Learning to fly, or thinking of learning? Post your questions, comments and experiences here

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By Milty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1868055
I understand that Hapenny Green is similar but £35.
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1868066
Milty wrote:I was a bit cheesed off after my dodgy stalls last Friday.

What was wrong with them?
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By Milty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1868075
Mainly that I couldn’t stop myself pushing the column too far forward on the initial recovery, then pulling back to correct. Was like the Big Dipper at Blackpool. The more I ballsed it up, the more annoyed and tense I got and the worse it was. More annoyed at my reaction than anything else. I’m learning that this flying lark is not quite as easy as I thought it might be.
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By leiafee
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1868085
Milty wrote:Mainly that I couldn’t stop myself pushing the column too far forward on the initial recovery, then pulling back to correct. Was like the Big Dipper at Blackpool. The more I ballsed it up, the more annoyed and tense I got and the worse it was.


If they haven’t already, I’d have your instructor show you what happens in that scenario when you simply let go.

In pretty much any basic trainer, if you were trimmed for cruise speed before you started, then the aircraft will drop its nose towards recovery at the removal of the back pressure even before you start any signficant forward ‘push’.

Don’t forget that when the aeroplane is trimmed it’s trimmed for a particular speed. Left to its own devices and if you’re not yet TOO far out of whack, a reasonably stable trainer will seek that speed if you let go.

Watching that happen can help reduce the urge to overcontrol. Did for me anyway.
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By Milty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1868087
:thumleft: Good idea. I’ll ask if I’m still doing it next time.
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By VRB_20kt
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1868117
It’ll work, but remember that the final aim of the exercise is to …recover from the stall with minimum height loss. The nose only needs to dip sufficiently to get the wing flying again.

The exercise is trying to develop an instinct to recover quickly and accurately. If you stall close to the ground you MUST still get the wing flying and in an SEP that means dip the nose (even with the ground looming), apply full power and keep the aircraft in balance.
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1868127
Milty wrote:Mainly that I couldn’t stop myself pushing the column too far forward on the initial recovery, then pulling back to correct. Was like the Big Dipper at Blackpool. The more I ballsed it up, the more annoyed and tense I got and the worse it was.

People are often nervous about the stall, and are consequently tense as they approach it.

This leads to the overcontrolling you mention, and as you're so desperate to recover, you push far harder than you need to.

Although as @VRB_20kt says, your objective in the exercise is to recover with minimum height loss, this does require a little finesse - you need to ease forward enough to unstall the wing, but not so much that in stuffing the nose down you aim at the ground that you're trying to avoid.

I think this finesse is best learned at altitude, where you can stall, unstall, stall, unstall - several times in a row (best without power initially) and discover how little forward movement is actually required to get the wing flying again.

Without power, of course, height loss is inevitable, but once you have the control, you can add power as you unstall the wing, and with practice the height loss can be kept to less than 100'.

The secret is in staying as relaxed as possible throughout, as that way you'll remain as focused on the sensations and control inputs as you can.

Although the lift from the wing is less than the weight at the stall, it only falls to slightly less than the weight, so there's no plummeting involved. :)
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By jcal
#1868128
Milty wrote:I’m 1 trial lesson and 3 others in. Take a look at my thread re new student Gloucester.

The XC is planned primarily because it’s cheaper and quieter to do circuits at Hapenny Green than it is at Gloucester. I’m sure my FI will have me doing slow flight, the odd stall etc on the way over and back. It will be an intro into what XC is like. As @ChrisRowland said, I don’t think XC will be that difficult with an FI sat next to me. Would I want to do it alone at this stage or with responsibility for exactly where we are - god no. But I think it will be interesting rather than intense and be great to experience flying to a different airfield… landing and paying landing fees elsewhere etc.

My target is to qualify in roughly 18 months. I have been booking roughly 1 lesson per week but missed 1 due to weather and 1 due to work. I don’t want to rush it due to time and money constraints but am aiming at worst to get in 1 lesson every 2 weeks or 3 weeks.

