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

Moderator: AndyR

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#1889818
Could have been me if just after 10am, but we were mostly further to the north. There was at least one other school C152 out yesterday morning so you might have seen them!
Of course, if it looked like it was being flown in an impeccable expert manner, then it was definitely me :wink:
#1891252
Quick update on my last lesson of last year, before I forget...

I was lucky with the weather on Christmas Eve and got to finish off the stalling lesson that we had started a few days earlier. We had to do some slow flight stalls, power on stalls and simulated base-leg-to-final turn incipient stall (2 stages flap, flying slowly, turning left). After the previous lesson I was feeling fairly confident with the HASELL checks and the recovery procedure - yoke forward, full power, then once un-stalled, wings level and return to straight and level flight. Indeed things went pretty well the first time, although it took a while to induce the stall as I needed to pull back a bit more on the yoke to get a full stall with nose down in the C152.

The second time, my instructor again asked for a full stall, and I was happy to oblige - so decided to be a bit more positive with the pitch to make sure I stalled "properly". I was rewarded with a huge left wing drop, a couple of seconds of negative G and a proper nose down attitude! Took a bit more time to recover from this one (I probably needed to push the yoke forwards a bit more) but despite the surprise factor, I did find it quite "enjoyable" in a way! However I think my instructor was even more surprised than me - he commented "that's the first time someone's done that to me!" We then did a bit more practice, using the rudder to keep the wings level when inducing the stall, and not inducing such a big wing drop for the remaining exercises! Happy to have had enough time to complete the exercise before we landed with thick fog coming in from the north (although it took a while for the fog to get to the airport, at least another hour after we landed despite it being less than a few miles away).

I'm now hoping for good weather for my next lesson booked on Tuesday! In the meantime, I'm trying to get ready for the Air Law and Human Performance exams, which will be the first ones I'm sitting. Have registered on the CAA portal so will hopefully be able to book them in the next week or two. I've been using the Pooley's books (I assume pretty much everyone uses these) along with some online options:
- Pooley's books: comprehensive, seem to be well written and with good explanations / diagrams etc on the whole.
- PPLTutor app: cheap (£10-15 for access to all courses and questions, in perpetuity, I think) and seems to have a pretty decent question bank. However the "revision material" is quite terse and doesn't always seem to be up-to-date / correct. Also, quite a few questions seem to have mistakes in (and one or two with incorrect answers). I did find this pretty useful, especially considering the low cost.
- EasyPPL Ground School (as recommended by @T6Harvard) - much more expensive than PPLTutor, at approx £11 per course per month including revision material and practice exam questions. However "you pays your money and takes your choice" applies here - the revision material and practice questions are much more comprehensive, up to date, and higher quality than PPLTutor (there is also an "ask an instructor" feature although I haven't used that). Would definitely recommend this to others, despite the extra cost.
Will find out if I have learned enough once I sit the exams, I suppose...!

Looking forward to this year's flying as I'm sure everyone else is! Wishing good weather to all :)
T6Harvard, Milty liked this
#1891257
ericgreveson wrote:... despite the surprise factor, I did find it quite "enjoyable" in a way!


No need for the quotation marks. Gaining the realisation that even when an aircraft departs from controlled flight you still aren't necessarily going to die a horrible death, and at the same time realising that you have acquired a skill that will stand you in good stead, are ample reasons for both enjoyment, and satisfaction. :thumleft:

Rob P
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1891263
A great lesson @ericgreveson !

I was surprised by a big wing drop on stall....my Instructor did it without warning :shock: but, as @Rob P said, it was amazing how quick the recovery was (of course, being in the hands of an expert). Despite the startle factor I was compos mentis enough to register the rudder arresting (edit for clarity) the incipient spin that started. A great learning point.

