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Lesson Three
Climbing, Descending & Stalling
Cessna 172S VH-LCS
26.09.04

I didn't not know it, but today would be the best lesson yet, another early flight and another spectacular day. It’s 7am and very cold, I encountered light mist on the drive to the airport. Once there, the distinct smell of AVTUR (Aviation Turbine Fuel) was in the air. A Skywest Fokker 50 had just landed and the smell and sound of the early morning quiet being broken was enough to get me excited.

While I sit and wait for the instructor to arrive, the airport comes alive. There are some small aircraft making their way out to the runway for takeoff and the RFDS doing their preflight checks before a morning run.

My instructor arrives, and while he is getting everything ready inside, I am sent out to pre flight LCS. With my service book open to the pre flight checklist page I make my way around the aircraft. I check the maintenance release for serviceability and time to next inspection. I open the door and make sure all switches, mixtures and ignitions are off before turning on the battery and lowering the flaps for inspection. I make my walk around and check all the control surfaces thoroughly. After adding a few quartz of oil and cleaning the windscreen, my instructor emerges to check on my progress. He gives me a quick thumbs up and we make our way into the briefing room.

Today we will try and get a little more work done he said. He’s happy with my progress and keen to let me do more of the basics. He tells me that today we will try and get through climbs, descents, turning and if we have time stalls. I’m excited and a little amused at how blasé he was when saying stalls, he didn’t build it up or try and make it sound more challenging. To him it was just another student learning to fall out of the sky.

To me this was exciting and I felt like there should have been some fan fair or something.

I had all the confidence I needed to wash away those butterflies or at least push them further down so I didn’t notice them as much. The briefing is quick and to the point, they know I study before every lesson and after a short time, I have an understanding of the few parts I was a little unsure of.

Pre flight complete, engine started, and taxiing to the runway almost seem normal to me now. The hardest part about taxiing at Geraldton is you have raised lights down the centerline. It’s easy to taxi along a line but it’s hard to taxi just off to one side. Every now and again, I would run one over sending a shudder though the aircraft. They’re big and hard, not a nice thing to run over in a 24 year old plane.

We take off and make our way to the Western Training area, my instructor tells me to make a series of climbing turns all the way up to 3000ft. Turning left through 360deg’s and then doing the same to the right. Our ascent took a long time, I’m sure it was just anticipation of what we would do when up there. Time stood still as we approached 3000ft because I was thinking about some of the things that could go wrong in a stall. Leveling off I had to put that all aside as the instructor took control to demonstrate my first ever stall. I made sure my hands and feet were well away from the controls so not to interfere. This is hard to do because I’m a tall man over 6”2 and there isn’t any room to play with. He talks me though the process and tells me it’s my turn next. First, we do a powered stall and the instructor reduces power to 1800RPM to simulate a landing power setting. As the speed slows, he keeps us from descending by raising the nose. The stall warning very slowly starts to whine, quiet at first but slowly getting louder and louder and our nose attitude is getting higher and higher. I look over to the instructor and he is pulling back on the control column as far as he can. I’m starting to get a sinking feeling in the bottom of my pants as if something is pulling on that part of me alone. “SNAP” It was like something had broken off the aircraft. The unmistakable feeling of falling and all I could do was grab hold of my seat because it felt like it was trying to leave me up there. The nose rapidly moved from a high nose up attitude to a very low nose down attitude and that feeling of falling was beginning to worsen as we started to accelerate. With a gentle pull we start to level out and I experience for the first time what positive G forces feel like.

My instructor looked over, and asked if I was ok. I could not hide it, I had the stupidest grin on my face and this overwhelming urge to go WOOHOO!!!. I was screaming in my mind but maintaining a cool calm exterior. For some reason in that moment I decided to play the “that wasn’t so impressive” card. I don’t think I fooled anyone but at the time I didn’t care. My instructor showed me 3 more with different configurations. Powered, un-powered, with flaps and without. All with the purpose of giving me the tools to avoid and or handle such an event. I was an avid student soaking up all the information like a sponge because now it was my turn.

