Yesterday was PPL Lesson 5: Slow Flight.
We seem to be working through the syllabus quite quickly and things are starting to click. Today we started doing stalling for the first time.
In our pre flight briefing my instructor taught me HASELL which helps you remember the procedure before doing a stall recovery.
- Height – Do we have enough height to practice stalls?
- Airframe – Is there ice on the plane?
- Security – Are you strapped in?
- Engine – Are the T’s and P’s (temperature and pressure) good?
- Location – Where are you? You cant do this over built up areas etc.
- Lookout – Are there any other aircraft around?
Stalling wasn’t what I expected at all, I anticipated when a plane stalls it would start to lose altitude and be reasonably unstable. However in the Cessna 152 I learn in, all that really happened was an audio stall warning sounded and that the plane shook very slightly which you corrected with the rudder. The plane of course lost altitude while we was doing this.
Following this, you pitch the nose down and apply full power then climb back out at 65 knots at which point the stall is recovered.
There wasn’t much else to say about the lesson as the stalls was the focus.
I did get to see the sun set behind the horizon which was absolutely breath taking.
I also did my first radio call today, I felt a little nervous calling the tower incase I got it wrong but I got both calls perfect.
I feel like I am making solid progress and I cant wait to get up in the air again.
Hopefully next week I can sort out the exercise spirometry that is holding up my class 1 medical.
Another 1.1 hours in the log book and we are now at 5.9 hours!
