More stalls, maneuvers, and an emergency! (Drill that is.)

9:00am flight – scheduled for just the right day. The 23rd and 24th (my last two lessons) were in perfect weather, the 25th was lousy overcast, and today was perfect again. Wind was calm, 10 miles visibility – very nice.

Today we worked on more stalls – specifically power on stalls, to simulate stalling the plane just after takeoff or during a go around. Very cool. On the first one, the nose dropped pretty sharply, nearly the entry to a spin. My response was simply “Oh shit”, but I recovered OK. No real danger I was told, so I relaxed after that. A few stalls later it did the same thing, and that one was kinda FUN. I imagine that they’d be a lot less fun if they were unintentional or close to the ground – so I’ll be very careful.

Next up was some ground reference maneuvers. Turns around a point first – we found a water tower, and turned around it both left and right. Easy to understand, just needs practice. Next was S turns across a road. Again – just needs practice.

After that, Richard demonstrated a complete engine failure. Pulled the throttle all the way back, trimmed for best glide, and then found a spot. Circled down until we were on final for a small road, then recovered. Cool.

Back to Van Nuys for another OK landing (a 5 on a 1-10 scale, I think I’ll rate them all that way from now on), and taxi home.

1.5 hours/12.0 total