Lesson #6 - Slow flight, stalls, and ground reference

Today was my longest flight so far, 2.1 hours.  I thought the weather was kind of marginal, lots of clouds around, but they were mostly high enough and scattered enough to let us fly without any problems.  

I'm getting better with preflight runup and getting the instruments and radios all set up.  Made the radio calls for permission to taxi and take off, getting a little more confidence on the radio there, although Dave handled a lot of the radio today.  We had to be careful to use the full callsign (we were in 739TW) today because someone else was out in 669TW.  Definitely don't want to confuse calls for "9TW" when you've got both up in the air.

My takeoffs are getting better, I remembered to use more right rudder on takeoff and not let the aircraft drift left. The takeoff climb was OK, although I pitched up a little too high and started to lose some airspeed. Dave had to remind me to get the nose down for a 75 knot climb. We made a right Dumbarton departure and headed out over Fremont past 680 to practice maneuvers over Lake Del Valle. 

Today's lesson started out with more slow flight practice and getting used to the nose up attitude in slow flight, going into and out of slow flight, and turning while in slow flight. After slow flight, we did a few steep turns in each direction. I have discovered that I have a harder time with steep turns to the right, not using enough right rudder.  After steep turn practice, we worked on stalls.

Stalls are kind of freaky, but they weren't as bad as I had anticipated, at least not when we had a few thousand feet between the aircraft and the ground. I wouldn't want to stall at low altitude, that's for sure.  Dave demonstrated power-off and power-on stalls. I guess we were only pitched up about 20 degrees, but it sure seemed steeper. I saw a lot of blue sky through the windshield... We ran through several demonstrations of entering stalls as well as recovery, then it was my turn.  Dave coached me through power-on stalls and recovery a couple times, then the same with power-off stalls. I won't say they're my idea of fun, but they weren't as scary as I had anticipated, at least at altitude.

We took a break from maneuvers and I just flew the plane for a few minutes, practicing trim and holding altitude and making a few turns. After 5 or 6 minutes of that, we turned back toward Palo Alto and started our descent. All that stall practice had put us to over 7,000 feet MSL, so we started heading down quickly. Dave demonstrated a fast dive to get us down from about 5,000 to around 3,500 or so. Heading back over Fremont, we dropped down to 1,000 feet and called Palo Alto to let them know we would be doing some ground reference maneuvers. We were a little worried about birds – we missed a couple random gulls, and at one point we passed above a hawk about 150 feet down to my left. 

Dave showed me turns around a point using a building in the middle of the salt ponds as the center. After I took a turn, we worked on rectangular patterns using a cluster of eight salt ponds for reference. I took the controls for a lap around and did OK, although I'm not really used to doing 45 degree banks at 1,000 feet yet. 

We were starting to run short of time, so we skipped S-turns and headed back to Palo Alto, joining the right pattern for runway 31 at 800 feet. We did an extended downwind leg and I made turns onto base and final. I got closer to landing again, but still didn't quite do it by myself. One of these days...  

I walked away from today feeling pretty good. I certainly felt like I am doing a better job controlling the aircraft. It would really help if the weather would cooperate and I could fly more than once per weekend and build my skills. The weather tomorrow is iffy, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be good enough to fly.

Lesson #6: 2.1 hours

Total hours: 9.1