My FI has a reputation for pushing hard. The theory is that it’s better to throw a lot of stuff in at the start, then you can work on perfecting what you need to over time and relax a bit later on. I personally like this approach overall but it is quite intense and I was a bit cheesed off after my dodgy stalls last Friday. But it’s all progress. I think it’s good to mix up training with different experiences. We did a low flyover Defford grass strip on my second lesson with a strong crosswind whilst trying to track down the runway. It was great to try it and just makes learning more interesting rather than perfecting one thing at a time.

Ah I see, I thought I had it in the back of my head that you had just started but interesting to hear about other schools teaching methods! It makes total sense to go to another airfield if it's easier to do circuits there, plus you get multiple "lessons" in one.

My lesson on stalls today was cancelled, went out to the airfield and my FI was optimistic that we could at least start doing circuits, so we went through a bunch of theory on circuits while waiting for a gap in the weather which was nice! In the end cloud level got worse, 400ft BR, so had to scrap it. Good way to get Monday started early though :). Hopefully it'll be better next weekend, and in the meantime I'm getting lots of good insight from everybody elses lessons :mrgreen:
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By Milty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1868147
Thanks all for the feedback.

@TopCat I agree I think the issue is being tense. I don’t feel particularly nervous about the stall ‘consciously’ anyway, but I’m a bit of a perfectionist (see other thread re autism/OCD). I’m sure it will come with time. The couple that I did better on were when we did them back to back rather than fully resetting, climbing etc. Thanks for your thoughts.

@jcal I’m not sure if it’s a school policy or just that my FI is a bit unique but I think it might work well. The main reason is to save a bit of dosh as its £10/landing at Gloucester and circuits could get pricey. We’ll give it a try anyway.
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By Cessna571
#1869255
One of my passengers asked to see a stall, and when I agreed was quite disappointed at how benign the aircraft was when “not flying”.

I had to impress on him that a stall meant the wing was no longer flying, not that we were performing an aerobatic manoeuvre.

I think there is a great misconception that it can be more exciting than it is*

The main lesson for me was to stay away from the ailerons when recovering a stall.
I never was actually shown the outcome if you didn’t.



*it can however get much more exciting if you are in an airframe that drops a wing, and you try to pick it up with aileron rather than rudder.
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By lobstaboy
#1869287
Practicing stalls intentionally is not hugely exciting in training aeroplanes. But (so I'm told) it is exciting if you allow it to happen unintentionally near the ground - on your base to final turn for example!
Trying to pick up the dropped wing with aileron increases the effective angle of attack on that wing so deepening the stall and risking a spin. Really you shouldn't try to pick up the wing with either aileron or rudder until after you've recovered from the stall (I know this doesn't accord with the old school way of doing things).
It's also worth noting that for the GST what is required is a recovery into a full power climb (in Microlights anyway).
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By Rob P
#1869292
@lobstaboy Agreed. :thumleft:

Assuming a safe height, who cares if the wing drops? Get the aircraft back flying again and then worry about straightening the horizon later. It's not a priority.

I would guess that the issue is that many people only experience a wing drop of any sort in training, and if it is fairly abrupt and they aren't used to 'unusual attitudes' it can be a bit scary and leave a permanent impression in their mind. Sometimes reinforced by dire warnings of imminent smoking holes from the instructor.

Rob P

Note: As this is the Student Forum please pay more attention to your instructor than to my random thoughts.
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By jcal
#1869304
I've been a bit lazy and haven't updated in a while! Been 2 lessons since last, and we've started doing circuits which gives us a bit of flexibility with the weather which is nice!

Lesson 10

Visibility was just above flyable so we weren't going to do stalls, but instead did my first set of circuits! Holy *!&@ it's hard work :lol:. I know technically everything is stuff I've practised before but suddenly doing it all in a span of 6 minutes made me forget everything I learned.