I started with my H.A.S.E.L Checks (Height, Altitude, Security, Engine, Lookout) and then setup the aircraft for an un-powered stall and recovery. I raised the nose and the stall warning begins to chirp. Keeping strait with rudder and pulling back a little more we gently start to fall into a very unimpressive stall. With no snap and very little movement of the aircraft. It seems the hardest part was telling my brain that it didn’t need to prevent this stall from happening. Again my instructor barks and I set my self up after climbing back to 3000ft. This time with a more aggressive approach I pull the nose up to 30deg and wait for the speed to come winding down. As we hit the lower part of the green arc I pull back as hard as I can and get an extra 10 degrees. SNAP! There it was, that unmistakable feeling of release from the controls. For the next 5 seconds they would be useless to me. The nose swung down as I fought the urge to grab hold of my seat again. I must have been a little more gentle on the pull back because my instructor looked at me as our speed was fast approaching the yellow caution arc. I had it under control but we did experience far more severe G forces in that stall. It felt like someone was pushing down on the skin around my neck. I became vary aware of every vein and tendon as I strained to hold my position in the aircraft. I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of situation we were in at that moment. My instructor seemed a little uneasy for a second there but I felt comfortable and thought it was well in hand. Perhaps he was just wondering if I had things under control or not. I wonder if he thought for a moment about taking control of the aeroplane. I would never know because as soon as we leveled out we climbed the 500ft back to 3000 and started doing it all over again.

We started doing powered recovery in all types of configurations. Repeatedly setting our selves up and falling out of the sky. We worked hard and after some old timer flying tips I was able to recover from a full stall without loosing more than 30-50ft.

Before we head back we have one more stall to do my instructor said. This was a demonstration only and although I didn’t mind at the time I really wished I got to do this one a short time later. My instructor takes over and sets up the stall. While doing so he tells me he will demonstrate a spin and I’m to watch closely and place my feet on the rudder pedals. The nose is raised and the stall warning that used to strike fear into my heart was now just another noise in the cockpit. I was very relaxed and enjoying the ride. As I started to feel that sinking feeling my instructor violently pushes down on the left rudder leaving my left foot behind and my right foot around my ears. At the same time he went full right aileron with a large movement of the controls. We got our snap but this was a very different type of snap. Everything happened very fast but my mind was able to capture it in detail. We started to bank left for a second and then wham, like something lifted up the left wing and threw it over to the right. We were flipped in a heart beat and now rapidly spinning towards the ground. We were right over the beach so the coastline made an excellent artificial horizon as we spun around and around 2,3,4 times before we stopped spinning and level out. I couldn’t hold it back any longer, WOOHOO!! I said. I was laughing like a little schoolgirl. “That was great” I said, and the instructor started laughing with me.

He handed over control and we made some descending turns down to 1500ft. We were totally silent on the way back. Normally that would be very unusual because we are always talking about something when we are flying. I didn’t notice though, I was already reflecting on the flight and I hadn’t even touched down yet. Deep in thought I noticed the instructor making the radio calls for me. I came back to reality once we entered downwind. I started to concentrate on landing and make the radio calls again. I found my self very tight fisted on the controls and my fingers hurt when I tried to wiggle them. Being so close to home I decided to clamp back onto the controls with my vice like hands.

Smooth as silk we are gliding into land and I notice all the traffic that was abuzz first thing this morning had gone. I was ecstatic with what I had achieved today and confident with my new skills. I was thoroughly prepared to deal with stalls in the future.

We cross the fence line and gently lower our bird onto the gravel runway. Taxiing back to the hangar we started talking about the days’ flying. My instructor is very happy and mentions that next week I will get ready for my first solo by doing circuits for the whole lesson. We park in front of the maintenance hangar and as I get out, my knees buckle from underneath me. My legs are wobbly and they feel like I have not used them in days. We had only been flying an hour but I’m constantly surprised at the effect it has on me. My instructor told me not to worry about it and that it happened to him when he started flying as well.

I offered to help wash and put the plane to bed after my flight. I spent all day at the airport and met some fantastic pilots from all walks of life. Some of them were as excited about my learning to fly as I was. They invited me to the Midwest Aero club for a beer and of course, I accepted. Spending the rest of the afternoon drinking and listening to the old timers stories seemed like the perfect finish to an amazing day.

Regards Gavin

Email: gavin@ausflightsim.net