Although I have yet to solo I have done a couple of the next exercises but it's a while ago and I'm definitely going to ask to repeat them, esp recovery from unusual attitudes :mrgreen:

Good luck with the exams. BTW, I think Pooleys was too detailed with regards to the needs for the HF exam but it was a good read.
Last edited by T6Harvard on Sun Jan 02, 2022 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By Milty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1891272
Sounds like a good lesson (or 2). I’m sort of looking forward to getting back to trying out stalling again over the next few weeks. I did an hour or so of it fairly early on and while it was OK ish in the end, I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t get the hang of perfecting it. I recall I was pushing the yoke too far forward and putting us almost into a dive and losing too much height. I’m interested to see what it will be like next time as I’ve learned to have a bit more finesse in my control inputs in general. I also found it quite hard to stall the C152 - it’s so docile.
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#1891286
Milty wrote:I’m sort of looking forward to getting back to trying out stalling again over the next few weeks. I did an hour or so of it fairly early on and while it was OK ish in the end, I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t get the hang of perfecting it.

Milty wrote: I also found it quite hard to stall the C152 - it’s so docile.


I was wondering if these things might be linked... I found it difficult to get a similar stall behaviour each time. Sometimes just a gentle nose nod (not much drop even if yoke pushed forward a fair bit during recovery), sometimes a big one like with the wing drop (big nose down and altitude loss even before yoke was forward). Maybe the amount of altitude loss is more related to how severe a stall is induced (waiting longer before starting the recovery) rather than the recovery itself? It's easy to recover with minimal altitude loss when you put the nose back down just after the stall warner goes off (incipient stage)... which is hopefully what would happen in case of a real world situation! Rather than continuing to force a full stall...
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By VRB_20kt
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1891288
T6Harvard wrote:Wing drop, incipient spin, rudder stopped it pdq. All done by the rhs, thankfully.


There is potential for making the aircraft spin in the opposite direction if you do this.

The correct response to a stall is the standard recovery whether a wing drops or not. Once the wings are flying again then aileron is used to return to level flight.

The stall exercise is to lose minimum height during a stall. Unless you're doing aerobatics then the response to the first signs of a stall is to get the nose down and apply power - only once the aircraft is flying again do you sort out the attitude. It needs to become instinctive
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1891297
The stalling I did was fine. I enjoyed them all - straight, turns, flapped etc. Once I managed to get the C152 to stall! I found recovery to be instinctive, check forward, apply power with rudder to balance ( also recovery without power ). In the turn, check forward, get wings flying again THEN level wings. I never had a wing drop but I expect that will be introduced in upset recovery in a later lesson. It was one of my favourite lessons, once I actually got the stall rather than recovering at incipient stage :mrgreen:
ericgreveson liked this
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1891388
VRB_20kt wrote:The stall exercise is to lose minimum height during a stall. Unless you're doing aerobatics then the response to the first signs of a stall is to get the nose down and apply power - only once the aircraft is flying again do you sort out the attitude. It needs to become instinctive

This is all very well, and drummed into the vast majority of students, without a doubt.

Yet we keep getting stall/spin accidents.

I can't help feeling that students don't spend enough time actually stalled to get used to the feeling of being stalled. Which results in it being more difficult to recognise the incipient stall for what it is.

All the exercises are completely staged (even the unusual attitude recovery exercises are effectively always one of only two things), and the student is concentrating on what's going on at the time, so it's virtually impossible to simulate what it's like in the real world.

In the real world, you're usually concentrating on something else, tense for some reason (so unconsciously pulling back somewhat), and already in a situation where the picture isn't right and you haven't figured it out yet.

IMHO the way stall recovery is usually taught leaves a lot to be desired.

And then (warning: wild generalisation alert) the way most people fly after getting their PPL virtually guarantees that they will not spend anywhere near enough time in unusual attitudes for either recognition of, or recovery from, the stall, even an incipient one, to become anything resembling instinctive.
ericgreveson liked this
#1891443
TopCat wrote:And then (warning: wild generalisation alert) the way most people fly after getting their PPL virtually guarantees that they will not spend anywhere near enough time in unusual attitudes for either recognition of, or recovery from, the stall, even an incipient one, to become anything resembling instinctive.

