Had an awesome booking yesterday! The last thing I needed to get signed off before going solo was stalls, spins, and spiral dives…so we headed out to the practice area and had a little fun.
Started off with a simple power off stall, followed by power off with 20 degrees of flaps. Then a few power on stalls, 1500 RPM, 1700 RPM and 2000 RPM. Then Brad did a spin for us. Then we did a spiral dive and recovery.
I don’t know if it was to try to make it more realistic or what, but Brad got me to close my eyes and fold my arms across my chest while he went a little crazy in the plane. The idea was to get the plane is a somewhat screwed up position and then get me to open my eyes and take control and fix the situation. Fun stuff! Let me tell you, he did some funky shit with that plane while my eyes were closed, at one point I heard him say, “Cool, I’ve never tried this before.”
We tried a few departure stalls which is when you are doing a climbing turn and experience a stall. In my case, we were doing a climbing turn to the left and when the wings stalled, the plane wanted to whip over to the right. Kind of cool. After that, I convinced Brad to do another spin before heading back.
A bit of a crosswind for the landing, but since I’ve figured them out, no big deal. :) Actually, I came in a bit slow (not THAT slow) which meant I had to add a bit of power so we’d make the runway. It was interesting.
Next booking is on Friday. My plan is to write the OFC pre-solo exam tonight so perhaps I’ll be going solo tomorrow! How crazy is that?!