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

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#1891558
I think the point being made was that it is firmly lodged in T6's mind that stalls are AoA, not airspeed, dependent.

I think she has been swotting. :D

Rob P
VRB_20kt, T6Harvard liked this
#1891571
@ericgreveson

were you flying G-CLNC at 15:00 this afternoon? If so, looks like you had some company with a couple of other aircraft flying in the vicinity. Have you ever tried to see how good your circuits are? If not, have you tried this

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/g-clnc - replace with your own aircraft reg if you were not in G-CLNC
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1891582
Rob P wrote:I think the point being made was that it is firmly lodged in T6's mind that stalls are AoA, not airspeed, dependent.

I think she has been swotting. :D

Rob P


Actually, I should apologise to @ericgreveson for being flippant and not helpful.

Of course there is a stalling speed for the aircraft in various states (max weight, full flaps, clean, etc) and those figures, in the POH, are important. I have, once, got very slow in the turn onto final and was told in no uncertain terms that I'd kill myself if I wasn't more careful. The solution, of course, was to lower the nose, thus reducing AofA and increasing airspeed :D

However, angle of attack is well written up in 'Principles of Flight' textbooks and EasyPPL Groundschool, and the stalling lessons are a decent way to get that message across. One can be flying at above stalling speed (IAS) but pull the nose past 15 or 16° up and you've reached the critical angle, airflow breaks away from the wing surface and, ooooops, loss of lift. Further caution is needed in a turn due to the lift force being tilted, and that's why the climbing turn is no more that 15-20° bank angle in our training a/c.

Your Instructor can answer your questions properly, and will be happy that you are thinking about it and enquiring. Keep up the good work!

Anyway, my apologies again. Put it down to the fact that I haven't flown for weeks and therefore I am feeling out of sorts :roll:
VRB_20kt, ericgreveson liked this
#1891592
T6Harvard wrote:...One can be flying at above stalling speed (IAS) but pull the nose past 15 or 16° up and you've reached the critical angle, airflow breaks away from the wing surface and, ooooops, loss of lift. Further caution is needed in a turn due to the lift force being tilted:


Yes, good point. Although strictly speaking you meant the stalling speed at 1g. There is no such thing as The Stalling Speed. Only the critical AoA, as you say.
The speed at which you stall in a turn (and various other manouevers) is higher because you need more lift to maintain level flight because the lift vector doesn't point straight up, some of the lift force being used to provide the acceleration needed for the turn - to get the extra lift you need to fly at a greater AoA .
You can tell this is happening because you have to apply back pressure to the control column/yoke.
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#1891643
FlyingBoot wrote:Did you do any low level passes before starting landing and circuits?

No - we just went straight into it, although with some demos from the instructors in previous lessons (and me landing it with their assistance a few times previously too). This did involve some pretty long hold-offs which I guess is a similar thing (flying just above the runway for a few seconds, although I guess not as long!). Might be one to consider if flare height continues to be difficult to judge though! (Also sounds a lot of fun :wink:)

FlyingBoot wrote:were you flying G-CLNC at 15:00 this afternoon?

Yep, indeed I was! Good guess - and thanks for the FR24 link, very handy. I guess that should show how consistent (or not) my circuits are - and I can check if track, turn points, altitude etc are all in line with what I was trying to do! In fact, you can probably see that this afternoon we had quite a few variations in the circuit, another 7 times round although with different exercises almost every time, which kept things interesting. Today included:
  • crosswind for all landings (started off around 7-8kt and dropped a bit towards the end, so not too bad, but pretty much 90 degrees to the runway!) so plenty of practise at crabbing, then wing down into wind and rudder to keep straight when landing
  • a couple of fully flapped (30 degree) touch & go's which indeed had a much steeper approach, although I didn't mind the feeling of flying straight towards the runway as it was more of a reminder to not round out too early!
  • two practice glide approaches from downwind at 1500 feet
  • one practice EFATO while climbing on crosswind that I certainly wasn't expecting to be trying today! (best glide pitch, pick a field quickly, point towards it and see if we would have made it)
  • a couple of flapless landings

All in all, lots more stuff to learn - I think it went pretty well again overall, although still lots of mistakes - I'm still flaring too high, need to improve judgement of crab angle with crosswind approaches, forgot to put carb heat to cold on final once (although at least remembered to check it before taking off again) and a couple of times climbing or descending 100 feet away from the correct circuit height on downwind / base. Since the PTT was still broken on my side, my instructor was handling all radio calls again, leading to this chestnut: he forgot to put in the "final" call (and I forgot to ask / check) and get clearance to land until we were almost over the runway threshold! Quick call went in just before I was starting the flare, and so I got ready to go around, but the ATC response came back (in a very relaxed and leisurely way) that we were cleared to land - so it was a normal touch and go after all.