It's still very early days for me (8 hours in to training!) but I definitely agree that despite having "done" the stalling exercise, it would need a lot (lot) more practice to get near "instinctive". I guess the instinctive response for most people when stalling (especially close to the ground) is to pull back, since you're going down and you feel like you need to gain height. Pushing forward to point the aeroplane more towards the ground is very counter-intuitive - although obviously essential. I'll aim to spend a bit more time with an instructor practicing stalls etc later during training (and even afterwards!) to get more experience with stalls - I think I read somewhere that stalls/spins after takeoff, followed by stalls on approach, are one of the most common serious accidents in typical light aircraft... worth bearing in mind.

In other news, upon waking up to a lovely day with blue skies, I discovered that some extra slots had become available overnight for lessons - so I quickly booked an afternoon session! As a result, I was lucky enough to spend an hour this afternoon doing my first circuits (8 in total) with quite gusty winds, although mostly straight down the runway. I was also lucky in that the left-hand PTT switch on the C152 was broken, so I got away without having to make any R/T calls - which probably made this first experience of circuits quite a lot easier. Did 4 landings with 20 degrees of flap and 4 flapless landings, which were of variable quality but nothing too bad - a couple of nice gentle ones in there. There was a bit of traffic in and around the circuit as well, so we had one right-hand orbit and a couple of extended downwind legs to deal with this. My main impression was how fast everything has to happen - especially downwind, it was very busy as the strong wind meant that we were already nearly past the downwind end of the runway after completing the turn from crosswind. Had trouble remembering what all the bits of "BUMPFFITCHH" were for the first couple of circuits, but after a few goes I think it became a bit easier to go through all the checks without forgetting anything. On the plus side, again perhaps because of the strong headwind, it seemed like there was lots of time to get everything sorted out on final (no crosswind probably helped with this too).

Things I'd like to improve:
  • maintaining altitude more accurately during turns to crosswind and base: I dropped about 50-100 feet a few times while not paying enough attention to altitude, and 150 feet once when turning to base, although I'd like to blame the gusts for that :wink:
  • flaring a bit lower: I think I'm starting to flare a little bit too early sometimes, so then I have to stop and wait until we're a bit lower before continuing
  • trying to be a bit more consistent with the turning points for the circuit - this is mostly about getting the trim sorted a bit faster on crosswind, and getting all the checks done in good time on downwind.

Overall, it was a great experience and a lot of fun - looking forward to the same again tomorrow - although it looks like the wind will be pretty much all crosswind tomorrow, so no doubt there will end up being quite a few differences to learn! I also have a different instructor tomorrow so will be interesting to see any differences in their approach (there are always a few small things that different people like to do differently...)
Milty, T6Harvard liked this
#1891500
The training syllabus is designed (the stalling AND slow flight exercises) to put emphasis on recognising the flight conditions and symptoms of the impending stall (attitude, stick position, air speed, wind noise, buffet etc etc) so that the pilot does something about it before the stall happens.
You can have as much training as you like, and believe that your response to an unexpected stall will be instinctive, but an unexpected stall on base to final turn will still probably kill you. Don't let it happen.
Don't allow yourself to be distracted in the circuit. Watch the airspeed and slip ball carefully (as well as all the other busy stuff!).

Having said all that the stall as an exercise done at a sensible height with some slow flight too is great fun and good for getting back into harmony with the aeroplane after a break. Don't be frightened of it, but do keep the ball in the middle!
ericgreveson liked this
#1891534
@ericgreveson

Did you do any low level passes before starting landing and circuits? I found that it helped take away that feeling that you are about to crash into the ground as you get used to flying down to about ten or five feet off the surface. Then you just get lower and allow it to actually land. That being said, I did round-out and flare a little too high at first (two feet according to the instructor) but that is possibly better than too low. You soon get used to the height above the ground. You will also do some full flap landings at some stage and then it really feels like you are pointing to the ground.

I have to agree with @lobstaboy , the stall exercises are really so that you recognise the incipient stall and do something about it rather than allow a stall and know how to recover. Keep airspeed up and you should never need to recover from a stall unless you are deliberately inducing it for practise or check flight.
ericgreveson liked this
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