Lesson 6: Introduction to Stalls!

Slow flight, Steep Turns, and Stalls!
No, not this type of stall! Contrary to the intuitive thought, an airplane stall has nothing to do with your engine. Text book definition is when an the wings critical angle of attack is exceeded. Say what? Well, for those that want mental punishment, I will refer to you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stall_(flight) if you want an explanation of the physics. In short, the lift an airplane receives is from the airflow over the wing foils. This occurs when you have sufficient airspeed and smooth airflow over the wings. You can lose lift basically one of two ways: remove the airflow (i.e. fly too slow), or pitch the plane so that the airflow is no longer smooth over the wing.

So, onto the actual lesson. Arrived at the airport just before 6 am, jumped in, grabbed the clipboard and started my preflight. I think Jack had already looked over the plane, but I think he was pretty satisfied that I proactively preflighted the plane anyway, everything looked good. I was told a little later this was the first flight after they replaced the spark plugs (or magnetos as they are more accurately called). Weather check, call up ground, I had to rehearse one time before calling up, its been a few days, just to get my confidence up. I still have trouble using the radio when the workload is more intense, but during the times on the ground running checklists, its a little easier. I also have difficulty turning the airplane into the wind for the runup with the nose-wheel straight. We'd like that straight because if the brakes fail during runup, we'd like to know where the airplane is going to go!

So, runup, good! Call up tower, "Eau Claire Tower, Cessna 588BR, at the hold runway 22, ready for departure". They give us clearance, ease the throttle in, accelerate, and off we go. I was a little timid on get the nose up this time, but once we did, setting the pitch and trim for climbout went much better. I got to enjoy the scenery a little more as I constantly kept looking out for traffic and a potential landing spot in case of emergency.

Ok, we headed for 3500 ft, since this was much higher than before, I knew what the plan was, he was warming me up for stalls. But first, some slow flight and turns with slow flight. Quite different, your turn is very slight, and the bank is very shallow. We got to hold speed while the stall horn was blaring. First time I wasn't watching my heading and altitude very well, Jack pointed that out, and I corrected nicely and was able to do slow turns much better. Plane also wants to yaw again to the left in slow flight because of torque, precession, spiraling slipstream, p-factor, etc. So, more intense right rudder work on those slow turns. Then we did some steep turns, I remember this from my discovery flight (lesson 1), I didn't like them too much then. But this time, it was pretty fun. The turn to the right was hard to do, the nose wants to dive a bit, and the proper correction is rollout of the turn a bit, stabilize, and resume. So, I frequently lost some altitude on the right steep turns. Steep turns to the left, I was able to control a little better. So, not that bad, a lot of fun, I need to do better at estimating my rollout, but I am getting better at keeping my eyes outside the cockpit.

Ok, so Jack had me slow up the airplane a bit. Then he had me reduce power to 1500 rpm to demonstrate a stall. Wow, not too scary, at least the way Jack did it. The stall horn started to blare for a while (so you have to be deaf or really distracted not to hear it), continued to pitch up to maintain altitude, then the plane shook for a second, and then the nose dived. Recovery was pretty simple, get the wings level, slight pitch down to regain airspeed, increase throttle, but not too much you don't want to dive straight at the ground. And then you begin flying again. They key here is to enter the stall with wings level and coordinated flight. If its uncoordinated, one wing will dip more severe than the other, and you can enter a spin. Also very recoverable, but can be very dangerous if you hesitate too long. So, when I tried, I of course failed to keep the plane perfectly coordinated and we when we stalled, we dived with a roll the the left, we entered a spin. Jack helped me correct with right aileron and rudder, wings level, slight down pitch to regain airspeed and lift! The first two stalls we did resulted in about 500 ft lost in altitude. So you can see why we train for these and recognize a pending stall, you lose altitude fast during the stall and recovery. Now this type of stall is relatively uncommon to occur because you normally wouldn't try to fly that slow at such an odd attitude. We tried a more common occurrence, a stall on approach or landing. This also requires quick thinking and action. Here we are in a glide, and suppose we flare a bit too much. We experience the stall, and since we want to minimize the altitude loss, we quickly do full throttle, carb heat in, wings level, retract the flaps quickly, stabilize, next notch of flaps, stabilize, and get a positive rate of climb. So, stalls are too bad, requires quick and decisive action, maybe slightly uncomfortable because you do drop significantly, and there is something a bit unsettling about the nose of the plane pointing straight at the ground for a second or two. But the plane wants to naturally correct itself, just with some minor guidance.

Ok, time to get back, was getting a little late. Dial up weather. Call up tower. We needed to be at 1900 for pattern altitude, so I wanted to start to descend when were 7 miles out. Jack, said I could if I wanted to, but it would be far easier to do a cruise descend, bascially, pitch the plane down slightly, keep our speed up so we get there faster instead of dropping to 1900 and lumbering along at 70 kts. Jack still helped quite a bit on the landing, but I felt I did more this time, he only corrected me minorly a few times. Mid downfield, reduce power, 1500 rpm, pitch for 65-70 kts, 1 notch of flaps. Carb heat on. Turn to base, call up tower (Jack did that, I was still concentrating too much). Then turn to final, I turned a bit early, so I had a sloppy angle on final. Carb heat off. Ok, maintain this attitude, aim for the numbers. Jack said I had a tendency to over correct a bit, I need to relax more. The winds were calm, so I didn't need to deal with a crosswind. Over the numbers, Jack reminded me to reduce the throttle, maintain the attitude. Start to flare, and touch down! Jack helped me get the plane off the runway quick since there was a Northwest Mesaba flight waiting for me so they could take off. I saw them at the hold when I was gliding in for landing, how cool is that!

Off the runway, do our checklists, taxi to parking. Normally we'd switch to ground, but tower had said to stay with him to parking. Did a better job taxing and I think I parked it straight on this time. We reviewed a bit and highlighted things for me to concentrate on. Oh, by the way, the weather was fabulous this morning, smooth as silk, much easier to control the plane today!

Another 1.4 hours in the log book! I just noticed, today marks my 1 year anniversary taking that discover flight a year ago and taking a major step in overcoming my fear of flying! Yah!