More Stalls

Rob and I flew again today. His back was better and the weather was very nice for this time of year in Florida. I did the pre-flight checks by myself this time. N54666 was a little low on oil again, so I let Rob know and he called for a mechanic and oil. We climbed in the plane and ran through the engine start procedures. Then, I actually got to use the radio!

"Whitted Ground, Cessna 54666 at Bay Air for departure to the west"

"Cessna 54666, Taxi to runway 7 and hold. Contact tower on 127.4"

"Taxi to runway 7 and hold. Contact tower on 127.4. Cessna 54666"

Pretty cool. I'm getting a little more comfortable taxiing the aircraft. In the past it has been scary when other planes were nearby. Now, I'm looking around to make sure my wing tips hit nothing and taxiing to where I need to go. I taxi out to the runway, do my engine run-up and magneto checks then:

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54666 ready for departure."

"Cessna 54666, cleared for departure"

"Cleared for departure, Cessna 54666"

Rob saw another plane several miles off inbound to land, so he told me not to stop on the runway, just roll into position and keep going. So, I rolled to the middle of the runway, lined up the airplane and gave it power. Taking off is getting to be pretty easy. The neutral position indicator for the elevator trim is a little off in 54666, so the nose wants to come up a little too much on climb out. No problem, adjust the trim and head for the beach.

Once over the water, we reviewed slow flight and power off stalls. Then it was time for power on stalls. Rob did the first one, and I have to admit, power on is a little more exciting than power off stalls. The plane is pointed up so much that it wants to fall to the right or left. I did several stalls and found that the problem is if you over control when it falls one way, you make it fall the other way more severely. As with everything when the plane is slow, rudder control is critical. I'm a little slow with the rudder and once I use it, I tend to over-control and then back off of it too fast. It made for some interesting stalls with the plane falling right then left. Of course a lot is going on when you are doing this, so one mistake leads to another and at one point I had us in a powered dive before I knew what was going on. Rob calmly told me to raise the nose and return to level flight.

I don't know how many stalls I did, but we practiced until I got it right. Then we practiced a little more. Rob showed me left and right steep turns and had me do a set before we headed for the airport. I found the steep turns much easier than the stalls. We were in the same area as last lesson, so the landing approach was the same. Once over the Don Cesar:

"Whitted Tower, Cessna 54666 over the Don inbound to land."

"Cessna 54666, make straight in runway 7, cleared to land."

"Straight in runway 7, Cessna 54666."

The traffic was light, so we were cleared to land immediately. I did pretty well on the landing approach as far as setting up the airplane to land.

Over the runway, I started my flare a little early and was corrected by Rob. He says not to worry about the landings, we're not even really working on them yet, so I'm doing great.

I had a blast, but I was sweat soaked and exhausted after the flight. I guess I'm concentrating on flying so much that I don't realize I'm working pretty hard during some of these maneuvers. My left arm is still sore from pulling on the yoke during stall practice. Next time, we'll review again, do more steep turns and start ground reference maneuvers. Ground reference maneuvers are things like s-turns and turns around a point. Rob would like a little wind to complicate matters.

The link at the bottom of this post will download a GPS file of our flight today. You will need to have Google Earth installed on your computer. Click on the link and it will open. Enjoy.

lesson 3 file

Statistics:

Dual Instruction Time: 4 hours

Landings: 4