06/16/08 19:00

Stats: 1.5 Hours Dual, 3 Day Landings, Power off Stalls, turns, climbs, descents, slow flight, and crosswind landings. Total hours to date: 2.7

As promised, I came back for lesson number 2. There wasn’t a whole lot of highly eventful happenings this time around, that was until Ron said, “let’s do some stalls”. If you are not familiar, this is where you get up in the air and intentionally tell the plane to stop flying and it starts to fall out of the sky. Technically the wings move past the critical angle of attack, air stops rushing over the top of them, and you lose lift. To break the stall, you reduce the angle of attack until the wings start generating lift again and add full power (if not already there). Seems simple enough. That is unless you’ve never done it before and push the nose down too far causing a Negative G situation for awhile. It’s what roller coaster enthusiasts call “Air Time”. You are lifted out of your seat. If you’re not expecting this in a craft that you are in control of, it’s not as much fun as when it happens on a roller coaster.

After surviving the stalls, we head back for a few landings. Today we have the added “bonus” of a crosswind condition. If making coordinated turns is like rubbing your stomach and patting your head (as I mentioned before), then crosswind landings are like writing your name in cursive with your non dominant hand, conducting an orchestra with your other hand and tapping a 2 different beats with your feet that are different from the beat the orchestra is playing. Suffice it to say, I didn’t break anything on the plane, but I had a lot of help from Ron on a couple of the landings.

Never fear though… I’m coming back for more…