Extra Practice

May 16, 2011

Eric and I flew together today. My regular instructor was out of town with work, so he asked me to work on a few different things with Eric to get me closer to checkride standards. The weather for the day was beautiful; sunny and 60 degrees, but the winds were blowing from the north at about 11 knots, and at times gusting to (I think) 17 knots.

One of the things Matt asked us to work on was maneuvers. I've not done any in the Cessna yet, so Eric said it would be a good day to cover ground reference maneuvers (turns around a point and s-turns), stalls, and steep turns. We started with steep turns, which went ok, then we moved on to stalls. I told Eric beforehand that stalls have always made me nervous, but since one particular stall in the Remos, I've gone from just nervous to afraid of them. He assured me that the Cessna is much more gentle, and that a lot of people fear stalls in the Remos. We entered slow flight, then pitched the nose up and waited for the stall. Eric was completely right, we stalled the airplane and I didn't even notice it, which caused us go into a secondary stall. Afterward, I told him that I could totally handle stalls in the Cessna. I was feeling much better. We then did a power on stall, and shortly after I asked a question about spins, which lead into the next thing he showed me...

No we didn't do an actual spin, but he did show me some rotation. He put us in a steep decent and turned to the left to give me an idea of what a spin is like and how the airplane reacts. He showed me the relationship between speed and the tightness of the spiral. Although he had the controls, he told me to keep my feet on the rudders. At one point, I think he let go of the controls and had me apply right rudder only. Sure enough, the airplane fixed itself. Unbelievable! I greatly appreciate Eric showing me the stalls and the rotations. I can now say that I'm over my fear of stalls and I think I'm ready to ask Matt to show me spins. (Dad, if you're reading this, please do not freak out about the spins. I'll be ok, I'm in good hands). The ground reference maneuvers were quick and easy, so I have nothing to report there.

Eric and I then moved onto instrument work. Our main focus this time was unusual attitudes. I was a little ahead of the game because Matt showed this to me during my Sport training. The difference this time was that I was wearing the foggles and couldn't look outside, and I was in a different airplane. Eric took the controls and began flying in a hundred different directions to throw my equilibrium off. I had a pretty good laugh during the first time when he made a fast movement, and my whole body lifted off the seat. I guess I need to tighten my safety belt! I did really good with the recovery of the plane.

The last thing we did was practice a couple landings. It was definitely more challenging because of the gusts. None of the landings were beautiful, but they were safe. It was a good day to practice the landings because we had thermals and the wind gusts. You never knew what was going to happen, until it did.

I'll be flying with Matt again this weekend and really looking forward to it. The airport is also having a Pancake Breakfast and Bomb Drop Competition this weekend as well. Although I'm not participating, I plan on helping out with the activities. It should be fun!