Another great lesson - now the long week of waiting until the next one... which if all goes to plan, will be at Duxford (where the club has started operating at recently)! Looking forward to that especially since there's free entry to the museum afterwards :)

And @T6Harvard / @lobstaboy and others - thanks for all the stall chat! All makes sense and is in line with what I've read so far - although I haven't got on to the more technical theory subjects yet, looking forward to getting stuck in as I have a background (and interest!) in engineering, so will be able to go Full Nerd (tm).
T6Harvard, Milty liked this
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1891672
TopCat wrote:
T6Harvard wrote:If only I could walk the walk :lol:

It's 2022. Enough self-deprecation already. Stop it right now. I mean it.


I was just having a laugh. I'm going to be all over 2022, don't you worry! Now I must stop hijacking Eric's thread and get on with revision, planning on sitting 5th TK exam before end January :mrgreen:
ericgreveson liked this
#1892835
Been reading the updates on the other student threads, it's good to see all the progress being made! Especially since most of you guys are further along in the course, it's nice to have a sneak preview of what I have to look forward to.

Since I didn't have any lessons booked this weekend, and inspired by the various other theory exams being taken, I thought it would be a good idea to get some of the ground work and "admin" out of the way. Based on the pearls of wisdom in the "what order to take exams" sticky, I thought it made sense to do Air Law, Operational Procedures and Human Performance & Limitations yesterday. I'd already read the books, and had gone through the "EasyPPL Ground School" material and sat a bunch of their mock exams (thanks for the recommendation @T6Harvard) so felt I was ready. Decided to do Air Law first, and then the first question came up... "under what conditions does a Permit to Fly cease to be valid" or something along those lines, which I vaguely remember reading about but didn't really have a clue! I spent a few seconds thinking that I had bitten off more than I can chew. However, reading the answer options then gave me a bit of comfort (two were obviously wrong), and fortunately pretty much all the other questions were things I knew or could figure out, and it was all over with in about 20 minutes! Pleased to say I passed with just one wrong (don't know which one for sure, because I think my guess on Q1 looks like it was correct in the end, but I might have mis-remembered the exact wording). Then the Operational Procedures and Human Performance & Limitations exams seemed much easier, got all of those right. So, first 3 exams out of the way - happy days! I think the "what order to take exams" thread was definitely right about these three.

Then, to keep things moving, I had my Class 2 Medical today. This went mostly fine, but I haven't passed with flying colours yet - as part of the eye examination, I apparently have something called exotropia (eyes moving outwards when relaxed, although nowhere near as bad as the photo that comes up on Google if you search for it!). The AME requested some additional checks with an opthalmologist - this should likely be fine once checked properly, but I'll need this to be signed off before the medical is approved. One more optician's appointment to be booked, fingers crossed...

Next lesson scheduled for Wednesday, weather is looking promising, looking forwards to loads more circuits! Perhaps with a working PTT button for the first time, meaning I might actually have to make some radio calls... what could possibly go wrong...
T6Harvard, Milty liked this
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By Milty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1892866
Sounds good. You should have got an email from the CAA with your result. On the pdf attached to the email is a section giving a reference number of topics that you might want to study in detail again. It will be a number like 070.04.01.01 or similar. Google CAA and that number and it will give you an idea of what question(s) that you got wrong.

I’m behind the curve on my exams due to available time / apathy / being out of comfort zone having to study again so I have some jealousy of your progress but good on you for cracking on with it.

On the order of topics, there’s no right and wrong. Interestingly, EasyPPL suggest a different order than the flyer forum sticky thread. My school also suggests a different order. I’m doing comms now having completed air law, ops proc and human performance. The next suggested topics are met and aircraft general knowledge. I believe comms and met may also be a prerequisite for solo nav in the flying school flying order book. Might be worth checking your school doesn’t have a preferred order too but I think it is only a preference and there is no legislation on order.

Also worth noting that the flyer forum thread on exam order was started in a time where I believe you had to sit multiple exams in one sitting. IIRC, you had a maximum 6 sittings to do 9 exams so it was maybe thought to be good to group similar or easier topics together. Now, there is no limit on the number of sittings other than you have 4 chances to pass each topic. So, you could choose to do 1 exam every other week for example.

Good luck for Wednesday - hope the weather gods are shining in you.

I can’t compete on forum response time tonight as was out as part of a winning pub quiz team but it’s a goal to beat @T6Harvard :lol: :wink:
T6Harvard, ericgreveson liked this
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