First off, I apologize for no scenery pictures on today's post. My phone mount fell off the windshield, so I just tossed it in the back seat rather than try to reattach it mid-lesson. So this representation of what the nose of the airplane was doing during my stall recovery drills will have to suffice.
Seriously... Stall recovery is the bane of my existence at the moment. Some days I get it very smoothly. Others it gets me. And today was an "other" day for that. I'm not going to dwell too much on that, but for students who are hitting brick walls or plateaus in their training, this seems to be mine at the moment. There are four components to a proper stall recovery. First, apply full power. Second, keep the nose to the horizon to get air moving over the wing and reestablish lift. Third, right rudder to counter the left-turning tendency of applying full power. Lastly, retract flaps. All four of these things have to happen pretty much simultaneously. Today seemed to be "pick three of the four." I did a half dozen or so drills, and only one was even halfway decent. I'd forget one element, and all hell would break loose. In retrospect, I think my successful stall recoveries in the past have been done with a firm, steady, but not rapid application of power. This allowed me to balance the right rudder and counter the desire for the nose to buck up with a bit more smoothness because the throttle increase was fast enough to get the job done but slow enough to still be able to stay ahead of it. In today's drills, I think perhaps my application of power was far more of an immediate jamming of the throttle into the dashboard. As that happened, I was then playing catch-up with the plane and overcorrecting. Nothing good ever comes of overcorrecting.
Fortunately, my instructor realized that for whatever reason, this wasn't clicking for me today, and decided to move on to other things. Today, he introduced me to steep turns. Did I mention steep turns are friggin' fun??? I hadn't done one yet (at least not on purpose). In steep turns, you bank the plane to around 45 degrees to make the turn. You lose a lot of your vertical lift component when you do this (mathematically, half of your vertical lift component is now horizontal "lift." That component is allowing you to turn, but it's not helping you stay in the air. You have to increase your throttle and add some back pressure on the controls to increase the vertical component of the lift to keep you from losing altitude. You then have to remember to take that back out when you exit the turn. One thing with steep turns, you will also really feel it in your seat. They can also be disorienting, mind you, since you're looking at the world zip by. The key is to keep the horizon at a given point on the glare shield as you're turning. What surprised me, though, was looking at the flight path and seeing how tight those steep turns really are compared to the broader more typical 30-degree bank turns I do when maneuvering in the practice area. They're like less than half if a third of the diameter. These were a pleasant (and successful) diversion from my dismal stall recovery, so that helped get my mind back in the game.
Partway through today's flight, my instructor pulls my throttle to idle and says "you just lost your engine. Now what?" First, let me say that for those new students who are kind of dreading this, I was surprised at how controllable the plane is. You don't just fall out of the sky. First step is to pitch for best glide, then look for a place to land. Check to make sure you have fuel, the key is still on, the choke hasn't been pulled out, and all the "should be obvious" things. If it's one of those, correct it and restart the engine. If it's not, try the fuel pump to get fuel flowing again. If you can do all of that quickly, you will not have lost too much altitude in that time. That way if you can't get the engine to start, you still have plenty of airspeed and altitude to formulate ideas. Because my instructor pulled the throttle to idle for this exercise, I dismissed that as a cause, but it can be something that simple. (And--really--who decided the throttle and choke should be right next to each other? It's a good thing the knob on the choke has a different physical feel to it.) I have to work on verbalizing my checklists a bit more, but overall I felt comfortable in my ability to control the plane and try to troubleshoot.
We were hoping to get some pattern work in at the airport today, but ATC was having nothing to do with that. So we flew a few more circles, got our weather info, and started heading back to the airport. The past few times, I've flown the approach with my instructor handling the landing. Today the winds were calm so I got to handle the landing as well--my first time with my hand on the yoke and throttle as we landed. Don't misunderstand--my instructor's hand was also on his yoke, and he was dancing the rudder pedals as we came in as well, so to call this landing the product of my efforts would be akin to saying the waterboy won the Super Bowl. However, it was a good introduction to pitch and power management for landing, and likewise a good introduction into really burning into my mind the sight picture of what the runway should look like on approach. Yeah, I paid attention the previous landings, but things get a whole lot clearer when it's your hand advancing the throttle to gain altitude because you've got 4 red lights on the PAPI. I'm looking forward to this next phase of the process.
One quick side comment about communication. Instructors aren't mindreaders, so as a student when you're flying, be very communicative about what you're doing so your instructor knows why the plane is doing what it's doing. For instance, when we were returning to the airport, my instructor pointed out that 2000 RPM wasn't a cruise speed. I knew that, I wasn't cruising. I was doing a slow descent into pattern altitude. I didn't tell him that's what I was doing, so he thought I wasn't paying attention to straight-and-level. Likewise, ATC told us to join midfield right pattern. There's an IKEA store at the midfield point of the pattern. I wasn't flying towards the IKEA, rather I was headed a bit south, towards the south end of the runway. My instructor asked me why I wasn't flying to the midfield point. I wanted to enter the pattern at a 45-degree angle as is common, so I was flying further south before turning northeast so I could join midfield at that 45-degree angle. Had I told my instructor that's what I was doing, it would have cleared up his concerns. Aviate, navigate, communicate.
Oh, and make sure not to leave your headset in the plane. Thankfully they'll be waiting for me at the front desk next time. That could be part of the reason I didn't spring for the $1,200 Bose headsets. I lose stuff. I just ordered prescription sunglasses for flying. I'm gonna have to put a GPS tag on those.
