PPL exercise 10b - Stall recoveries, takeoff and landing.
Lift: vertical upward forces acting upon wings, keeps aircraft airborne.
An easily comprehendible word and concept required for flight, yet requiring multitude of factors working just right in a complex manner to achieve stable and enjoyable flight.
A complete interaction that student pilots aim to make second nature. Instinct requires a minimum 45 hours of practice.
Taking off: when aircrafts moves fast enough for Bernouli forces to push it upwards
The Cessna 150 trainer does so at 50 knots. The first phase of getting airborne, irony dictates that a student may not do this first, nay, first is to just keep it straight and level.
Taking off, when ticked off, brings quiet excitement, a novelty milestone. Next challenge, ironically again, is to practice it enough to to feel mundane.
Turning, the intuitive roll of yoke and complementary yaw of rudder that belies the complex interaction of forces acting to bring forth a new heading.
A simplicity that was achieved with with iterative engineering, funnels complex forces onto a pilots bum, enforcing intuition and thus we fly over shoulders of giants.
Stall, a decreasing relative airspeed to a point where lift is lost.
It may be initiated or forced upon, the former trains for the latter.
To practice, first perform HASSELL check, Its okay to HELL check instead.
Carb heat on, Pull throttle back to idle.
Pull nose up to maintain altitude.
Warning 1: the quiet oflow air speed
Warning 2: the buffetting of air separating earlier across wings
Warning 3: Blaring stall warner
SSR: Standard Stall recovery
Again, a good pilot should not be stalling acidentally. Yet one sould still learn how to recover from it.
to recover
Push nose forward or release yoke back pressure
return throttle to Full Power
Level wings when speed picks up
Pull nose up and Recover altitude.
When done correctly shall not induce sickness, and with minimal altitude lost.
Conclusion: I still like to fly
To prepare for next lesson, my CFI performed a full spin and its recovery. Its equally interesting and scary sight - the anticipation of a stall (now that I’ve done a few) was not enough to prepare for the quickness that the aircraft brought the ground right in front- spinning.
we dropped 1000ft in (i think) 2 seconds.
My stomach did not agree, but manly I held it in.
I was glad i got to perform my own landing and take off this lesson, while I still need to be talked through, and task saturation is still evident it feels I’ve passed a small milestone.
Next lesson, more stall and spin recoveries.
