Lesson 37 - Stalls and such

Lesson: 37

11/XII/2012

• Lessons time: dual - 1.2h, solo - none


• Total time: 32.9h (1.1h solo)


• Location: EGAD


• Aircraft: G-UFCL (Tecnam 2002JF)


• Instructor: Gavin M.

I got to the club earlier - thinking that I'll maybe get two slots instead of just one. Well, that at least gave me loads of time to do preflight this time. That finished, I ended up sitting in the aircraft for about 30 minutes, sort of reading checklist entries back end. 

Once Gavin arrived, we got cracking on. For some reason, I was rather slow on that day - so things were slow as well. We went off towards peninsula. Gavin insisted that I'll do the RT myself, but of course I managed to cock it up, and he had to talk to Belfast. 

We went up to 3000ft (you need extra altitude to do stalls and spins and such) and started off with HASELL checks. I did cock up a bit, not reading about it in the book prior to lesson. It was very visible.

Gavin was showing me each manoeuvre first, starting with proper stall in normal configuration. I tried it couple times, but each time I cocked something up - I had a feeling that there's something wrong. This had a strange effect on me, I started to doubt myself a lot. Gavin was very patient with me tho. 

Then we moved on to do 'dirty' stalls (on final approach) with flaps, etc. Base turn stalls, etc. Just the usual. I've already done stalls before, so I won't cover it all here again. 

There were some clouds around, but far away, and we did stay well clear of them. But it is nice to watch skies from above. I'm still amazed :-) The clouds also forced me to turn around few times, where otherwise I would be able to continue on. 

I had a feeling that Gavin wasn't 100% happy with my performance. Like I mentioned before, a lot of it is due to the fact that I didn't refresh my knowledge and run a mental exercise. This is something I recommend to any friends I'm teaching driving, or doing refreshing drives with. To sit at home, and imagine you are doing manoeuvres. It allows you to run through everything in slow motion. I think I picked it up first, when reading Leia's blog. Then reading on advanced driving. It makes a lot of sense. It is also a good idea to do it with RT. Get instructor or someone who know's their RT well in the club to do it with you. It's fun. And it helps to practice it, when not flying, in relaxed atmosphere. 

It was time to go back, this time my RT wasn't that bad (still not perfect tho). 

I joined on base for 04, and landed it quite nicely. For some reason it seemed like the aircraft is taxing sideways. Dunno why. But we were ok :-)

As with every CFI, I was told to slow down with taxing, but otherwise, it was smooth. 

Mandatory GPS track:

• Route: EGAD-> over peninsula-> EGAD


• Milestones: stalls covered in the new aircraft


• Exercises covered: 10b


• Weather: Quite nice, still, bit of cloud here and there.