Lesson 10, stalls bashing...

Lesson: 10

04/IV/2010

• Lesson time: 0.8h


• Total time: 8.5h


• Location: EGAD


• Aircraft: G-BNKR (C152)

My last lesson was a failure. I have to admit it. So this time around, I did prepare myself much better.

The 'blue book' doesn't talk much about exact technique of stall recovery with flaps, so I researched a bit on the web, and found few places that talked about it from instructor's point of view. Which is even better, cos it has more details :)

I drove to the club bit earlier Today, and was there about 20 minutes before. I was hoping for a quick start, but it turned out to be the same as usual :P .

He quickly gave me review of what I should know, what is his point of view, etc. He is not as much as detailed in procedures description as Anthony for instance, but he gives all required info, and rest is up to you. Like I even told him, they all have different styles of teaching, and it is fine. Some will just tell me enough to make me do it, some others will on top of that already provide all info that I would ask about anyway, etc. He was surprised that I am mad enough to do some stall training in C172, and some in C152, or so it seemed. But he was fine with it, but I knew that he is probably not psyched about having to fly in the small can, the C152 is. To be honest, I thought G-BNKR will be off for annual check, but it was to be its last day before.

So I went over to check the little tin can. Everything was grand, until I started to check ailerons. They were fine for the right bank, but left bank movement seemed a bit more resistant. That worried me, I spotted Anthony passing by, and asked him for opinion. He trained on the aircraft, and knew its little 'personalities' inside out. He said this wasn't right, but is not show stopper. "Just mention it to Ian", he said, "and make sure someone writes it down before the annual". Fair enough, I thought, the aircraft is close to its annual check, so things like that will be addressed. Other thing, I noticed week ago, was rudder pedals cable being slightly too loose, and hitting fuselage. Nothing big again, but just shows that the annual service is required.

Ian was fine with it, altho it seemed that he have never seen anything like it. I suspect, even tho he is not very chatty, that he doesn't fly the C152 too often.

So I went on with the business. I can see that now instructors expect me to do stuff, without asking too many questions. Same was true with Ian Today. He seemed to just want me to get us up in the air asap, since I should know all the stuff now. Well. I tried my best, would be my answer. And I wasn't so bad, overall. I even handled radio without a hitch. The initial call, to obtain airfield information was okay. I repeated it fine, but I forgot what the QNH was.. so embarrassed. Again, Ian's stone face didn't show anything else than 'just get on with it'. The man is hard to decipher.

Rolling on 22, I started to push the power throttle in. Ian just told me to do it much quicker. It is funny, just as I started to think that I am good at taking off, I get told more and more things that show me otherwise. This time, I was reminded to pull control column so that the front wheel doesn't take the bashing. I have to say, sweat was running down my face as I lifted off. Not because I was nervous or anything, but just the sheer embarrassment.

This is my general 'problem'. I am trying to be gentle with stuff, and not break anything. But that seem to be against me. I have to make my movements slightly more quick.

Around 500 ft, I was told to climb us up, but in turn, just as if I was doing circuit. And than all the way ahead, first to 2000 ft, and as soon as we passed Mount Steward, where we can go above 3000ft. However Ian got instruction not to climb higher than 3k ft for time being,  but quickly told afterwards to go over. Probably there was some airliner approaching Belfast City Airport, flying from Isle of Man, and they wanted to keep the separation up. Fair enough.

As soon as we hit 3500ft, Ian asked me to do HASELL checks. Being myself, I got lost somewhere in the middle, but he quickly reminded me what I was left to do.

I was asked to do clean , full stall. Which I fscked up.. Honestly. Again, I didn't pulled all the way up, and started to recover around half way through. Previously I would do it in C172 (when Kate was flying with us), and it felt slightly different in it. Ian wasn't happy, and he proceed to show me how it should be done. I repeated it probably 3 times, each time, I managed to do it with less height drop. I think my best result was around 70 ft ,which is not too bad. Not for someone with that little experience. The limit is 100ft, so I was well within it .

One of the stalls, I did something unforgivable. But Ian was there to help out. Basically, unlike C172, the C152 will drop right wing in the stall. I instinctively started to not only push it, but also to level out at the same time. This ended up with another stall, and left wing drop. Ian didn't said a thing about it, but I knew I did screw up that one. He just told me to try another one.

Than time came to do stall recovery with flaps. Unlike Anthony, Ian wasn't very detailed about positive rate of climb, and the whole procedure. He just underlined the fact, that the whole stall should not lead to any drop of height. This configuration is simulation of what would happen when you stall the aircraft just as you are on the finals. Meaning, last 'stretch' before you land. Usually this means, that you fly slow, and rather low. So no room for errors. I seemed to get it now, especially that I went through series of 'mental exercises' after last week..

Next on the plate was stall in descend turn. This was easy. Again, one thing to remember, is not to level up the wings prior to gaining some speed. I did it few times, and Ian seemed happy. He than went on to demonstrate same thing but in climb turn. Very unlikely that this will be something I have to demonstrate on practical test, but knowing my luck, this will be the thing :)

Having the stalls behind me, Ian said that he is happy with my performance, (the man seems more happy and chatty once we are in the air) and if I want to try something else out, we have a bit of time. I honestly couldn't come up with anything I would want to try out. At this stage, I want to go on and do the circuit bashing, even tho I know I will regret that.

We headed back to EGAD, but I had to first descent to 2k before Mountain Steward again, as bottom of the D control airspace drops there from 3500 to 2000 feet. Once under, I went straight on long base for the rwy 22.

Another landing done, this time around winds were even worse. So Ian had to correct me couple of times, as I seemed to get swing sideways more and more as we were close to the rwy. It is funny how you initially aim for the numbers, even tho, you want to actually not crash into em. But I did it. This time around with a lot of help, but can't really blame myself with that sort of wind.

Afterwards Ian said he was happy with my performance, and reminded me that probably for the circuit bashing stage I will have to book two slots, cos there's a lot of briefing that needs to be done, and than it has to be demonstrated by instructor, probably time and time again.. I bet ya, this will be the time when some instructors will just loose their nerves with me....

I went on to pay, and here's the nice thing about C152. The tacho (or hobbs meter) counts engine hours. But it will count a real hour only if the engine was on full power whole time. In essence, since I was doing a lot of flying around idle, or 1500 rpm, I only had to pay 89 quid for 0.8h of flying. Instead of the usual 100ish. Shame the aircraft is going away for 2 weeks.

This month is pretty bad for me anyway. In all fairness, even tho I am booked for 3 lessons this month, I don't think I will be able to afford more than one more, and that's providing that my other employer pays me. I seriously started to think about placing a paypal 'donations' button here on the blog, or doing some other strange things to raise some more cash. But in all honesty, I write so much here, that probably no one is interested in reading that, not to mention sparing 10 quid a month or so. Plus, probably next month will be much better in financial terms anyway. After all, my initial goal was to do one-two lessons a month. So anything on top of that is just pure blessing...

• Route: Departed rwy 22, over Strangford Lough and back up . Landed rwy 22.


• Milestones: I did all stalling exercises , yeah baby.


• Exercises covered: 10b pt2, including turns


• Weather: hazy sunshine, some rainfalls in vicinity, quite windy. qnh 1012.