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