I fixated way too much on the instruments chasing that airspeed making me much less stable that I usually were, so big homework piece is to remember to look out and set the picture, not chase the ASI dummy!

Landings were shoddy, much worse than any of the ones I did before doing circuits. My guess is overloading myself with work on final. Struggling to stay level on the hold off as well, using quite a bit of muscle to keep level means it's hard to do tiny adjustments! Anyway, lots to practice but overall I was happy, and exhausted.

Lesson 11

This one was yesterday, stunning day, not a cloud in the sky so a perfect opportunity to do stalls.

@Cessna571 and @lobstaboy, your comments are very timely, because indeed it wasn't nearly as "exciting" as I was expecting, the aircraft is so easy to recover it's barely more than a little bump on the road. It was still fun! And I got quite a bit of practice getting out of the way of our usual training area to get into higher airspace which was nice.

My landing this time was probably the worst yet, actually thought for a second I would damage the plane, but my instructor is ice cold and never batted an eye, so maybe it just felt worse than it was. We had quite a bit of crosswind so was crabbing maybe 10-15 degrees and I think I gave myself too much work to do in final, wasn't aligned at all to the centre line so had to do lots of last minutes adjustments. I pull up not particularly level and we land on one of the main wheels first, slightly sideways, twisting the plane around and down on the ground. Kept it stable and straight once on the ground so we're all safe and sound, but it was scary.

In the back of my mind I was constantly thinking I wouldn't have done that landing and just gone around. So I asked my FI after what he thought and he agreed that if I was flying solo I should've gone around, but since he was there he was happy to guide me down anyway. It does make me think though that if I'm on the controls (and as far as I know he didn't touch the controls at all) and he thought that we should've gone around why didn't we?
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1869327
jcal wrote:In the back of my mind I was constantly thinking I wouldn't have done that landing and just gone around. So I asked my FI after what he thought and he agreed that if I was flying solo I should've gone around, but since he was there he was happy to guide me down anyway. It does make me think though that if I'm on the controls (and as far as I know he didn't touch the controls at all) and he thought that we should've gone around why didn't we?

He would have wanted you to go around on that landing at your current stage, if you'd been solo, because it was close enough to the edge of the Ok range that he would want you to have a bigger margin when you're solo. I expect he also wanted you to see what a moderately bad one looks and feels like, which is absolutely crucial to the learning process.

By the time you're ready for solo, you'll be better able to

a) be reliably further from that edge,
b) recover from the recoverable ones that don't need a go around, and
b) make the land/go-around judgement for yourself.

So absolutely do not beat yourself up about that now.

Having said that, if you ever touchdown nose first, go around immediately. Otherwise there's a pretty good chance of a very badly ruined day. But hopefully there is absolutely no chance of your doing that, if you're being taught properly.
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By jcal
#1869332
TopCat wrote:He would have wanted you to go around on that landing at your current stage, if you'd been solo, because it was close enough to the edge of the Ok range that he would want you to have a bigger margin when you're solo. I expect he also wanted you to see what a moderately bad one looks and feels like, which is absolutely crucial to the learning process.

By the time you're ready for solo, you'll be better able to

a) be reliably further from that edge,
b) recover from the recoverable ones that don't need a go around, and
b) make the land/go-around judgement for yourself.

So absolutely do not beat yourself up about that now.

That does sound spot on. He was very calm about the whole thing and your point about a bad landing being part of the learning process really hits home. I feel like I did take away a whole bunch of stuff from that landing that I probably don't if I "grease" them every time (as if that's going to happen :lol:)

TopCat wrote:Having said that, if you ever touchdown nose first, go around immediately. Otherwise there's a pretty good chance of a very badly ruined day. But hopefully there is absolutely no chance of your doing that, if you're being taught properly.

Yeah, that's unlikely to happen. We're comfortably far away from any nose landings. Besides, that video you posted of the Piper Warrior bouncing on the runway is still firmly etched in my mind :shock:.
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