flying. Considering the rough ride I probably did pretty well, but when he told me to flare I pulled back a little too much on the yoke and instead of leveling off over the runway we rose. Rob helped out a little here, but instead of the gentle touchdown of my last landing, we smacked the runway pretty good.

Note to self: If wife ever allows you to buy an airplane, DO NOT buy an airplane that has EVER been used as a trainer.

In retrospect, I think that I had been pulling on the yoke so much during slow flight and stalls that I just yanked on it too hard out of habit. Something to keep in mind for the next flight, which will be Wednesday. Rob wants to spend a little time going over aerodynamics before we fly. We will be going over slow flight and power off (landing) stalls again and probably get to power on (take off) stalls. I should get to talk on the radio next time. I will definitely be looking forward to it.

Another student pilot blogger, Greg P. of Huntington WV, put me on to the idea of using a GPS logger to show where I've flown. The device can also be used to review flight performance. This may be helpful when I get into pattern work. I've ordered one of these devices and hopefully will be able to share the routes we've been flying soon.

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Hours: 2.8

Landings: 3