Lesson 28 - Fundamentals Review

What a fun day! Met Paul at the airport at 8:00 am, preflight, all good. Paul explained we'd be taking off using a soft field takeoff technique, do some hood work, do some stall training, and then finally steep turns.

So, the soft field takeoff, that was interesting to say the least. Ok. The goal here is to get off the ground as fast as possible, and avoid digging the nose gear into the ground. So, flaps to 10*, you want to take the runway on a roll, don't stop, have the elevator full aft, and full power. The nose will come up FAST, I mean really FAST. I didn't anticipate it, and I swear I might have bonked the tail slightly. The way you are supposed to do is, once the nose raises, reduce elevator and just keep the nose off the ground. Use right rudder, the high angle of attack is going to want to yaw the airplane. Once you are at 50 kts, you should be off the ground, lower the nose to the horizon, accelerate in ground affect to Vy, positive rate of climb, flaps up, normal climbout.

On climb out, we turned toward course, and the engine hesitated, only for a second. Funny, it didn't bother me much. We were already high enough, I was prepared to turn back toward the airport, no big deal. Although, Paul got quite excited, but he was impressed how cool I was. We applied some carb heat, saw that oil pressure, temperature, RPM was all in the green, so we decided to continue figuring it was just a small pocket of bad gas or air.

I got some more hood time, turned towards courses, standard rate turns, maintaining speed and altitude. Next was stalls. Honestly, this wasn't something I was looking forward to. Maybe it was because the last time I practiced stalls, that is when the engine gave out. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but I think I have a slight mental block. Fortunately, Paul was very methodical in his approach, and I seemed to have a much better understanding.

First was the Approach to Landing stall, this is to simulate a string of bad decisions on approach. So, here is how we execute:

1. First you must be legally 1500 AGL, we like a little more buffer, so we were up beyond 2000 AGL.
2. GUMPS check. Clearing turn to the right, carb heat, begin slowing to 70 kts
3. Flaps to 10*, clearing turn to the left.
4. Full flaps. Reduce throttle to idle. Maintain altitude by bringing back the elevator.
5. The reduction of power and bringing the elevator after, bleeds off the last bit of speed, then stall!
6. PTS standards call to recover from a stall at its first sign, in the C152, that is the stall horn.
7. Recovery is: Elevator Forward! Full Throttle! Carb Heat Off! Flaps to 10*. Positive rate of climb, 60 kts, Flaps to 0*.

We did several of these, we even took the plane to the full stall break, where the plane literally stops flying and drops. Good experience, and not as scary as I remember. Next was Power On, Take Off Stall. This simulates a stall on climbout, particularly when attempting a go-around. This is how you execute this:

1. Again, 2000 AGL.
2. GUMPS Check. Clearing turn to the right, carb heat, begin slowing
3. (No flaps), clearing turn to the left slow to 50 kts! Yep, slow, but still power, engine is not at idle! Watch that Right Rudder.
4. Carb Heat off. Elevator back to simulate rotation, but keep going back! This is weird, it feels like you are pointed straight at the sky. Stall!
5. Recovery is simpler: Reduce Elevator back pressure, nose to horizon, apply power to get back airspeed.

After a few of those, we proceeded onto steep turns, and then decided to fly back, where we did a straight in on runway 4. A good 1.0 hours of practice, looking good!